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Kappa Omicron Nu
FORUM
Advanced Information Infrastructures:
The Human Interface
Virginia Moxley
Dr. Moxley is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, College of Human Ecology, Kansas State University
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Exponential growth in the capacity of informational infrastructures during the past decade has vastly increased the ability to distribute and access information. This paper explores how advances in information technologies have impacted the everyday experiences of the people who use them. Information technologies have rearranged time use, neutralized geography as an asset (or liability) for workers and learners, and ratcheted up expectations for instantly available customized information.
Much of human progress has come about because someone invented a better and more powerful tool… Informational tools are symbolic mediators that amplify the intellect rather than the muscle of their users. —Bill Gates, 1995.
Human beings have a need to communicate. Throughout history, human
communities have developed languages that enabled community members to share
information. When these languages came to exist in written form, asynchronous
communication occurred, and human communities shared innovations and traditions
across time and place. However, until the invention of the printing press in
the mid 15th century, the process of sharing was difficult, expensive, and
slow. The printing press transformed human communication because it could
reproduce written information more easily, at less cost, and at greater speed
than scribes could.
Human communities continue to search for ways to share information across
time and place in ways that are easy, inexpensive, and instantaneous. Advances
in information technologies in the latter half of the 20th century are vastly
more significant in terms of information growth and transfer than the printing
press was in the 15th century. When the printing press was invented, few people
could read. When the networked microcomputer was introduced, the population of
the world was mostly literate and poised to capitalize on information exchange.
The decade of the 1990s has been a transformational time for information
growth and transfer. The growth in information and its accessibility has
changed work, education, and family life. This growth has been fueled by
advances in information infrastructures.
U.S. households have chosen the networked personal computer as the appliance
of choice for the decade of the 1990s. The broad diffusion of personal
computers assures consumer demand for products which drives the development of
new and better hardware, software, networks, and technological services.
The memory and processing capacity of personal computers is growing
exponentially. According to Bill Gates (1995), since the mid 1960s the capacity
of computer chips has doubled every 18 months and this rate of growth will
continue for another twenty years. The consequences of exponential growth are
such that if Gates’ prediction holds true, twenty years from now computer
transactions will be 10,000 times faster and what now takes a day will then
take fewer than ten seconds.
The bandwidth connecting computers is expanding to allow for faster
transmission of digital data. Transmission speed is not especially critical for
transmitting print information to a few computers, however the transmission of
images and video to vast numbers of information appliances will require broad
band widths.
Software has been “dumbed down” at the user interface and
“smartened up” in work capacity. Because new software is relatively
easy for experienced computer users to learn, they tend to load lots of
programs on their computers which drives the demand for computers with
increased storage and operating capacity.
In historical context, I expect that the decade of the 1990s will come to be
recognized as a time when asynchronous human communication shifted from paper
to electronic media. It will also be known as a time
- when technology and the talent to use it were never quite synchronized
- when college professors and kindergartners were learning the same technical
skills
- when the work of high level professionals and managers was temporarily
“dumbed down” because businesses and universities were slow to
rethink support needs and time use
- when human communities reconceptualized time and space
- when glitz competed with substance for our attention and appreciation
- when depreciation schedules were revised to accommodate the 3-year lifespan
of information technologies.
This paper will discuss changes in information infrastructures that have
occurred during the last half of the 20th century. It will focus on the human
interface—how people have experienced these changes—during the decade
of the 1990s.
A Case Study—The Author’s
Journey
I am a rather typical professional user of electronic information
infrastructures. As such, I have chosen to provide the following case history
of my personal “coming on line.” In compiling this case history, I
came to the following understandings.
Today, using the internet and a personal computer at home and work seems so
natural that I cannot imagine life without my personal networked computers. Yet
as the case history illustrates, most of my life was spent without a computer
at my fingertips. This look back has enabled me to see that as soon as I
upgraded a computer or a software program, I forgot about the limitations of
the previous one and so I discounted the advances in capacity even while I was
avidly using them. Because of this ability to discount advances, much of the
change has been invisible to those of us experiencing it.
Throughout much of the 1990s I have felt as if I were not sufficiently
competent to manage computer communication as well as I wanted. I would put off
upgrades because I did not have time to learn to use the new and improved
equipment and programs. I would attend training sessions and leave convinced
that I was technologically inept. I watched my children develop computer skills
by playing and realized that I reached adulthood in the only generation in
human history to learn an entirely new and constantly changing communication
medium in adulthood.
Just as quickly as communications technology advanced, expectations for it
advanced. These expectations assumed that the human users of the equipment were
as adaptable as the equipment itself. This has rarely proven to be the case.
Having the human capacity to create an instant response to an inquiry is quite
different from having the technological capacity to do so. The output from the
human brain has not experienced the exponential growth that output from
information technology has. For many practical uses, computing capacity has
outpaced our ability to benefit from the speed. It has not however outpaced the
growth of our impatience. We continue to redefine “instant.”
