What Happened
Future?
by
George North
URBN 4800, Summer 1994
Dr. Robert O. Washington
July 17, 1994
What Happened to the Future?
How does the digital highway offer new tools to social movements?
by
George North
Information and knowledge outweigh wealth and violence as the fundamental
source of power.
Alvin Toffler
Every member of a community has an inalienable right to be an interactive
node in that community's digitally converged network.
Richard O. Mason,
Distinguished Professor at Southern Methodist University, Texas andwidth,
a measure of information over time, can be used to write a chronological
history of the world. The first time, using word of mouth, the world learned
about itself took 300,000 years. The second time, using the printing press,
and a well developed maritime tradition, the world learned about itself
in 300 years. Roughly speaking, that brings us to today, when it takes the
world, with the help of CNN, about three seconds to learn about itself.
A first impression might be that communications is getting better. Bandwidth
has increased. Information moves much faster. But is it better? The first
300,000 years was a two way conversation (synchronous). The next 300 years
a was one way conversation (asynchronous), between the world and books,
then radio, then television. We know faster. But do we know better?
This same example can be used to explain the history of education. For
300,000 years education was a two way conversation. It wasn't easy to find
the information you wanted, but when you did it was an interactive conversation
with an expert. During the last 300 years, information has been kept in
widely available books. Information is easier to find and use, but education
changed. Education is much less interactive. Bandwidth needs to get much
wider for the world to have a two way conversation with itself in real time.
Today, we can look into the near future and imagine how this might happen.
Digital networks are changing how the world communicates. The Internet
is the most mature of these digital networks. A two-decade-old effort to
link mainframe computers for use by defense researchers has blossomed into
every man's Internet--a global information system composed of millions of
computers and communications links. Reinforcing the law of unanticipated
consequences, the network genie set loose by the Defense Department now
serves the most unenfranchised of our citizens through dozens of Freenets
as well as it does the executive suites of our largest enterprises, with
their multimillion-dollar corporate networks. It now includes two million
directly connected businesses and organizations in more than 135 countries.
The Internet Society estimates that fifteen million to twenty million people
tap into the network through these connections, and the total has been doubling
each year. Society president Vinton Cerf says that at the current rate of
growth, the number of Internet users would catch up to the total population
of the planet sometime early in the year 2001. No one expects that the total
world population will ever be connected to Internet, especially Vinton Cerf.
This simply points out how fast the way we communicate is changing. In other
words, electronic chat (digital communications) will become as common a
way to talk to someone as is talking to someone, an "On line Discourse
Community."
Technology looking for a market
The world is catching up to electronic chat. The global marketplace means that businesses have offices around the world. Family members don't live in adjoining rooms, they live in adjoining nations. Telephone calls are placed by computers (cellular phones), and answered by computers (answer machines). Even our paper in sent (FAXed) from place to place by computers. Telephone tag is now recognized by the IRS as a legitimate business expense, and will be included as a demonstration sport at the next Olympics.Using a wireless modem with a portable computer, it is now possible to send and receive electronic messages anywhere, anytime, in real time. To a busy executive, this will become an invaluable tool.
John Sculley, formerly of Apple Computer, coined a term for this ... PDA, Personal Digital Assistant. Actually PDA means a lot more than just portable electronic chat. It is the coming together of computer, telephone, and television into a Star Trek-like communications device. What we accept as electronic chat today is the precursor of this technology, like the telegraph was the precursor to cable television. Business and government are beginning to build the information highways that will make global two way audio and video possible.
Mitch Kapor founder of Lotus Corp., publisher of Lotus 1-2-3, has long been a visionary in the computer field say's "It's the Internet boom. Imagine a user-friendly, multimedia Internet over a switched fiber-optic network: practically infinite capacity and infinite reach in a world of cheap video equipment, subtly interactive software and so on. Uses of the network would be reminiscent of various mixtures of T.V., radio, telephones, computers, magazines, mass mail, C.B. radios--a new medium of such flexibility and power that there's literally no telling what it will be like." He and some others want to make public schools and libraries information oases in low-income neighborhoods. He wants to "get the network out to K-12."
When the ubiquity of the world telecommunications network is combined with the information-structuring and storing capabilities of computers, a new communication medium becomes possible. As we've learned from the history of the telephone, radio, and television, people can adopt new communication media and redesign their way of life with surprising rapidity. Computers, modems, and communication networks furnish the technological infrastructure of computer-mediated communication (CMC). Cyberspace is the conceptual space where words and human relationships, data and wealth and power are manifested by people using CMC technology.
