Paul Evan Peters
Executive Director, CNI
The third presentation of The Follett Lecture series
London, 20 Sept 1994
*********** * Slide 1 * ********************************** * * * The Life of the Mind * * in a * * World Transformed * * by * * Networks and Digital Libraries * * * **********************************
I am very pleased to be here with you this evening.
For over the last four years I have devoted myself fully to the question of how networks can be used to advance science, scholarship, and other intellectually productive activities, wherever and whenever those activities occur and whomever in involved in them.
Before that, I worked for just over two years on designing, funding, and then installing a rather large network for the New York Public Library, a network that not only provided a common data transport medium for all of the Library's computer systems and applications but provided a common medium for both voice and data traffic as well.
And before that, I worked for eight years on providing acquisitions, cataloging, online public access, circulation, and other modern computer-based library systems to the Columbia University Library community. It was then that I first recognized the importance of the telecommunications component of library technology strategies, and that I began to look for ways to improve the cost / benefit characteristics of that component.
I tell you these things so that you appreciate my perspective on the theme of this Roundtable, and so that you understand my point of departure for this talk.
I believe that networks like the Internet and that digital libraries like the sorts of information resources and services that can already be found in the Internet will be important features of all 21st Century research and education communities. Therefore, I also believe that they must as well be important features of all 21st Century libraries that serve those communities.
Moreover, I believe that networks and digital libraries will transform our research and education communities, by changing not only how, and when, and with what resources questions are framed and addressed in these communities, but by changing the types of questions asked in those communities and the identity of who asks what sorts of questions as well.
In short, I believe that networks and digital libraries will mean as least as much to the "life of the mind" in "knowledge communities" as roads and energy sources have meant to the "life of the body" in agricultural and industrial communities. At the dawn of the 21st Century we seem poised to change the ways in which we create, distribute, and use ideas and words at least as much as we changed the ways in which we create, distribute, and use things and commodities at the start of the 20th Century.
At the EDUCOM 1994 annual conference in San Antonio, Texas last week, noted futurist George Gilder, author of the very well-received books "Microcasm" and "Life with Television" whose next book, "Telecasm," is eargerly awaited in the United States, characterized the situation that many of us now face as similar to the situation that would be faced by a cave dweller were he or she to come across a modern automobile in her or his environment.
Dr. Gilder observed that such an individual would most certainly identify the automobile as a much improved cave: a cave with both heat and air conditioning, a cave that could be locked and made secure, a cave with comfortable areas for sitting and sleeping, even a cave that could make loud noises that frightened away predators and competitors. Our cave dweller would not see the automobile for what it really is: a much improved mode of transportation. For that, he or she would have to see the automobile on a road, a related but, in this parable, a separate and missing piece of collateral technology.
Dr. Gilder asks us to put ourselves in the place of the cave dweller, but instead of encountering an automobile in our environment we have encountered the personal computer. We tend to think of personal computers in terms of the mainframe computers we knew before them, and we will continue to do so until most personal computers are on information highways. Until then, it will be very difficult for most of us to see personal computers for what they really are: personal communication and information management appliances that amplify our individual creative and anayltic abilities.
This is a theme that Richard Lanham has developed at length in his ground-breaking and mind-boggling work "The Electronic Word." Other distinguished commentators, like Peter Drucker, Robert Reich, Walter Wriston, and John Perry Barlow (who span quite a range of experience and opinion), are encouraging us to believe that a society served by networks and digital libraries will be a society in which people who are good with words and ideas (dare we call them "intellectuals"?) will, among other things, not only be able to create economic value in powerful new ways but will be compensated for the economic value that they create at new and much more rewarding levels.
Libraries, computer centers, disciplinary societies, and publishing houses typify the institutions, organizations, and professions that serve the life of the mind by supporting scholarly and scientific creation, communication, and publication. So it is quite natural (even "necessary," now that I think about it) to try to imbed the question of the impacts of networks and digital libraries on these institutions, organizations, and professions in the question of the impacts of networks and digital libraries on the life of the mind.
This is what I will endeavor to do, in a suggestive rather than definitive sort of way, in this talk, using the life of the mind in higher education as my specific point of reference.
