A Comm for Historymemes

As amusing as these are, I have to assume that a lot of the time these things aren't direct predictions of the future, but instead a visual metaphor for what it might look like.

The big funnel full of books ("books go in") and hand crank ("work is done") are such that any regular joe of the time can look at it and see "ah yes, this is a machine that eats up books and zaps them into your head!"

If someone had to make a serious prediction at what such a future machine might look like, I doubt it would have looked so haphazard as that, with books funnelled in like coal.

For all I know, this illustration isn't serious at all, and could be nothing more than political satire - on the danger of technology in education - and massively exaggerated just as our current political satire is. The things of true value (the books) are chewed up like worthless fodder for the machine, while the students sit bored, all the interest of learning taken away, as they can no longer learn for themselves. Meanwhile the "teacher" sits there all pompous, getting paid for apparently doing almost nothing!

There's a lot of reasons this illustration could be the way that it is.