Virtual communities are cultural aggregations that emerge when enough people bump into each other often enough in cyberspace. Because we cannot see one another, we are unable to form prejudices about others before we read what they have to say: Race, gender, age, national origin and physical appearance are not apparent unless a person wants to make such characteristics public. People who are thoughtful but who are not quick to formulate a reply often do better in CMC than face-to-face or over the telephone. People whose physical handicaps make it difficult to form new friendships find that virtual communities treat them as they always wanted to be treated -- as thinkers, and transmitters of ideas, and feeling beings, not carnal vessels with a certain appearance and way of walking and talking (or not walking and not talking). Don't mistake this filtration of appearances for dehumanization: Words on a screen are quite capable of moving one to laughter or tears, of evoking anger or compassion, of creating a community from a collection of strangers.
The Day the World Changed
I'm not sure of the very day, but some time in the middle of 1993 the world changed; we realized that the future is not what it used to be. Evidence of this was mergers and rumors of mergers. Telephone companies wanted to buy cable companies. Home shopping channels wanted to be a part of movie studios. Every aspect of publishing, TV news, newspapers, magazines, etc. featured story after story about the "Information Super Highway." Every major corporation, oil, banking, energy, government, telephone, cable, broadcast television and radio, even the Orleans Parish Levee Board, were claiming (trying to claim) their share of the Information Super Highway. A share of something that doesn't exist. What makes major corporations (read power elite) want something that doesn't exist ... FEAR.It has been common knowledge for quite some time that communications in the United States and the world was converting from analog to digital. A large part of our phone system has already converted, Sprint's you can "hear a pin drop" commercials have been around for years. But, its not just telephone conversations that are converting to digital. Most music published today is digital (CDs), and digital books and video are coming. Digital -- meaning words, written or spoken, music, and video -- all represented by 0's and 1's. The original source is magically converted to digital format, than stored, transported, or both, and magically converted back again without any noticeable loss in quality. The magic is supplied by computers. Storage is organized and cataloged by computers. Transportation is over digital networks controlled by computers, the Information Super Highway. It is interesting to point out that, once converted to digital, one cannot tell the difference between words, written or spoken, music, or video. Neither can one tell whether they were generated by governments, multi-national corporations, or mere mortals; just as important, neither can the computers doing all the work. On a digital highway, everyone is equal.
In other words, radio, television, telephones, cable, books, libraries, movies, music, VCRs, education, computers, entertainment are all converging. Today, these are all controlled by separate industries, each with their sphere of influence, each with separate sources of income, each with legislative protection fought for and won over many years. Some time in the middle of last year, collectively, they all realized that soon (within ten years), an individual will be able to stop by K-Mart and purchase a device that will empower her to compete on equal terms in what used to be their private market. What makes major corporations (read power elite) want something that doesn't exist ... FEAR.
Digital convergence is here and expanding rapidly, but what does it mean for our contemporary social contract? How does it affect the unwritten agreement among us that specifies our mutual responsibility to behave in certain ways to each other? The answers can be explored within the context of a simple moral principle: Every member of a community has an inalienable right to be an interactive node in that community's digitally converged network. Members are conferred full citizenship status if that principle is adopted. If the principle is not upheld, then some people will not be able to participate effectively, if at all, in their community. Thus we might call it a "democratic principle of digital convergence." That democratic principle implies that all community members have access to the basic equipment, can acquire the basic information, and possess the basic capability to use the equipment and information effectively.
Digital convergence is leading major corporations like AT&T, TCI, British Telecom, McCaw to seek merger. This restructuring will cause the cable television industry to cease to exist as a significant independent player during the next years as the communications industry becomes dominated by about a dozen multifaceted enterprises. This industry has already made a fundamental decision to deliver new video entertainment to the home. Deliver is the key word. Their vision is a one way system, they deliver, we pay -- a very narrow minded view of the future, but one that does maximize their profits. Today, cable delivers fifty channels of video -- now we are promised five hundred channels. An average TV customer will settle on five favorite channels out of fifty. If offered five hundred channels, will the number of favorite channels move up to fifty?
Publishing
In a conversation, if talking can be considered publishing, then listening is subscribing. In a conversation, all participants want to both publish and subscribe. Books, newspaper, magazines, radio, and television all share the same limits -- far too few publishers. Without diminishing the accomplishments of books, only a fraction of the possible books have ever been published and with fewer than a dozen television publishers, how much have we missed?Publishing is what computers have always been about. True, the earliest computers were used to do computations that otherwise were impractical. But, the reason to do the calculations was to publish the results; even if they were not widely published. Still today, the computer's publishing powers are not fully appreciated. Even though Desktop Publishing was pioneered by Apple Computer ten years ago, and is widely used by Mom and Pop operations everywhere, the largest newspapers are just now beginning to adopt its technology. When the digital communications highway is added in the near future, everyone will have the option, not just to subscribe, but to publish.
It is important now to point out that the convergence of television, telephone, and computer will produce a device that is much more usable than any of these devices alone. Of the three, the computer is the least widely used, because it is the most difficult. In the US, ninety-nine percent of the population use the telephone, while fewer than twenty percent use computers. Space does not allow an explanation, but a new device, call it a Personal Digital Communicator (PDC) will be at least as easy to use as the telephone. Since we will not be expected to remember phone numbers, one could say it will be easier. One point is ... it will not be called a computer ... and will not carry all the negative overtones associated with computers today. PDC, you make up a name, will be easy. It will be a communicator, not just a receiver, a publisher, not just a subscriber.