*********** * Slide 2 * ********************************************* * * * Networking is Hot * * ================= * * * * The Clinton Administration Has Made * * Networking a National Priority * * * * The US Congress is Working on * * Telecommunications Policy Reform * * * * The "Information Highway" Concept * * Has Become Part of the US Popular Culture * * * *********************************************
I will start by invoking the contemporary context that I believe situates and energizes this general subject in the United States.
The president and vice president of the United States, Bill Clinton and Al Gore, have made networking a national priority. And, a lot of the heat *and* light that is now radiating from the subject of networking can be directly attributed to the influence that presidential and vice presidential attention has on all issues and priorities in the United States.
The Clinton Administration has formed high powered, productive groups like the Information Infrastructure Task Force, inside the federal government, and the US Advisory Committee on the National Information Infrastructure, outside the federal government, and it has funded the new Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Applications Program to stimulate the development of community and other networking applications through-out the United States.
The Administration has also been working with Congress on the first complete make-over of Federal communications policy since the Communication Act of 1994. Legislation of this sort did not pass during the 1st Congress of the Clinton Administration. It is widely reported that this legislation did not pass primarily because of disagreements between the large telephone companies and the large cable companies in the United States. Regardless, hopes are high that the next Congress will be back at work on this business in the late winter or early spring in 1995.
Still another reason why networking is hot is that the concept of the "information highway" is now part of the popular culture. One not-so-serious but important sign of this development is that a steadily increasing number of people in the United States are bluffing their ways through an increasing number of cocktail party conversations about the information highway. A much more important sign is that the information highway and the Internet are now an assigned "beat" not only for reporters and correspondents associated with the likes of _Byte_, _PC World_, and the _Chronicle of Higher Education_ ,but for those associated with US national media outlets like the _New York Times_, the _Wall Street Journal_, _Newsweek_, and National Public Radio as well.
The good news of this development is that the Internet community no longer has to look far and wide for press coverage. The bad news of this development is that the national media are doing about as good a job with covering the Internet as they are with other matters of national importance; which is to say, in my opinion, that they often do not do that good a job and that they on some occasions do an absolutely dreadful one.
This is another clear reason why networking is hot, but it is an even clearer reason why the Internet is red hot. To a very large extent, interest in the "information highway" in the United States is right now being rapidly converted into usage of the Internet and of Internet resources and services.
*********** * Slide 3 * ******************************************************* * * * The Internet is Red Hot * * ======================= * * * * The Internet Continues to Grow Explosively * * * * US Commercial Enterprises are Responding to * * Internet Users and Their Needs * * * * The US Region of the Internet is Being Restructured * * to Accommodate All Types of Traffic and * * to Scale to Still Higher Levels of Use * * * *******************************************************
As of August, 1994:
The Internet community is now experiencing the largest process of migration in human history, with the number of Internet immigrants outnumbering or nearly outnumbering the number of Internet residents for over five years running now.
Another thing that is heating up the Internet is the restructuring of the US region of the Internet from a National Science Foundation -based to a community (most would say "market") -based model. By the end of April, 1995, if all goes as planned, the NSFNet backbone will be decommissioned in favor or a new, open architecture and marketplace for US Internet transport services of which the most visible features will be predominantly privately owned and operated network service providers and predominantly privately owned and operated network access point operators.
This new architecture and marketplace, if the hopes of the US Internet community are realized, will allow all types of traffic to be transported (not just traffic consistent with the purposes of the research and education community, as has been the case to-date in the NSFNet-based US region of the Internet), and will allow private as well as public capital to be used to expand capacity (private capital having generally not been used in the US region of the Internet because of the concerns of prospective investors regarding asset ownership and the difficulty of determining actual costs over the extended time periods of most business plans).
And, the WorldWideWeb and its various clients (NCSA Mosaic, Cello, MacWeb, NetScape, Lynx, and the like) have been the hottest thing in the red hot Internet for almost a year now. The WorldWideWeb already accounts for nearly 10% of the traffic on the Internet. What's more, I recently read one projection that WorldWideWeb traffic will exceed telephone traffic in two to three years.
