"And that over there is a printer! Once you've written something on it you can make the printer make a copy, as many as you have the paper and ink for. But you can also cause the file you've written to appear on another computer! Some offices use little to no paper."

Percy's brow furrows. "No paper? Wouldn't you have to carry your computer around to all your meetings, then? And how do you keep it all organized on there?"

"Well, computers take up less space as they get more advanced. This is mine." He waves his little stick of a computer. "They get small enough to fit in a briefcase soon. Also, instead of sending it to a printer, you could send it to be copied to a little computer-readable storage item, so another computer at your destination can read it from there. How are you imagining it being disorganized, exactly?"

"What's the computer equivalent of having all your papers alphabetized in the correct folders in a filing cabinet, and new incoming papers in your in-tray?"

Slide. Now they are being presented with a blown-up computer interface. "Computers can be programmed to act like they're a filing cabinet! But there are some advantages over that. Within a notional 'folder', you can sort stuff by several different parameters - date created or date edited, file type in case some of them aren't text but are pictures or audio or something, alphabetical by name. Also, you can have the computer look through every single file you have, looking for, say, the word 'Paraguay', or, if you're really fancy, you can have it find you all files that were created in a specific month and have a photo in them and say Paraguay in the file name, that kind of thing."

Percy stares. "How efficient! I look forward to computers getting small enough that the Ministry starts using them." (He also kind of wants one for his homework, but of course it would die as soon as he went back to the castle.)

"Oh, do electronics work there? That's great! They'll be getting both less bulky and better at what they do basically indefinitely. You do want to watch out for that, because if a big institution adopts computers early and then computers get better and they don't keep up, they wind up with legacy systems that interface poorly with everything else. Banks and governments had this problem a lot in my turn of this century. Okay, who else has a career in mind?"

"I want to work on the wizarding wireless!" says Mallory. I don't mean as one of the people who go on the wireless, I mean one of the people who keep the spells for it working."

"The wireless is like the radio only it doesn't use radio frequency?"

"Yeah, it uses attuned rune-rods instead. But some of the principles around range and interference are similar to radio frequencies." Mallory clamps her mouth shut on the rest of the infodump.

"Well, it doesn't sound like electronics advances are necessarily going to be a huge help there, but I can get you a book on the state of the art anyway, here's a curator's favorite. And Mr. Weasley, here's one on digitizing offices for you, your assignments - has the rumor mill already gotten to you on my system? - will be to tell me whether and how, or whether and why not, as the case may be, these things are relevant to your fields. Next?"

This person wants to breed and train post owls! She's aware that this doesn't have much to do with muggle studies.

"No, no, if you want to breed them it could! Muggles don't breed owls, but check out the futuristic domesticated foxes -" Slide. "Let me dig up something that's the right level of introduction on genetics... hmm... here you go."

Well gosh, that's pretty neat! Rachel Balakrishnan takes a look at the table of contents and then stows the book for later.

"Are we going to be presenting on these to the class, or just talking about them with you?" Mallory asks. "Some of these sound wicked."

"I for one would be happy to present to the class," adds Percy.

"If you would enjoy presenting and hearing presented other people's findings I can set aside some classtime for it! You'll have to be brief, though, I'm an endless fountain of books from another universe."

An endless fountain of books is a very cool thing to be! They can share their reading with each other outside of class. 

Daniel Hornbeam is the only student who doesn't have an assignment yet; he wants to design and build wizarding houses.

"Hmm, are wizarding houses very magical? Bigger on the inside and not all necessarily connected through normal lines in physical space?"

"Yes. And some of them are in muggle neighborhoods, so you've got to get the floor plan inside all set up the way the homeowner wants without any change being noticeable on the outside, and it has to look normal if someone looks in the windows."

"Are you okay with your assignment involving hanging out in my off-campus house where you can use a computer?"

"That's alright; seventh years are allowed off the grounds. Is it in Hogsmeade, or somewhere farther?"

"It's in Hogsmeade! I have a program you might like for designing impossible - well, mundanely impossible - architecture."

"Wicked!"

Now that everyone has an assignment, are they supposed to spend the rest of the class working on them, or is there more lecture first?

He has some more slides ready for other possible answers they could have given! They can check out Lunar and Martian cities, and space stations and undersea bases, and Jurassic Park (the live one with the re-instantiated dinosaurs), and the largest shipping depots in the world brimful of robots.

They have questions! Especially about the re-instantiated dinosaurs! Did that need demon magic? Could Cam theoretically make dragon eggs? He shouldn't try it now, it's illegal to have them if you're not a dragon preserve, but there are some governments who would love help with their endangered dragon species.

"That did need demon magic. I suspect dragon eggs would be too magical, but if a preserve asks me I'd be happy to give it a try."