Our concept of democracy is built on access to information and the ensuring of an informed public. That is the most effective way for sharing power among the many rather than concentrating it within the few. The principle has become increasingly true in the information age--one in which, as Alvin Toffler argues, information and knowledge outweigh wealth and violence as the fundamental source of power.
John Stuart Mill argued that a society is obligated--indeed compelled--to provide a certain standard of knowledge and education for every human being. Other thinkers have expanded that concept. Such diverse philosophers as Mortimer Adler, Immanuel Kant, Abraham Maslow, and Edgar A. Singer, Jr., maintain that all members of society have a right to realize their own potential by expanding their knowledge, skills, and information; Maslow called it "self-actualization." Others, harking back to Aristotle, would even argue that a community, if it is to be a good society, has a duty to help its citizens to engage in this vital educational process. At the very least, a community should not inhibit anyone's ability to progress.
Thus, ... each citizen should have unrestricted access to the public information that is available on the networks. It is difficult to specify, a priori, exactly what such information might consist of. Fortunately, however, a grassroots phenomenon known as free-netting provides several important clues. A community bulletin board system known as the Cleveland Free-Net may serve as a prototype. In Cleveland, as in most free-nets, the services available are limited by the resources contributed to it by the local community. Typical services include information about community events, entertainment, leisure, government services and announcements, health, safety, news, weather, transportation schedules and facilities, travel, tourism, places to visit/things to see, education opportunities, employment, job opportunities, legal services, and the library.
The guiding principle should be -- in each of the social, political, and economic systems in which a citizen is a member, that member should be able to both subscribe to and publish the information necessary to exercise his or her legitimate rights and duties. Access to the digital highway must be pervasive.
Implications for Education
Our world is moving from the industrial age to the information age. Education will have to move with it. The current system of rows of students, sitting side by side, gazing straight ahead at the conveyor of knowledge reflects the industrial age mind-set of assembly-line manufacturing. The information age requires a new model for education. With digital networks the potential exists for a learning revolution. Through the interaction of electronic chat, entirely different classrooms can be constructed.In doing research for this paper I ran across an excellent article written by Norman Coombs titled "Teaching in the Information Age" (see works cited below). Mr. Coombs is blind. He has for many years been involved with course ware using traditional mail service and the telephone for off-campus students. He tells how electronic chat served to replace the role of telephone, and how electronic conferencing provided group interactions never before possible. Students learn from one another and measure their progress based on classmates' comments. He realized that the technology was altering the whole learning experience, his and the students. In an electronic classroom the teacher is no longer the center of activity. E-mail dissolves the boundaries of time and space breaking down some of the barriers that have long existed between student and teacher.
Not only were students evolving an effective component in learning, but also they discussed topics with an openness that was not typical of other classroom experience. Instead of merely teaching them about the Great Depression or the horrors of racial lynching, I became aware of how historical events touched them personally. Each student was learning the material within his or her own context. This level of frankness probably would not have occurred in a classroom. "People have the ability to write their feelings in a somewhat anonymous way," one student observed, "leaving them with the ability to say how they really feel." The message continued, "I do not think people would respond in the same way if this were a face-to-face, in-class discussion." Another participant commented, "I'm not a great speaker, so the [electronic] conference helps me put my thoughts together and allows me to express them better without having my tongue twisted."
Several students reported sharing more in this telecourse than they had in standard classes. Others said that sometimes they hesitated to speak openly in classrooms. These students felt freer to speak their mind because the environment was less threatening. "The everyday communication barriers are avoided. Whether this barrier is being hearing impaired, being black, white, or green, being shy or not a good speaker, or what have you, these communication gaps and many others are bridged."
As a result of these insights, I now think of myself less as a conduit for well-packaged information and more as a facilitator to guide each unique learner. As the wealth of electronic information expands, teachers should convey less and less information; rather, they should function as guides for learners searching for relevant information.Teaching in the future should focus more on helping students to know what questions to ask, where to find information, and how to structure the information once they have found it. If such a learning revolution occurs, it will ... move the center of control from the teacher to the learner. Just as the printing press freed teaching to move to a higher level of conceptualization, so, too, will education in the information"> age transcend what has been common in our time.
This is what is offered to education today using the Internet or any of the many local BBS systems. The University of New Orleans is involved with a project, Toyota Families in Learning, that uses the MacCommonWealth BBS to link three area elementary schools in a program targeted at both preschool children and their parents.