Web "weavers" and "dancers" have already changed forever the look and feel of the Internet, and the expectations that untold numbers of users bring to networking. It is now clear to anyone who cares to notice that it no longer takes an expert in multiple technologies to use the Internet to develop and access multiple networked information resources and services that contain graphics, sounds, moving images, and other non-textual elements as well as texts.
And, Web weavers and dancers are also giving real meaning to a new network metaphor, the metaphor of the Internet as a "web," that says much more about how the content of the Internet is organized than it does about how the conduit of the Internet is engineered.
This emphasis on the content and deemphasis of the conduit at this basic metaphorical level is more important than has been commonly realized, at least to-date. To the degree that network users think of content first and conduit second, if at all, they will be inclined to *develop* network applications rather than they will be to *talk* about network topologies and performances. A change of this sort in user behavior is very much in the interest of imagining as well as innovating the future of networks and networked information.
*********** * Slide 4 * *************************** * * * Historical Context * * ================== * * * * Paleo-electronic Period * * * * Meso-electronic Period * * * * Neo-electronic Period * * * ***************************
As I look forward toward what I believe will be the future of our networks and networked information resources and services, I have for some time been in the grip of the idea that we are deep into what I believe is best thought of as human-kind's paleo-electronic period.
Consider: our current Internet environment is as dangerous and forbidding as it is vast and inviting, a positive Eden of virtual delights; our Internet communities seem to be dominated by explorers, pioneers, hunters, gatherers, story-tellers, and, yes, even wizards and their familiars; and, after all the appropriate slack has been cut, the best that can be said as far as I am concerned is that we are using crude tools with which we are having some uneven but very real success in fashioning crude but functional Internet artifacts. On the last point, I am not only speaking of Internet tools like SMTP, FTP, TELNET, gopher, JPEG, HTML and HTTP, and the lot here; there is no more blunt electro-magnetic tool than broadcast television and radio, and there is no more inflexible electro-magnetic tool that vinyl, CD, and cassette audio.
Now, though, it seems like we are on the threshold of what can be productively thought of as human-kind's meso-electronic period:
Fixed settlements are beginning to emerge in the Internet environment, places that offer safe, reliable havens to scholars and scientists who are much more interested in their research and educational objectives then they are in discovering a new resource or charting a new territory in cyberspace. Domesticate flora (databases) and fauna (algorithms) are replacing all manner of networked things that go bump and roar in the *day* as well as the night. And, notions of private property, and fences that enforce those notions, are beginning to appear, prompting fears than the ideals of the open range and the public good will be soon be history all together.
To my way of thinking, we are clearly at the end of the period in which cheap stunts, brilliant hacks, and acts of ignorance or desperation were the principal ways for creating useful and affordable Internet resources and services. I believe that we are now at the beginning of the period in which strategic thinking, careful research and development, steady progress over the long run, and significant investments will be the drivers of progress in the network environment.
*********** * Slide 5 * *********************************************** * * * Impacts of Networking on Higher Education * * ========================================= * * * * Communication, Publication, and Information * * Strategies, Products, and Services * * * * Facilities, Functions, and Artifacts * * * * Missions * * * ***********************************************
The impacts of these development in the United States and around the World are being considered in two basic ways, and there is a growing need to add a third as soon as possible.
The great majority of the attention that is being devoted to the impacts of networking on higher education is being directed toward how networks are changing and may change the ways in which scholars and scientists communicate and publish, and how the information strategies, products, and services pursued and offered by the institutions and organizations that support scholarly and scientific communication and publication may change as well. Topics commonly considered in such discussions include:
Since these topics are already so well-covered in the literature and elsewhere, and since I am seeking a "higher" standard by which to plan networking and networked information activities and to measure the progress made and not made by those activities, I will say no more about these topics during this talk.
The second area that has garnered a lot of attention in discussions about the impacts of networking on higher education centers on differences of opinion about whether certain facilities (such as libraries and classrooms), functions (such as cataloging and lecturing), and artifacts (such as textbooks and periodicals) will continue to be facilities, functions, and artifacts in the age of networks.
