The latest version of such an argument appeared in a recent The New York Times article. “The research is unequivocal,” the author says, that laptops are distracting for both users and those around them. The arguments in the piece follow a predictable pattern that have already been featured in, among others, columns and op-eds from NPR, Washington Post, Inside Higher Ed, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

There are reasons to be skeptical of these pieces. Disabled students often need tech to communicate, take notes, and otherwise access course materials; as a dyslexic man who has trouble forming letters by hand, I learned best when I had access to technology. The issues faced by the disability community, moreover, raise broader questions about the future human-technology interactions as they apply in the classroom. If the disability-rights argument in favor of classroom technology hasn’t persuaded everyone, perhaps the bigger picture will. This is the last generation, pending an apocalypse, in which it’s possible to imagine separating students from their tech. It’s a moment to begin seriously thinking about the pedagogy of teaching a cyborg.

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Science-fiction authors have been thinking a lot about the broader societal implications of embedded tech for decades. William Gibson’s cyberpunk “Neuromancer” trilogy, for example, takes place in a world where people might easily be able access all the information in the universe through their brains. In such a world, teachers could, at last, stop worrying so much about memorizing and closed-book tests. Neal Stephenson’s book The Diamond Age tells the story of Nell, an impoverished child, who accidentally ends up with access to a fully immersive virtual-reality education program. When she logs in, a collection of artificial intelligences and actors train her to become a kind of revolutionary leader. In C.S. Friedman’s This Alien Shore, every child is granted “brainware” when she is born, so that access to knowledge is reasonably equitably distributed. These and countless other stories envision futuristic worlds in which banning laptops just isn’t going to be feasible. So what would teaching look like in those worlds?

Back in reality, technologists are largely focused on the Internet of Things in which all the objects with which people interact on a daily basis—Google Glass and Apple Watch, for example—are gradually becoming computers, robots, and phones. The technologist Bruce Schneier calls it a “world-size robot.” The upshot? Quotidian objects that are actually computers will soon enter classrooms. It's still fairly easy to spot students using their cell phones in class—but when the smart pen or smart textbook sends messages directly to the contact lenses of students, teachers aren’t likely to even notice.