Imagine a US History course in 2005 (maybe sooner), a binder-sized computer is your teacher/librarian. The screen shows a photograph of Ulysses S. Grant. It's a familiar photo, but now it's colorized, digitized animated 3-D image. Grant doesn't look "historical" anymore; he looks alive. Now Grant is riding up to a farm house at Appomattox. As he walks inside, in stereo you hear the murmur of the other men in the room, the distant bark of a dog. You hear Grant speak, see him gesture. Meanwhile the text of his speech appears as subtitles. Along the edge of the screen are small "button" images. You touch one and the speech stops. You press another one, titled "Details," and then touch the images of the other people in the picture: their names appear beside them.
Touching a name fills the screen with a brief biography of the person. You return to the speech. When it's over, you press a button titled "Comment." A bibliography of historical research scrolls up the screen. You can read each article or skim to another one. The multimedia essay you write about Grant and Lee will include "buttons," thus referring readers to your sources. Advances in graphics, audio, and computer memory will soon turn such science fiction into everyday reality. Through such computerized teaching, students will be able to understand their subjects better than ever before. Going in any direction they like, learning what most concerns them. In a subject like history, they'll see vivid recreations of events (Kilian 1-2).
George Gilder, an American writer on technology, has pointed out that computers are linking up into networks at a dramatic rate. The more they do so, the more efficient and valuable they become. Gilder notes that since the 1970s, the number of transistors on a silicon chip has doubled about every eighteen months. Today's most advanced chips have around 20,000 transistors; by 2003, the doubling rate will mean a billion-transistor chip. In effect, says Gilder, the computing power of 16 Cray supercomputers (total 1993 cost: $320 million) will be available in 2003 on one chip for under $100. What's more, millions of personal computers using such chips will be in use. Each computer will contain both astounding amounts of information and powerful means of shaping that information. And each computer will hook up to millions of others. Your computer will search the network for whatever information it knows you want--old movies, a news summary, a good novel, or statistical data on the number of people who no longer commute to work. Legislation, some Roadblocks on the Digital Highway
Issues in telecommunications regulation, technology, and policy promise to rank as some of the most important of the issues that we will face as the transition into the next century continues. Access to, and influence over, the uses of a digital network present major challenges to the future well-being and societal integration of traditionally under-represented groups. The current debate in Washington about the National Information Infrastructure (the Clinton Administration's NII) is vital to issues of access and representation for everyone. It is a highly technical debate that talks about gigabits, backbones, and interconnectivity. The undercurrent of the debate is not really about technology type or capacity. It is about certain fundamental principles of our democracy: a citizen's right to information and citizen participation in a free and open government.
The Communications Act of 1934 had tremendous societal impact by guaranteeing to the nation's citizens universal access to telephony. Ironically, that guarantee did not extend to the nation's classrooms, and most of them remain unwired for even simple voice communication. That simple fact places students and teachers in schools at a disadvantage in reaping the rewards of the coming information superhighways. Most of our students have yet to harness the power of the Internet, and our schools have yet to become the electronic curb cuts of the National Research and Education Network.
The future of the knowledge infrastructure is no longer defined by the number of connected hosts (that's a telecommunications concept) or even by how much information is available (an old library concept). It is defined by functionality: how the information is assembled, organized, processed, presented, and used. But functionality is the domain of patent law, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office routinely grants patents on abstract, system-level processes. Those Internet services, and the information that rides on them, are vulnerable. As Joseph Hardin, Associate Director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (where Mosaic was developed), warns that abstract patents could be disastrous for public access to information technologies. People doing development read these types of claims and freeze. The impact on emerging collaborative technologies, hypermedia, navigational technologies, and other rapidly developing areas crucial to everyone's access to the new information infrastructure is potentially devastating. Huge chunks of infrastructure are being snatched away--nuts, bolts, platforms, and all.
Knowledge and the ability to know cannot be owned, cannot be reserved for the elite, whether academic or corporate, and still retain their powerful human character. The challenge to business is to realize, as it has had to in the global marketplace, that "spheres of influence" is no longer a workable concept. Colonialism on the Digital Highway will fail as surely as it did in China or Eastern Europe, only faster. This battle is happening today with the commercialization of the Internet. Commercial organizations must be welcomed--potentially, they have much to offer--but they will be confounded if they apply old rules of thumb to a market that has discovered its own intelligence and is unlikely to relinquish its own unfettered channels of communication. Tools for Change
The characteristics of social movements reflect those of the coming digital information highway. A social movement is an organized communication network that needs to be large in scope to have an impact. The digital information highway will be a global communications network. Using the Internet as an example, a digital network exhibits many of the characteristics, categories, and stages of social movements.
The Internet was started thirty years ago by the Defense Department, co-opted by education, matured in relative anonymity, seemed to burst onto the scene during this last year and is eliciting a massive response from big business (read power elite). Citizen participation is the main ingredient of the Internet. It is truly a community, one that has both at the same time physical geographic boundaries and no boundaries at all. Equality of participants is inherent in its operation. Where the Internet fails is equality of access ... the coming digital information highway should fix this. The irony of the Internet is the technology that made it possible was created by the power elite for its own use, but, until now, they did not have the vision to understand its best use.