The following timeline is provided to illustrate the extent of change in
information technologies that mid-career professionals have experienced in
their work lives. I have inserted major milestones in computing technology as
they happened. I note that the early milestones did not have the immediate
consequences for my work that recent milestones have had.
The Mainframe Years
1967 - Kansas State University had one main frame computer primarily used
for data management. Data to be inputted were carried to the computer for entry
by an operator. As an undergraduate student, I enrolled in a computer
programming course. Keypunched assignments were given to an operator and were
run sometime within the next 24 hours.
Early 1970s - E-mail was first used for academic information exchange
(Harasin et al., 1996). This use appears to have been the exclusive domain of
researchers in the natural sciences. The earliest adopters were defense
contractors because the military developed the first network.
1972 - Intel released a microprocessor chip (Gates, 1995). Few people
other than Bill Gates and Paul Allen noticed.
1975 - Bill Gates and Paul Allen formed Microsoft, the world’s
first microcomputer software company (Gates, 1995).
1977 - I employed a typist who used an electric typewriter to type
the final draft of my doctoral dissertation. Computers were still mostly
mainframe management and analysis tools. They were not being used for word
processing.
Personal Computer Years
1982 - IBM Personal Computer is marketed with MS-DOS operating system
(Gates, 1995).
Mid 1980s - Universities and businesses began to invest in personal
computers for use in word processing and data management.
1984 - Apple Computer released the Macintosh, the first microcomputer
with graphical interface (Gates, 1995).
1985 - I returned to KSU as Associate Dean of the College of Human
Ecology. Some staff and even fewer faculty members had computers on their
desks. For the next decade, the need to provide distributed computing to all
faculty and staff drove financial decisions, and faculty and staff were
alternately stressed either by lack of access to sufficient computing capacity
or by lack of personal capacity to use what they had access to.
1989 - KSU began to provide electronic mail training for faculty. The
course material had limited value for me—there were few other users to
send mail to. I opened my electronic mailbox biweekly and rarely found a
message.
1990 - I purchased my first home computer—a Macintosh LC with
pull down bars and screen icons. The primary uses for the computer were word
processing and children’s homework. Microsoft released Windows
3.0—the first graphical interface for DOS-based computers (Gates, 1995).
The Networked Years
1993 - The University opened new networked public computing laboratories,
one of which was located in the College. These laboratories were not (and still
are not) staffed. For the first two years, faculty members officed near
laboratories became de facto lab assistants as students sought technical
assistance with the equipment. Within two years, however, students sought
support from peer users of the laboratories, and this has proven to be a
satisfactory solution.
1994 - Human Sciences administrators in the Great Plains area met to
form a distance education alliance. In 1994, distance delivery modes used by
participating universities were designed for in-state audiences. Initial
inter-state offerings were by videotape and telephone conferencing. Although
universities could deliver courses on the Internet, most potenetial students
lacked the computer and network access to receive them.
1995 - Bill Gates reported, “Now that computing is astoundingly
inexpensive and computers inhabit every part of our lives, we stand at the
brink of another revolution. This one will involve unprecedentedly inexpensive
communication; all the computers will join together to communicate with us and
for us. Interconnected globally, they will form a network, which is being
called the information highway. A direct precursor is the present
Internet” (Gates, 1995). The College created a Local Area Network for the
building and hired a full time network supervisor. The supervisor has been
upgrading computers and wiring and peripherals full time since then. All rooms
in university residence halls were equipped with two Ethernet connections to
link student computers to the university server.
1996 - I replaced computers at work and at home due to “social
obsolescence” of previous computers. According to Tenner (1997), social
obsolescence, the inability of a computer model to run new releases of
important software efficiently, often occurs within a year of purchase. Local
Internet access reached the rural telephone company that serves our household.
We subscribed. The college offered its first courses delivered entirely via the
Internet. For the first time, all entering KSU students were assigned an e-mail
address at preenrollment. The university published its first campus directory
of electronic mail addresses. Average daily electronic mail transmissions
handled by the university server increased 400% from April 1995 to April 1996
(CITAC, 1998).
1997 - I began to teach in one of the university’s high
technology classrooms. Palm top computers provide instant analysis of student
responses. Networked classroom computer provides access to the Internet and is
equipped with Power Point software. In-class activities are supplemented
through a listserve.
1998 - Networked computers are the status quo for businesses and
households in the United States. The Great Plains Interactive Distance
Education Alliance (IDEA) has become a virtual team that collaborates regularly
on distance education and technology issues. Home pages accessed electronically
are the information source of choice for prospective students and the public.
Newsletters are being reformatted for electronic rather than paper delivery.
Students at KSU are expected to be computer savvy when they arrive. KSU
students in off-campus organized living groups that install T1 lines have
direct access to the university server.
Final Thoughts
The advances during the past decade have had major impacts on our work and
on our daily lives. For the most part, these impacts have been positive ones.
Topping the list of positive impacts is the time and geographic freedom that
new information technologies have provided. These advances in technology have
also had unintended negative impacts which should be recognized and managed
better.