I cannot resist the impulse to sketch my views on the specific question of whether the library is a *place* in the age of networks. "Yes, most certainly" is my answer to this question I believe that to answer this question "no" is to mistake library collections for everything else that libraries are and do. I know that some librarians make this mistake, but this is a mistake made rather more often by non-librarians. Library collections have been and always will be but a means to an end. That end has been and always will be the enabling of access to the universe of knowledge that bears upon the thinking of the authors and readers in a given community. Since printed information is conveyed by physical artifacts like books and periodicals, effective and efficient management of that information toward this end has required conveniently located, comprehensive, well-organized collections of these artifacts. I believe that networks and networked information will soon reduce the need for such physical collections, particularly for new materials and resources which do not exist outside of network environments. I do not, however, see anywhere close to an equal reduction in the need for the human judgements and services that organize information, that make the resulting organization known, that assist authors and readers in their respective quests to find each other, and so forth. These activities and the people, tools, and facilities that enable and support them will constitute the *place* of the library in the age of networks.
As was the case with the first category of impacts, since impacts of this second sort are already well on their way to becoming widely discussed and since I am trying to identify a still higher standard of discussion and action, I will say no more about facilities, functions, and artifacts in this talk.
*********** * Slide 6 * ***************************** * * * Higher Education Missions * * ========================= * * * * Research * * * * Teaching and Learning * * * * Community Service * * * *****************************
The new category of impacts of networking on higher education that I believe we need to add the two categories that we have already identified and begun to study is so obvious that it is embarrassing, at least to me, that it was not the first of three to occur to us, although I am quite comfortable that it did not do so for very natural and familiar reasons.
It has become clear to me that we will never be able to finally resolve questions about the impact of networking on communication, publication, and information strategies, products, and services nor will we be able to do the same for our questions about facilities, functions, and artifacts without getting a handle on the broader, and much more fundamental, question of what networking means to the research, teaching and learning, and community service missions of higher education institutions.
We need to derive the future of the scholarly and scientific journal and monograph from an understanding of the future of scholarship and science; we need to derive the future of classroom and library facilities from our understanding of the future geographic and social organization of learning communities; and, we need to derive the future of cataloging and lecturing from our understanding of what people will do on their own and what people will need help with in this future, networked information environment.
A quick assessment of what we know and do not know about this new, third category of impacts reveals that it is in the area of the research mission of higher education that the impacts of networking have been most felt to-date. Indeed, access to network connections and networked information have become singularly essential for attracting and retaining researchers, along with their projects and funds.
The impacts of networking and networked information on the community service mission of higher education institutions are already very real, but they are also very uneven, reflecting the wide diversity of the communities in which higher education institutions are situated. However, the higher education community in the United States takes justifiable pride in the fact that many of its institutions and people affiliated with its institutions have played important role in establishing "civic networking" projects (such as the Cleveland Freenet and the Blacksburg Electronic Village) that offer the benefits of networking and networked information to the residents of the community in their area.
But, the impacts of networking are just beginning to be felt on the teaching and learning mission of higher education institutions. This is the area in which the most exciting research and education networking breakthroughs will likely occur over the next five years.
*********** * Slide 7 * ************************************************************** * * * Mission Objectives * * ================== * * * * Increase Efficiency by Modernizing Approaches * * * * Improve Effectiveness by Innovating Offerings * * * * Revitalize Missions by Transforming Institutions * * * **************************************************************
Before I introduce and briefly develop three key opportunities and three key challenges that I believe that networks and networked information will have on higher education missions, I need to cover the three objectives that I believe that people who fund and administer higher education institutions are relying upon us, the people who build networks and populate those networks with users, resources, and services, to address through the fruits of our labors.
Costs and how to reduce them is a compelling, consuming interest and concern of all college and university administrators in the 1990s. What's more, these administrators are particularly interested in how to measure the payoffs on investments in information technology, and they are eager to learn what those measurements will show. If benefit was the handle that our administrators grasped when they first placed networked resources and services onto their tables, cost will be the handle that they will grasp when they raise networked resources and services to their next level of development. Therefore, these administrators, in the main, are looking to those of us who are working on networks and networked information to increase the efficiency of higher education by using networks and networked information to modernize the way that higher education institutions approach their research, teaching and learning, and community service activities.