A global digital information highway provides at least two tools for social change: the ability for any/all individuals, groups, businesses, governments to be publishers with equality of access and equality of results; and the social space needed to exercise self-renewal. A digital highway will bypass the traditional gatekeepers. It will allow individuals to view the global village.
Propaganda is the systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause, or of information reflecting the views and interests of those people advocating such a doctrine or cause. Throughout recorded history, publishing reflected the views and interests of those who could publish, a minuscule percentage of the population. When information is converted to digital format and sent at the speed of light around the world, every participant becomes a potential publisher. Learning comes from conversation, not lecture. An elitist view cannot be propagated without challenge. Information and knowledge will outweigh wealth and violence as the fundamental source of power.
John Gardner says that the most important requirement for self-renewal is to remove the obstacles to individual fulfillment. This means doing away with the gross inequalities of opportunity imposed on some of our citizens by race prejudice and economic hardship. The relation of education to the level of motivation in the society is more direct than most people recognize. We need to develop skills, attitudes, habits of mind and the kinds of knowledge and understanding that will be the instruments of continuous change and growth. Teaching to innovate, not teaching products of earlier innovation. There is almost never a shortage of new ideas about revitalizing a society or an organization. Getting a hearing for ideas is the problem that means breaking through the crusty rigidity and stubborn complacency of the status quo. Proliferation of rules, customs and procedures bottle up energy that could lead to innovations. The 'high moral ground' is also used to escape change, asserting that the old way is inherently better. Vested interests are among the most powerful forces producing rigidity and diminishing capacity for change. Societies are renewed if they are renewed at all by people who believe in something, care about something, stand for something.
Individuals make their private hopes public when provided a social space to do so. Lawrence Goodwyn explains that a hall in Philadelphia provided a social space where ideas freely created and freely exchanged produced the Constitution of the United States. These people succeeded because they aspired to create the space. We need to confront the fact that there is no such remotely comparable space in contemporary life. No institutional space, where citizens can voluntarily associate. Every member of a community has an inalienable right to be an interactive node in that community's digitally converged network. Will we create such a network, and will citizens participate?
What Happened to the Future
The future is a constant in our lives, for it forever remains beyond our grasp. This does not prevent our imagining what the future holds and making decisions today based on our imagination. In this way, adults remain kids all their lives. During this past year, one collective view of the future was altered -- the roll that telephone, television, and computers will play in the future. The realization that these three devices of popular culture were in reality one device changed forever our future reality. Our imaginations cannot predict the future, but present day realities can change what we imagine. So, our future has changed, with great drama, an unexpected twist, a surprise in the screen play of life. Many opportunities will present themselves, because this event was unexpected. As already explained above, many major corporations have already reacted, wisely or unwisely, to this turn of events. Education is one institution that will (must) benefit from this new future.In the Middle Ages, professors read from manuscripts to their classes. The printing press gave students their own books and freed teachers to expand their texts, to do additional research, and provide further explanations that enhanced learning. The cloistered campus developed around that same time, because such intellectual resources as books, laboratories, and scholars could be in only one place at a time, could be used by only a few people at once, were hard to copy, and were fragile. It was natural to assume that a school and its campus were the same thing -- that the best school was one that concentrated a massive collection of academic resources in one convenient campus.
Just as our current school model evolved from the printed book, so will a future school model evolve from a new kind of book. Literature (any group of writing on a well-defined subject) is an ongoing system of interconnecting documents. Hypertext is a writing system that allows the creation of a network of textual elements and connections. The term "Hypertext" was coined by Ted Nelson in the 1960's. Nelson realized that computers could be used to create and manage textual networks for all kinds of writing. Hypermedia is a progression of hypertext that combines graphics, video, and audio with the textual network creating a new kind of document -- Multimedia. So books will not simply be converted to computer readable form, but will be recreated into a form that can not only be read, but navigated -- a form that allows the user to make changes and add new connections. History will not be recorded, it will be alive. Students will progress from reading and writing into research and publishing.
All information, all data, in the computer world is in a kind of controlled movement, a digital network. This network is under construction today, fewer than one percent of the world population have access. Within ten years that number could easily be over fifty percent, creating a critical mass where -- education will become again a two way conversation with an expert.
This presents an opportunity to redefine education. This is a ten year challenge. Today education has an opportunity that seldom presents itself. The world changes too fast to stop education at the twelfth grade or with a bachelor's degree, it has to be a life long pursuit. Too much valuable time is lost waiting till five or six for a child to start school. With air-conditioning, summer vacations make no sense. If we build an education network, we wouldn't need so many books, so many buildings, and so many administrators. We need highly motivated, highly skilled, highly paid teachers free to define education in more exciting and creative terms.
Machiavelli observed, "There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things, for the reformer has enemies in all who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order." We need to apply skills and talents to the core issues of education--the processes by which students learn and the infrastructure that must underlie them (Heterick 1).
