Horseless Classrooms & Virtual Learning

Philip J. Bossert, Ph.D.*

Abstract


Information and telecommunication technologies are reshaping every aspect of today's living, learning and working environments. These technologies are not fully understood, however, and their impact upon the social and cultural institutions of our society are not yet fully clear. The revolution in transportation technologies which occurred at the turn of the last century may serve us as a clarifying metaphor for the current transition. Although educational institutions escaped relatively unchanged from the transportation revolution, the current information technology revolution may be rendering much of our learning infrastructure irrelevant.

Misunderstood Technologies

Many commentators have observed that technological invention and innovation are reciprocal in nature: human beings invent new technologies and then those technologies shape the living, learning and working environments -- and in many cases the fundamental structures of consciousness -- of human beings. In most cases the impact that new technological invention and innovation will have upon the various social, cultural, physical, biological, intellectual and spiritual environments inhabited by humans is not fully understood at the time the new technologies are introduced. The hidden benefits and detriments of some technologies, such as the unfortunate side effects of the drug Thalidomide, come to be recognized in a matter of years; others take decades and some require centuries for their impact to become fully explicated.1

Almost no one would argue with the observation that there is currently underway a global transformation in the way information is accessed, stored, processed and communicated. This transformation, variously described as an information technology revolution, a communication technology revolution, and a consumer electronics revolution, began in earnest at about the halfway point of the current century. The seeds may have been planted with the introduction of telephony over a century ago and television half a century later, but it has been the explosive growth in recent years of microchip-based technologies -- such as computers, cellular phones, robotics, satellites, the Internet, etc. -- which has forced all of us to begin to deal with the impact of electronic information and telecommunication technologies.2

But just how are we dealing with these technologies? Some of us -- for example those who can comfortably watch an hour or more of MTV, read an issue of Wired magazine cover-to-cover, or hang out all night in a chat room on the 'Net -- are already fully at home with these new electronic inventions. Our consciousness to some extent has been shaped by these technologies. We may not fully understand the electronic environments that we inhabit but we are comfortable living and learning and working there for the most part. Others of us who still prefer to get most of our information from books and newspapers, like to attend live symphony performances, and nearly kill ourselves participating in weekend pickup football games for recreation often are not "at home" in these new technological environments. Our consciousness has been shaped by the technological infrastructures and institutions of an earlier age -- many of which still remain invisible to us3 -- and, at best, we remain on the fringes of these strange new environments or, at worst, feel like a "stranger in our own times".4

Both those who are at home in these new electronic environments and those who are on the fringes seem to agree that electronic information and telecommunication technologies result in more of our relationships being "mediated" or "intermediated" and that more of our experiences are "virtual" in nature. The only difference is that the former group is more comfortable with these types of relationships and experiences, while the latter group is uncomfortable with them. But both groups have to deal with these environments and to some extent live, learn and work with and within them. It is thus in the best interest of the membership of both groups to try to understand, to clarify, to explicate -- at least as much as is possible at this early stage in the development of these technologies -- the impact that these new technologies currently have and will likely have upon our lives.

Such understanding is not an easy task, since we usually "misunderstand" or "misinterpret" new technologies in terms of the older technologies that have shaped our current consciousness and living environments. We, so to speak, move into the future facing backwards, interpreting what is happening to us in the present in terms of the institutions and infrastructures of the past. In an attempt to explain this, let me use the events and process of a previous revolution -- the transportation technology revolution which began at the turn of the last century -- as a metaphor for the events and process of the revolution in which we find ourselves immersed at the turn of the current century -- the information and telecommunication technology revolution.5

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* Dr. Philip J. Bossert is the President of Strategic Information Solutions, Inc., a strategic technology planning and support services company with offices in Hawaii, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and China. He also currently serves as the Project Director for the Hawaii Education & Research Network project, a national demonstration project funded in part by the National Science Foundation under its Networking Infrastructure for Education initiative. Dr. Bossert is a former Fulbright Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Fellow and NEH Grantee. He has held positions as a college professor, a university director of strategic planning, a college president, a strategic information systems manager for GTE Hawaiian Tel, and as Asst. Superintendent for Information Technology in the Hawaii State Dept. of Education. This article is based in part on a presentation originally delivered at the annual meeting of the Pacific Basin Education Consortium in Honolulu on July 29, 1996.

1Shoshana Zuboff of Harvard University has argued that the full meaning and impact of the industrial revolution may only be clear from the vantage point of the current information technology revolution. See In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work & Power (New York: Basic Books, 1988).

2This is true primarily in the developed and developing nations of the world but also to some extent across the globe. Even though half the people currently living on earth have never talked on a telephone, their living, learning and working environments are nonetheless impacted by information and telecommunication technologies.

3See my article on this topic in last year's NASSP Bulletin, "Understanding the Technologies of Our Learning Environments" (October, 1996; pp. 11-20).

4Alvin Toffler's phrase used throughout Future Shock (New York: Random House, 1970).

5The information and telecommunication technology revolution is not the only "technology revolution" we find ourselves immersed in at the turn of this century. The equally important and explosive "biotechnology revolution" will have perhaps an even greater impact upon our lives than those of the electronics technologies.


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