This is not to say that these administrators are not interested in what networks and networked information can do to make higher education research, teaching and learning, and community service more effective. Many, perhaps even most, of these administrators are very interested in how we will innovate the offerings of our higher education institutions using network technologies, resources, and services. They recognize that although efficiency measures will allow higher education institutions to continue to serve their current constituencies, only effectiveness measures will allow these institutions to serve the large and more diverse constituencies that the 21st Century will call upon higher education institutions to serve.
Finally, a small but steadily and growing number of administrators are looking to networks and networked information, and those of us who work on them, to drive the revitalization of their particular higher education institutions by facilitating the complete transformation of not only how things get done and when and where they get done but of what gets done and by whom. Changes of this magnitude are quite difficult to grasp at this early a stage of our bringing networks and networked information to task in simply efficiency and effectiveness terms. But it is not too early to begin considering how those changes will not only recalibrate the relationships between higher education institutions and their existing constituencies, and create relationships between higher education institutions and their potential new constituencies, but will as well renew the relationship between higher education and the social goals and processes that higher education must serve.
*********** * Slide 8 * ******************************************************** * * * Mission Opportunities * * ===================== * * * * Expand Context of Thought, Communication, and Action * * * * Improve Responsiveness of Programs * * * * Strengthen Partnership Relationships * * * ********************************************************
I am now ready to turn attention to the three main opportunities that I believe networking and networked information will have on the research, teaching and learning, and community service missions of higher education.
First, networking and networked information enable a very much improved "context of work" for researchers and for their projects and programs. This new context of work will be constituted by access to and interactions among three resources that are fundamental to every researcher, research project, and research program:
The immediate, even intimate, "co-presence" of types of people and types and formats of knowledge in networked communities, coupled with the rapid and frequent interactivity enabled by basic networking technologies, yields a context of work in which ideas and facts can flow so widely and with such little resistance and such high resolution that productivity can rise to much higher levels and knowledge can accumulate at much faster rates than here-to-fore attained or even imagined.
Second, networks and networked information enable a world in which "immersion" and "immediacy" are the normal rather than the exceptional learner experience, and they also enable a world a world in which learning is a life-long rather than solely an activity of the young. We now have within our reach the technological means to construct learning environments that have the information density of the Library of Congress, the pedagogical skill of Socrates, and the excitement and holding power of a video game. Networked learning environments of this sort promise that each and every learner will be able to marshall faculty, library, laboratory, and other resources at her or his own pace according to her or his own schedule and in a setting of her or his own choosing and in close contact and cooperation with other learners.
And third, networks and networked information enable the easy and regular flow of communications and ideas that is necessary for the identification and management of the sorts of interesting and appropriate activities and initiatives that bring higher education institutions and their communities closer together. In some cases these activities and initiatives will arise from concerns about economic development, in other cases they will arise from concerns about elementary and secondary education, and in still other cases they will arise from a desire for expert knowledge to be applied to some community problem or objective ... solid waste disposal, zoning, or the like. Networked communication allows ideas and proposals to be brought forward, discussed, and disposed in a very much more responsive fashion than has generally been the case to-date, and this responsiveness fosters the trusting, positive attitude that is essential to productive relationships.
I will now discuss each of these three opportunity in slightly more depth.
*********** * Slide 9 * ******************************************************** * * * Expand Context of Thought, Communication, and Action * * ==================================================== * * * * Immediately Relevant Knowledge * * * * Plausibly Relevant Knowledge * * * * FUDfully Relevant Knowledge * * * ********************************************************
I find it useful to think in terms of three general zones of knowledge that situate each researcher in her or his own, highly individual world of work.