To bring such change about will require the largest social movement of all time. It is interesting to think that both the catalysts that brought it about and the tools to make it happen are one in the same. The digital information highway changed the world's view of the future. The digital information highway provides an opportunity to recreate our education system -- a system where students (subscribers) have equality of access and equality of results -- a system where everyone is a publisher (teacher) -- a system of education that again becomes a two way conversation with an expert . Self renewal, the individual and the innovative society ... self-renewal through education, sure hope I'm right.
Disconnect
When you're finished 'surfing the net' (Internet), disconnecting is the final step. Your ability to connect and your knowledge of the net is called "Wired." A final warning form Robert Wright who said: "Never has there been a way to observe people and groups so accurately and unobtrusively. As a place to eavesdrop, Cyberspace is without peer in all of human history."BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Roberts, Gregory, Computer Link is a Revolution. Staff Writer, The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, Louisiana, November 14, 1993
Roberts, Michael M. Building the NII: Challenges for Higher Education . EDUCOM Review, Volume 29, Number 2, March/April 1994 educom@bitnic.educom.edu
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Appendix
1. The National Information Infrastructure:
Agenda for Action
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
All Americans have a stake in the construction of an
advanced National Information Infrastructure (NII), a seamless
web of communications networks, computers, databases, and
consumer electronics that will put vast amounts of information at
users' fingertips. Development of the NII can help unleash an
information revolution that will change forever the way people
live, work, and interact with each other:
o People could live almost anywhere they wanted, without
foregoing opportunities for useful and fulfilling
employment, by "telecommuting" to their offices through an
electronic highway;
o The best schools, teachers, and courses would be available
to all students, without regard to geography, distance,
resources, or disability;
o Services that improve America's health care system and
respond to other important social needs could be available
on-line, without waiting in line, when and where you needed
them.
Private sector firms are already developing and deploying
that infrastructure today. Nevertheless, there remain essential
roles for government in this process. Carefully crafted
government action will complement and enhance the efforts of the
private sector and assure the growth of an information
infrastructure available to all Americans at reasonable cost. In
developing our policy initiatives in this area, the
Administration will work in close partnership with business,
labor, academia, the public, Congress, and state and local
government. Our efforts will be guided by the following
principles and objectives:
o Promote private sector investment, through appropriate tax
and regulatory policies.
o Extend the "universal service" concept to ensure that
information resources are available to all at affordable prices.
Because information means empowerment--and employment--the
government has a duty to ensure that all Americans have access to
the resources and job creation potential of the Information Age.
o Act as a catalyst to promote technological innovation and
new applications. Commit important government research programs
and grants to help the private sector develop and demonstrate
technologies needed for the NII, and develop the applications and
services that will maximize its value to users.
o Promote seamless, interactive, user-driven operation of
the NII. As the NII evolves into a "network of networks,"
government will ensure that users can transfer information across
networks easily and efficiently. To increase the likelihood that
the NII will be both interactive and, to a large extent, user-
driven, government must reform regulations and policies that may
inadvertently hamper the development of interactive applications.
o Ensure information security and network reliability. The
NII must be trust- worthy and secure, protecting the privacy of
its users. Government action will also ensure that the overall
system remains reliable, quickly repairable in the event of a
failure and, perhaps most importantly, easy to use.
o Improve management of the radio frequency spectrum, an
increasingly critical resource.
o Protect intellectual property rights. The Administration
will investigate how to strengthen domestic copyright laws and
international intellectual property treaties to prevent piracy
and to protect the integrity of intellectual property.
o Coordinate with other levels of government and with other
nations. Because information crosses state, regional, and
national boundaries, coordination is critical to avoid needless
obstacles and prevent unfair policies that handicap U.S.
industry.
o Provide access to government information and improve
government procurement. The Administration will seek to ensure
that Federal agencies, in concert with state and local
governments, use the NII to expand the information available to
the public, ensuring that the immense reservoir of government
information is available to the public easily and equitably.
Additionally, Federal procurement policies for telecommunications
and information services and equipment will be designed to
promote important technical developments for the NII and to
provide attractive incentives for the private sector to
contribute to NII development.
The time for action is now. Every day brings news of
change: new technologies, like hand-held computerized
assistants; new ventures and mergers combining businesses that
not long ago seemed discrete and insular; new legal decisions
that challenge the separation of computer, cable, and telephone
companies. These changes promise substantial benefits for the
American people, but only if government understands fully their
implications and begins working with the private sector and other
interested parties to shape the evolution of the communications
infrastructure.
The benefits of the NII for the nation are immense. An
advanced information infrastructure will enable U.S. firms to
compete and win in the global economy, generating good jobs for
the American people and economic growth for the nation. As
importantly, the NII can transform the lives of the American
people -- ameliorating the constraints of geography, disability,
and economic status -- giving all Americans a fair opportunity to
go as far as their talents and ambitions will take them.
