 1. For examples of online learning: Yahoo's list. 2. For a sense of the place of "polis" in ancient Greek culture: The Statesman by Plato or, perhaps more accessible, Plato's Republic. Also do a search for critical articles and commentary on these texts using a search engine, for example, Alta Vista. 3. Psychoanalysis online. 4. Speaking of radio, you can hear IALIVE as part of "Artdirt" the last thursday every month at 4pm on Pseudo Online Network |
Sun, IBM, Apple and Oracle (as well as at least one Top Secret contender whose name will later be announced in these pages) are all hard at work developing various models of a network computer that is best known by its mythical price:$500. That would be the price at which the Web would leap forward towards becoming ubiquitous, a result that many see as the next step in the development of interactive media and technology. The effects that this would have on education and on those of school-age is one of the most hotly debated topics where the interlocuors include public schools, the companies already named, parents, and national and state governments. It is unforturnate that when "politics" was taken over from Greek into English, the word "polis" wasn't; at the same time as "objects" are being spoken of as a means of developing software for the Web--with distant echos from psychoanalysis of Objects Relations Theory--discussions about the public good seem to spin out of control like a misfiring rocket: politics without a polis. IA will herein try to improve that situation by providing a context woven out of what IA sees as the warp and the woof of the problem. The Web has been often described as the meeeting place of servers and clients. The server provides a website and the client visits it. The thrill that the Web has held for many is based on the fluidity of this boundary. HTML, the "language" in which websites are constructed is within the reach of most clients and hence so is the possiblility of becoming a server. The results have been both sublime and ridiculous: websites that provide new constellations of ideas and guilds of creative endeavor and others that display the communications skills of serial killers. For 500 bucks the client would get a network terminal minus many of the capacities that todays PCs provide. The network computer is often imagined as having little memory, little storage capacity, but providing access to online information, including the Web, and email capability. The user of such a terminal would be able to call up information but not necessarily publish it or provide it with the same ease as it is now possible. The dividing line between client and server might become more solidified and resemble more closely that between producer and consumer. It is this trade-off that is generating the discursive heat. To some, the inexpensive network computer would turn cyberspace from the new suburban expansion of 50s white-flight into a place within the reach of a far greater part of the population, while to others its lack of publishing capability would rob the Web of its capacity to empower people and turn them once again into passive couch-potatoes, cyber-potatoes. Before a closer look at the two sides of this debate about the effects of this new commodity can proceed it is important to provide some caveat about the fallacy of what is often refered to as "technological determinism." New uses of technology always involve a set of pre-existing non-technological conditions and always imply choices about how the technology and the set of pre-existing conditions will be made to interact. The introduction of radio and television into the US provide radically different historical precedents for the Web's current surge towards ubiquity. The arrival of radio into American homes in the 1920s preceeded its use as a medium for commercial advertising; indeed, when AT&T first ran advertising on radio in 1922 Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, was among those joining their voices advocating the need for caution in developing the advertising potential of the new medium. The '20s rise of radio to ubiquity was accompanied by wide public debate about the opportunites it presented both for public good and private gain. Companies involved in the rise of television who had also played a role with the arrival of radio were determined not to be surprised a second time. Before television's rise to ubiquity, its way had been carefully charted; television and television advertising arose simultaneously and the debate that accompanied the arrival of radio was relatively sedate and ineffectual when television took off in the '50s. The development of the Web and its path towards ubiquity would currently appear to combine elements of both scenarios. Corporate power is of course much more concentrated than it was either in the '20s or '50s but the Web's development also comes as something of a surprise to many corporate prophets, as was the case with radio. Additionally, current social conditions--with the anxiety felt by many that the country is being permanently stratified into rich versus poor--more closely resemble the '20s, at least in the public's perception. This may further fuel public debate over hgow to groom the future of the web in order to maximise public good and private gain. Much of this debate may become misguided, fatalistic, even dangerously inflammatory if the debate becomes too narrowly focused on viewing technology in itself as determining the future. That having been said, it remains clear that a knowledge of the various technologies involved will be crucial for crafting practical solutions regarding reconciling the various demands being made by different constituencies. While future issues of IA will offer insights both on specific technologies and on the social and commercial forces in they are engaged, let us here point out some of the complexities of the current debate that are often overlooked by one party or the other. Consistently raised are a number of relevant criticisms of the thesis that the rise of the Web to ubiquity through the production of the cheap Web terminal will result in robbing the Web of its most valuable educational potential; these need to be clarified here. First, it is said, the idea that the inexpensive Web network computer is being marketed solely for a tv-dinner eating bunch of labotomized lotto-losers is just plain wrong. Sun Microsystems, for example, with its slogan "The network is the computer" envisions corporate executives as their first customers. Symbolic interaction with the Web, the argument continues, isn't limited to putting more stuff on the web; this fact Sun clearly doesn't feel is going to be lost on its potential customers; the real action is on taking information from the web and applying it elsewhere, the same kind of symbolic interaction that a network computer could provide for students at a low price, even if their capacity to publish on the Web is diminished. This raises an important second criticism made against dystopic visions of a ubiquitous thumb-sucking kind of Web connection, that is the assumption that the network computer will kill the personal computer rather than complimenting it. This zero-sum thinking, it is argued, fails to allow for scenarios involving the peaceful and creative co-existence of the NC with the PC. On the other hand, one argument remains most powerful in the camp of those who predict a new avalanche of passivity and sleep being foisted upon the awakeninbg forces of democracy and empowerment now evident in the proliferation of smart PCs.The argument combines the history of Gutenberg with the concept of literacy. Yes, this argument goes, the first ises of the cheap terminals will be corporate hierarchies, because they will set the rules for what counts as information worth publishing; they will determine what is knowledge and what is not. The most important interaction of interactivity takes place in the mind of the user who--through their ability to publish-- can help redefine what is information, learning, knowledge and thinking. Take that away, and what do you have left about the Web that could inspire today's students? It's a powerful argument. IA will continue to report on how the debate develops, and where the choices develop, and who makes them. |