I believe that each researcher is situated first within a zone of "immediately relevant knowledge" which is mostly of her or his own construction, although its construction is guided by relationships with numerous authority figures through-out the researchers' lives and careers. In this zone can be found as much of the information that is directly relevant to the the researcher's immediate or imminent interests as each he or she can afford and manage on her or his own. This information is recorded on various media, conveyed by various artifacts, and embodied in the minds of various colleagues. It is the information that is so important to the researcher that he or she simply cannot trust anyone else to deal with it.
This sort of trust and delegation of responsibility for acquiring and managing information resources is the distinctive characteristic of the second zone in which the world of work of each researcher is situated: the zone of "plausibly relevant knowledge." Researchers populate this second zone primarily with information resources that are not presently important to them but which they believe may well become immediately relevant at any moment or which were directly relevant at some not too distant previous point in time. This zone is also populated with information resources that researchers cannot afford or otherwise cost-justify and which they decide to cost- and access- share with others. Researchers rely upon libraries and disciplinary societies, in the main, to manage the information in this zone.
Finally, there is a third zone of knowledge that situates a researcher's world of work which can be best described as a zone about which he or she has only fear, uncertainty, and dread (FUD). This is the zone of knowledge that is beyond the reach of both researchers *and* of their delegates. And, most researchers worry that there may well be something in this zone that will, sooner or later, completely change their world of work, for the better or worse (but, most likely, for the worse), and by the hand of someone other than themselves.
I believe that networks and networked information have already begun to expand each of these zones, and that the rate and scope of expansion will increase for some time into the future. Although occupants of the inner two zones generally acknowledge the expansion of the outer, third zone, and the occupants of the inner two zones also generally acknowledge the expansion of the innermost zone, it is not generally acknowledged by the occupants of the innermost zone that the middle zone is expanding.
This is a rather too convoluted way of saying that libraries and disciplinary societies need to do a much better job of linking their networking and networked information efforts to those of their constituents and clients if those constituents and clients are to appreciate, let alone to participate in, those efforts.
************ * Slide 10 * ********************************************************** * * * Improve Responsiveness of Programs * * ================================== * * * * Aspects of Conventional New * * Learning Experience Approach Approach * * ------------------- ------------ -------- * * * * Delivery Campus Network * * * * Access Teacher + Teacher + * * Classroom + Workstation + * * Lecture Notes Courseware * * * * Interaction Relatively Relatively * * Closed Open * * * * Assessment Periodic + Continual + * * Grades + Grades + * * Degrees Certificates * * Degrees * * * **********************************************************
It is much more difficult and uncertain to reflect upon to impacts of networking and networked information on the teaching and learning mission of higher education institutions than it is to reflect upon the impacts on the research mission. The impacts on teaching and learning are just now moving to the center stage of the networking community, and the picture we have of those impacts will be much clearer in three to five years than it is at present. Nonetheless, it is possible and useful to speculate about how the use of networks and networked information will change our approach to teaching in certain key ways.
For instance, it is obvious that, in the main, the new approach to teaching and learning will deliver educational experiences through networks rather than through campuses, and that students will access those educational experiences through courseware running on workstations while guided by teachers (who will be much more accessible through electronic mail and conferences than teachers have ever been in person) rather than accessing those experiences through lectures presented by teachers in classrooms. These two changes are much easier to state than they are to make, and there is certain to be a wide range of variation around each of them, but they are changes that will most certainly be realized in the new approach to teaching and learning that is enabled by networks and networked information.
Two other changes come quickly to mind, but they are somewhat more speculative than were the first two. First, the interactions that will take place under the new approach to teaching and learning will be relatively more open than has been possible under the old one. Hypermedia approaches, such as those that have come before us at this Roundtable, change the way that students interact with the "knowledge base" of a given course, but networks also promise to change the ways in which students interact with each other and with their teachers..For instance, it will be possible for students at widely distanced locations with perhaps greatly different levels of preparation and working at very different paces to interact with each other and with the teacher(s) involved at the same point or along the same sequence of points in a given educational experience.
Second, progress will likely be assessed and recognized in the new approach on a much more frequent and incremental basis that has been practical under the old one. For instance, students will be able to assess their progress as often as they want the feedback that assessment provides, and they will be awarded certificates that recognize their mastery of specific sets of skills in addition to being awarded degrees that recognize their mastery of general disciplines.