2. Teaching in the Information Age, by Norman Coombs
Reprinted from EDUCOM Review, Volume 27, Number 2, March/April 1992. For more information, contact EDUCOM at 202-872-4200 or EDITOR@EDUCOM (BITNET) or EDUCOM@BITNIC.EDUCOM.EDU
Information has always been a major ingredient in education. Using high-speed networks over fiber-optic or satellite connections to access rapidly expanding, large electronic libraries and databases provides the basis for a potential learning revolution. Combining these resources with a personal computer gives students access to vast amounts of information and will move the locus of power from the teacher to the learner. Computer communications, e.g., connecting personal computers to mainframe servers via data networks, can create highly interactive educational settings.
A Learning Revolution
The personal computer has put unimaginable power into the hands of individual learners. It can empower learners to work in their own ways at varying speeds. Education has long given lip service to meeting the unique needs of individuals and to teaching them how to learn. The advent of the information age coupled with that of the personal computer makes this goal both more significant and more achievable.
Traditional classrooms typically have rows of students, sitting side by side, gazing straight ahead at a teacher who is the purveyor of knowledge. Any differences between students are explained as measures of individual intelligence. This structure mirrors the assembly-line systems of manufacturing society and reflects the industrial revolution mind-set that once led the way in our society. The information age of today needs a new model for education; hence the potential exists for a learning revolution.
A Shift in Instructional Focus
In 1985, RIT set the instructional goal of using computer-mediated communication to provide the same high-quality educational experiences for off-campus learners that were available to on-campus students. Using electronic mail (e-mail) and computer conferencing systems, I began working toward this goal within the framework of a traditional telecourse in American history.
Prior to this methodological change, the course had utilized traditional mail service and telephones, which provided unsatisfactory interactivity. E-mail served to successfully replace the role of the telephone, and computer conferencing provided group interactions similar to those in a classroom.
Group discussions had previously been missing from the telecourse, and computer conferencing not only provided a framework for questions and answers but also served as a platform for sharing opinions and differing perceptions about course content. Students learned from one another and were able to measure their progress based on classmates' comments.
Further, as expected, the changes created a true "flex learning" environment by enabling students to connect from home or work at their convenience using microcomputers and modems. Students indicated that they appreciated being able to tailor the course to their individual needs. By recording video broadcasts and using computer conferencing for discussion, learners could set their own schedules and could progress at an optimum pace. Such results have subsequently been reported by many educators and are no longer innovations.1
A Shift in Classroom Focus
Gradually, I became aware that using this technology was altering my thinking about teaching. I observed that closer relationships among participants were formed and that the course content became "real" for the students.
The vast bulk of computer-mediated group interaction was accomplished using VAX Notes as a replacement for classroom discussions. By periodically inserting comments into the discussion, I encouraged and directed its flow and provided a sense of continuous involvement as the discussion's moderator. I also sent personal e-mail messages weekly to each student, which constituted more one-on-one contact than I had in a classroom. Messages were usually short, but they allowed meaningful contact without having a student sit and chat in my office for an hour! Eventually, I realized that I knew the individual telecourse students better than I did those students enrolled in my regular courses. They, in turn, said they found me more accessible than their classroom teachers.
Not only were students evolving an affective component in learning, but also they discussed topics with an openness that was not typical of other classroom experience. Students were connecting what we studied about history to personal experiences or stories learned from their families. Instead of merely teaching them about the Great Depression or the horrors of racial lynching, I became aware of how historical events touched them personally. Each student was learning the material within his or her own context.
For example, after viewing a video on welfare, students responded via the computer conference to questions I posed regarding the needs and problems of welfare. After a couple of replies along traditional content lines, one student's responses opened up a very frank discussion among class members. This level of frankness probably would not have occurred in a classroom. (See sidebar for an excerpt from the actual discussion.)
Student Awareness
Students recognized they were interacting differently via the computer conference than they might be in a classroom. "People have the ability to write their feelings in a somewhat anonymous way," one student observed, "leaving them with the ability to say how they really feel." The message continued, "I do not think people would respond in the same way if this were a face-to-face, in-class discussion."
Another participant commented, "I'm not a great speaker, so the conference helps me put my thoughts together and allows me to express them better without having my tongue twisted."
Several students reported sharing more in this telecourse than they had in standard classes. Others said that sometimes they hesitated to speak openly in classrooms. These students felt freer to speak their mind because the environment was less threatening.
Several class members specifically thanked me for using this technology, and they also expressed their appreciation to their peers for using it so freely. "I also agree with everyone else about what a good idea using this conference is," still another class member commented, going on to point out that "the everyday communication barriers are avoided. Whether this barrier is being hearing impaired, being black, white, or green, being shy or not a good speaker, or what have you, these communication gaps and many others are bridged."