Technology does not create time, it simply rearranges it’s use. In some
ways, asynchronous communication is more demanding in terms of time management
than synchronous communication. For instance, when a faculty member initiates a
course for asynchronous delivery via the Internet, the faculty member’s
planning and development time is “front loaded.” No longer does the
faculty member experience the adrenaline high of last minute preparation for
the day’s class. Instead, the faculty member must engage in a thorough
planning process long before the first class is available to students. The
sequence of development changes when the entire class, not just the class
period, must be ready for launch at one time. If the course has previously been
taught in the traditional classroom, the delivery format must be converted from
a predominantly verbal format to a highly visual one. Because copyright laws
are far more stringent for materials being electronically reproduced than for
materials shown in a classroom, permission to use words and images must be
secured from the creator of the materials and cataloged. In addition,
electronic reproduction, just like paper reproduction, requires that all
materials derived from other sources be cited. Again, arranging and cataloging
these citations requires much more thorough documentation than faculty members
are accustomed to using in preparing for classroom delivery. The time payoff
for faculty members, if it exists, will only be realized during successive
offerings of the course.
Students, too, have time challenges in the use of asynchronously delivered
instruction. Students who enroll in distance education courses delivered via
the Internet choose this delivery technique because it offers perceived freedom
of time and place. However, students who most want this time freedom tend to be
time constrained by ongoing roles and responsibilities. Distance education
students are challenged to divert time from urgent daily activities related to
work and household responsibilities to the less urgent, but important, need to
learn course material. The human tendency to respond to urgent activities
before less urgent but more important activities is well documented.
Universities have found that the completion rate for students in distance
education courses is low (Cornell, 1997). To motivate students to allocate
sufficient time to the course, instructors must employ management techniques
such as setting deadlines that increase the urgency of completing course work.
Good teachers engage both the intellect and the emotion of the learners. The
Internet’s primary uses are for information (which feeds the intellect)
and for relationships (which feed the emotion). Good pedagogical techniques
will provide opportunities for developing student-teacher and student-student
relationships as well as providing information that advances knowledge.
Advanced information technologies provide a geographically neutral location
for the creation and distribution of knowledge (CITAC, 1998). The sense that
geography is neutral in working relationships and information creation/transfer
is new. In 1977, Tom Allen, MIT professor, reported that the “radius of
collaborative colocation is small. People aren’t likely to collaborate
often if they are more than fifty feet apart (Lipnack, 1997).” Twenty
years later, Allen’s world is a distant memory because of the impact of
information infrastructures that neutralize geography. Collaboration with
colleagues in other locales via virtual teamwork is almost as easy as
collaboration with a colleague next door.
Individuals are not bound by geography in the way they were. However, they
continue to be bound to geography by things that matter to them—families
and communities that provide stability and meaning to life. They expect that
these entities that make life meaningful for them will be accommodated by
technology that brings information and services to them where they are. It
remains to be seen whether technology infrastructures will reduce or increase
human migration patterns. Indeed, if people are not required to move to the
job, but can bring the job to them, some will use new decision-making models
based on personal quality of life measures to determine where to live.
A decade ago, as knowledge professionals began to realize the potential of
networked information technologies, the prevailing assumption was that these
technologies would somehow make our work easier. This has not happened.
Although work has been profoundly changed by information technologies, it has
not been simplified. Tenner (1997) reports that computerization has helped
reduce rather than promote the amount of time that professionals spend
performing their highest and best work. Professional time, according to Tenner,
has been diverted into providing peer technical support, learning key boarding
and editing skills formerly performed by support staff, and adapting
(continuously) to technological advancements.
The transformations in information infrastructures have and will continue to
create opportunities and challenges for workers and businesses and families and
communities. Our experiences so far may lead to better adaptations and more
reasonable responses as these transformations continue. The papers in this
journal describe some lessons learned about information infrastructures that
are reshaping our sense of community, the way we work, and how we access and
provide information.
Should this publication be read a decade from now, readers are likely to be
amused by our lack of technical sophistication and the limits of the
information technology that supports our work. As information technology
continues to advance, some challenges faced by current users of technology will
fade and new ones will emerge. I expect that one ongoing challenge will be to
meet the ever growing expectations of workers and learners for instant, easily
accessed, easily shared, and easily understood customized information.
References
CITAC. (1998). Information technology
progress and plans. Manhattan, KS: Kansas State University.
Cornell, R., & Martin, B. (1977). The role of
motivation. In B. H. Khan (Ed.). Web based instruction (pp. 93-100).
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications.
Gates, B. (1995). The Road Ahead. New York: Viking
Penguin.
Harasin, L., Hiltz, S., Teles, L., & Turoff, M. (1996).
Learning networks. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Lipnack, J. and Stamps, J. (1997). Virtual Teams.
Reaching Across Space, Time, and Organizations with Technology. New York:
John Wiley and Sons.
Tenner, E. (1997). Why things bite back: Technology and
the revenge of unintended consequences. New York: Random House.
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