Both of these changes are much more challenging and are potentially much more important than are changes to how educational experiences are delivered and accessed. But, these latter two changes have to-date been drawing the majority of the too scarce attention that the networking community has been devoting to the impacts of networking and networked information on the teaching and learning mission of higher education institutions. This emphasis must change in the near future if we are going to do justice to this second of the higher education missions.
************ * Slide 12 * ******************************************* * * * Retail and Entertainment Services * * ================================= * * * * Video Rental, Video Game, * * and Home Catalog Shopping Markets * * * * Barry Diller's Concept of Home Shopping * * * * Greg Bear's Concept of Authorship * * * *******************************************
I believe that members of the higher education community who ignore the retail and entertainment service uses of the information highway do so at their great loss, and may do so at their great peril.
First, the financial stakes involved are enormous. For instance, in 1993 consumers in the United States spent $12B on video rentals, $15B on video games, and $55B on home catalog shopping, for a total of $82B on the three applications that are destined to drive the retail and entertainment service uses of the information highway. During the same period, consumers in the United States spent $80B on local telephone service. When the history of the information highway in the United States is written, 1993 will undoubtedly be remembered as the year in which consumers spent more on the new than they did on the old applications of telecommunications technologies and networks.
Second, there are indications that at least some of the leaders of the retail and entertainment service industries are grappling with at least some of the same networking and networked information objectives and issues as are the members of the higher education community. For instance, Barry Diller, CEO of QVC (the largest home shopping network in the United States and, likely, in the World), has been quoted as saying that he believes that winners in the new retail services marketplace of the information highway will be firms that succeed at "delivering expert knowledge to a point of sale, at a time of sale, in support of consumer decision making." I find Mr. Diller's business concept to be very compatible to the "service without walls or clocks" program concept that is guiding so much of the work on networks and networked information currently underway in the higher education community.
Another example of insights originating the retail and entertainment service sector comes from noted science fiction author Greg Bear. At the 1994 annual meeting of the American Library Association in Miami, Florida Mr. Bear observed that video games look and work the way that they do because the computer programmers who make them are clearly much more interested in and experienced with action. color, and sound than they are with character and story development. Mr. Bear believes that video games will soon be completely transformed by the efforts of authors like himself who are rapidly coming to believe that the technologies involved are finally getting good enough for *them* to use. He predicts that the term "works of interactive fiction" will soon replace than the term "video games" as the term of choice to refer to this genre of creative expression.
************ * Slide 13 * ************************************* * * * Mission Challenges * * ================== * * * * Fragmentation of Communities * * * * Competition with New Players * * * * Managing and Meeting Expectations * * * *************************************
I also believe that networks and networked information resources and services present three basic, long-term challenges to the research, teaching and learning, and community service missions of higher education institutions.
First, networks and networked information enable effective and sustainable communication among researchers in ever smaller research specialties. This is, of course, perceived as an opportunity by the researchers who practice those specialities. My worry is that research problems and even entire disciplines will be decomposed into progressively more esoteric research programs and projects with the result that human knowledge will fragment to the degree that the use of research outputs and the funding of research inputs will be confounded and the whole research system will be destabilized. Higher education institutions and disciplinary societies must take the lead in devising new strategies for ensuring the relevance and coherence of research in the networked environment.
Second, networks and networked information enable parties other than existing higher education institutions to offer advanced, authoritative, even certificated, educational services to the public. This is, of course, perceived as an opportunity by the public and most politicians and government officials. Networks and networked information are certain to create a much more competitive marketplace for learners than higher education institutions have faced to this point, and higher education institutions will not only be competing with each other in this new marketplace. Many higher education institutions will become more student-centered, less dependent on keeping students in residence, and less devoted to granting degrees in order to compete successfully in this new environment. Other higher education institutions will develop the vision and the means to imbed quality instructional services in other institution's and organization's platforms, systems, and environments so that those services are ready for use at a point of need, at a time of need, and by the specific person or persons in need. My worry is that most higher education institutions have barely begun to realize the potential of networks and networked information to innovate their teaching and learning mission. Other organizations may beat higher education institutions to this new market, and the organizations that do will likely be very difficult to dislodge regardless of the objective quality of the products and services that they offer.