Instructor Awareness
As the teacher, I found myself developing a dual awareness in following our discussions: being both an observer/teacher and a participant/learner.
On one hand, I was able to observe a conference full of participants as I read through discussions. On the other hand, when a particular comment caught my attention, I could respond via e-mail to that individual for some period of time without impinging on other students.
As the observer/teacher, I knew all of the students were studying the same content material. As a participant/learner, I was aware that each student, as an individual, brought his or her unique needs and insights to the information.
Through these interactions, I developed a deeper understanding of each learner's uniqueness. Different students learn the same material in different ways, each bringing a varying amount of previous information to the subject and having different information needs.
Accommodating Learners' Needs
As a result of these insights, I now think of myself less as a conduit for well-packaged information and more as a facilitator to guide each unique learner. There may still be a standard body of material to be mastered, but, because no learner is standard, educational goals may be best pursued along individual paths.
The unique, individual characteristics that can be accommodated using techniques such as those incorporated in this telecourse not only include those of mainstream populations but, with the aid of specially equipped computers, also can encompass persons thought of as handicapped.
I am totally blind. During fall 1991, I taught an online course that accommodated a variety of learning needs. Half the class were hearing-impaired students at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., another quarter consisted of deaf students at the National Technical Institute of the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), and the remainder were mainstream RIT students. This course could have easily included participants with many other physical disabilities.
The Learning Revolution Defined
The learning revolution is not yet here. Its tools are being assembled; it requires creative minds to master and apply them. As the wealth of electronic information expands, teachers should convey less and less information; rather, they should function as guides for learners searching for relevant information.
Teaching in the future should focus more on helping students to know what questions to ask, where to find information, and how to structure the information once they have found it. The hard parts of teaching will be in knowing how to motivate and challenge students and in encouraging them to develop the requisite self-discipline for learning. After using computer conferencing to teach courses in American and African-American history, I am more consciously trying to motivate students to become active learners.
My role in the learning revolution is currently limited partly by the paucity of online material available to fill my particular needs and further constrained by my own lack of creative ideas about using what is already available. I am exploring more creative ways to use existing tools to empower individual learners and meanwhile dreaming of tools yet to come.
A conference system modified so that it has hypertext capabilities is one such dream. An online, interactive hypertext conferencing system would allow the teacher to structure course materials, yet enable individual students to choose their own path for digesting it. This seems like an obvious next step, because microcomputers are already used as multimedia presentation tools. It is hoped that these features will soon be available over networks and become readily accessible in educational settings.
The Future
If such a learning revolution occurs, it will, as observed earlier, move the center of control from the teacher to the learner. People ferociously resist relinquishing power, and teachers are notoriously conservative about education.
In the Middle Ages, professors read from their manuscripts to their classes. The printing press threatened that educational model. However, it was subsequently discovered that if students had the text available, teachers could expand on their texts and provide further explanations that enhanced learning. In a similar vein, many educators now fear that the computer will give students such powerful search and research engines that faculty will become redundant. Just as the printing press freed teaching to move to a higher level of conceptualization, so, too, will education in the information age transcend what has been common in our time. Good teachers will not be replaced by teaching assistants and teachers' aides, but they will be freed to define education in more exciting and creative terms.
Endnote
1. Mindweave, by Kaye and Mason, Pergamon Press, 1989, or Online Education, by Harisim, Praeger, 1990.
Sidebar
An Excerpt from a Computer Conference Discussion
Student One: "I think welfare sucks and should be completely eliminated from our system. It was a boon to our nation when it was brought about due to the Depression, but now it's being taken advantage of by lazy people who, rather than find a job, suck off our money. It's because of these people, and most of them good-for-nothings as far as I'm concerned, that the system of welfare is out of control, especially in New York State. I don't like my money supporting trash."
Student Two: "Welfare is a much needed thing in any society. Your attitude would go a long way in feeding a child whose father lost his job and cannot find a new one [sarcastic]. There are people who cannot afford to work. They could go to work at Burger King, for example, and earn $4 per hour and take home a paycheck of $160 [$4 x 40 hours] per week gross, about $130 net. Okay, Miss let's see how you would pay rent, doctor's bills, electric bills, clothing, food, and other necessities for, let's say, one adult and three children, but don't forget the 40 hours she has to pay for child care. Or should we just stick them in a closet, because, according to you, they're no-good trash?"
As the moderator and instructor, I thought about deleting some of this discussion to prevent "flaming" but decided to try to use it as a teaching mechanism. Meanwhile Student One responded calmly. However, the tone soon changed as yet another student shared her welfare experiences. I'm certain this would not have happened face-to-face in a classroom.
Student Three: "I would really like to comment on welfare because I am 'on welfare.' I grew up in a middle-class family, but because I had gotten married and had two kids and then divorced, I had nowhere to turn. . . I feel that welfare should be used to lean on when times are tough, but there are many who do abuse the system. . . . I, for one, will be glad when I can get 'off welfare.'"