And third, networks and networked information enable a situation in which immediate, concrete community interests could overwhelm the capacity of higher education institutions to frame and address such interests, an instance of the "insurmountable opportunity" syndrome. Community service is but one of three higher education missions, and it is important that higher education institutions pursue the other two missions in a manner that is relatively free of the immediate, concrete interests of any individual community. Higher education institutions need to find ways to use networks to improve communication with community figures and about community interests, without assuming an inappropriate stance of "general accountability" to those leaders and those interests.
************ * Slide 14 * ************************* * * * Mission Strategies * * ================== * * * * Cultivating Vision * * * * Enabling Access * * * * Providing Support * * * * Amplifying Incentives * * * *************************
In conclusion, I believe that every higher education institution needs to formulate a pursue a four part strategy if it is to seize the opportunities created and to meet the challenges presented by networks and networked information.
First, I believe that it is very important to make sure that as many people as possible in a given higher education institution have the opportunity to be exposed to and to contribute to the vision that that institution has for networks and networked information. We simply cannot rely upon people to get and develop the "right idea" about networks and networked information on their own and without a process of testing their ideas against those of others.
Second, I believe that there is no substitute for access to networks and to networked information resources and services for providing common experience and for stimulating useful discussion of what an institution wants and can get from networks and networked information. Every higher education institution needs a plan, no matter how extended in timeframe, to provide ubiquitous and affordable access to its faculty, students, and staff.
Third, I believe that an institution's investments in a cultivated and shared vision and in wide and easy access will be squandered if human and other resources are not made available to support faculty, student, and staff in their attempts to use networks and networked information.
And, fourth and finally, I believe an institution's strategy must also address the incentives that do and do not exist for using networks and networked information. I further believe that although an institution's strategy can provide some special incentives, that strategy should dwell primarily on how to amplify the attractiveness of incentives that already exist.
It is through startegies of this sort that higher education institutions, libraries, computers, disciplinary societies, publishing houses, and other institutions and organizations that support the life of the mind will reinvent themselves so that they can continue to offer that support in the world of networks and digital libraries that I believe will transform the life of the minf in the 21st Century.
************ * Slide 15 * ************************************************* * * * Coalition for Networked Information * * 21 Dupont Circle * * Washington, DC 20036 * * Voice: 202-296-5098 * * Fax: 202-872-0884 * * * * Paul Evan Peters paul@cni.org * * Executive Director * * * * Joan K. Lippincott joan@cni.org * * Assistant Executive Director * * * * Craig A. Summerhill craig@cni.org * * Systems Coordinator * * * * URL: ftp://ftp.cni.org/ * * URL: gopher://gopher.cni.org:70/ * * URL: http://www.cni.org/CNI.homepage.html * * * *************************************************
************ * Slide 16 * ****************************************************************** * * * Selected Readings * * ================= * * * * Information Infrastructure Task Force * * Putting the Information Infrastructure to Work * * Information Infrastructure: Realizing Society's Goals * * * * National Commission on Libraries and Information Science * * Public Libraries and the Internet * * * * National Research Council * * National Collaboratories: Applying IT for Scientific Research * * Realizing the Information Future: The Internet and Beyond * * * * Federation of American Research Networks * * 51 Reasons to Build the NII * * * * George Gilder * * Life After Television * * * * Richard A. Lanham * * The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts * * * * Avra Michelson and Jeff Rothenberg * * Scholarly Communication and Information Technology * * * * Peter Drucker * * Post-Capitalist Society * * * * Robert Reich * * The Work of Nations * * * * Walter Wriston * * The Twilight of Sovereignty * * * ******************************************************************
******************** * Copyright Notice * ********************************************************************* * * * Copyright to this work is retained by the author. Permission * * is granted for the noncommercial reproduction of this work, in * * part or in full, for education and research purposes. Permission * * for the commercial reproduction of this work, in part or in full, * * must be obtained from the author. * * * * November 11th, 1994 * * * *********************************************************************
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