CS 1023 Cultural Implications of the Information Society

Of all the possible methods for preventing crime, in the long run education should prove the most important, the most effective. And it should change the most with the maturing information age. This revolution in education is just starting, with only hints so far of the future to come, but already many learning tasks can be automated with adaptive, tutoring computer programs that provide immediate feedback. These same ``intelligent'' tutors will measure progress and effort, providing a good learning environment even with today's technology. Hardware advances support affordable simulation and virtual reality systems, while data transmission improvements make world-wide educational resources available and provide interactive video and other multi-media for educational exchanges.

Chasing technology might lead educators to miss all that is important, as with a school district so busy buying computers that no one has time for the children. School districts often buy hardware, but leave no money for maintenance or training, no money for release time to allow teachers to learn to use the equipment. Worse yet, some districts redirect money spent for worthwhile causes to the purchase of unneeded computer equipment. Computers can only help if they are properly and judiciously used and if their use is supported financially and by policy. Schools must understand the conditions when the computers are not essential, as with all-important areas like critical reading, reasoning, and writing. Thus society cannot wave a magic computer wand and conjure up better education. In a recent Internet document, Lowell Monke wrote:

... the computer promises to provide my students with an endless supply of information, but what good will that do if they can't make sense of any of it? It promises to help my students express their ideas better, but what good will that do if they don't have any ideas to express? It promises to help them develop marketable skills for a technological society, but how valuable is that if they have never developed the good judgment needed to live a fulfilling life?

The key question for me was, How is computer technology going to help my students develop those inner qualities, such as insight, creativity and good judgment, which education at its best has always sought to inspire? To put it another way, Is there a way to harness the power of computer technology to serve my students' search for meaning in their learning and in their lives?

Making effective use of computers for education will be difficult, but individuals will soon have convenient and inexpensive access to vast resources of information, of computing power, of software that includes responsive and conformable agents. The problem is to transform these resources into education, to improve those education strategies that already work without computers, to invent strategies only possible with the new technology.

Information as Wealth -- Knowledge as Power

Information is the new form of wealth in the computer era. In contrast with traditional material wealth (gold, jewels, houses), computers can easily copy this new form, and networks can distribute it, both at steadily decreasing cost compared with the cost of physical objects. This is shared wealth that keeps growing, with enough for everyone.

In this terminology, data, or ``raw'' data, denotes letters, digits, and other characters strung out in a row, without any concern about what they might mean. Data becomes information when it acquires a meaning or use. Thus one can extract information from data. No one is interested in data without meaning or use. Often data is arranged (``packaged'') in forms that make the information content readily discernible.

Not everyone has access to information. Many of the information-age ``destitute'' live without this wealth. Even in the U.S., information ``rich'' as it is, access to information divides people into classes. For example, a typical inner-city U.S. high school may have an adequate number of computers at the school, but most students will have no access to a computer at home. Just as a community's free library in the U.S. has given many citizens means to better themselves, the same community now needs affordable access to information -- to prepare for the information economy, to share the new wealth.

I use the term ``knowledge'' for information that has been transferred to a human being. Knowledge can confer power because a person can make use of the underlying information. In such terms, knowledge would not reside in books or electronic media, but only in people. However, the computer revolution is forcing a rethinking of the meaning of knowledge; mankind now produces software that behaves as if it understands the data available to it -- software that can act on the basis of that data in the same way that a person would.

I regard education as the change that occurs through acquiring knowledge. Then the educated person's advantage is not primarily the specific knowledge already acquired, but the skills developed while getting knowledge. These skills are subtle, traditionally involving the ability to reason, to analyze situations logically, to understand written material, to write clearly, in the end to tell sense from nonsense. The skills also involve facility in the use of research materials like those in libraries. Such useful library skills are shifting now to familiarization with the new electronic sources of information, so that the electronic catalog may bewilder an old-style scholar in his initial search for references. Thus an essential part of education in the information age is intimacy with the electronic media, with the new sources of information and the new technologies. Available computer technologies are changing so rapidly now that the future is hard to predict, but computer-related tools for scholars and professionals should mature eventually into forms enormously more powerful than today's versions, and yet much easier and more intuitive to use. Music and architecture provide two examples of professions in which a practitioner usually now needs familiarity with computer use to be regarded as a professional. The future may see a shift back to the basics in the education of students in these two fields and in similar ones. The use of computers will be ubiquitous and essential, but also so user-friendly that musicians or architects can concentrate on more important matters: creating beautiful music, or designing environments that meet a community's needs and desires.

I fear that American society may be splitting into two classes now, based on education. Thus America may replace a class structure partly based on culture or race with a new education-based structure. The logic of events, and not individuals, will direct future forms of discrimination against the under-educated. People who do not understand the basics of the modern technical society will not be able to participate fully.

Intelligent Tutors

Starting in 1954, the behaviorist psychologist B.F. Skinner worked on ``teaching machines,'' partly to correct defects he saw in traditional education. Skinner observed his own daughter's mathematics class and saw that ``the teacher was violating two fundamental principles: The students were not being told at once whether their work was right or wrong ..., and they were all moving at the same pace regardless of preparation or ability.'' Skinner worked for a frustrating decade on various teaching machines without success. One can see that his machines were doomed for lack of the necessary technology, but far-reaching advances have now provided the powerful inexpensive computer hardware and complex software needed for successful teaching machines. The machines of the future, yet to be fully developed, will not just give immediate reinforcement and move at the student's desired pace, but will adapt to each student in ways that resemble human intelligence. The key change is that in today's machines the most complicated part, the source of ``intelligence'' if you like, resides in the software. This software runs on standard inexpensive hardware; it can be copied for next to nothing; and its development cost, often many man-years of work, can be amortized over the use of millions of copies.

There are on-going experiments with small laboratories, especially in introductory college courses, that claim to do a better job with less money than traditional methods. Calculus is a good example because all approaches require disciplined students, willing to work hard, and there are limits to how much fun or entertainment calculus instruction can involve. A recent software package is typical of the computer assistance available for specific courses, in this case a course in ordinary differential equations.

Other educators are using artificial intelligence techniques to build more capable intelligent tutors. For the near term, these tutors will just do a better job of adapting to the user and of presenting material, but eventually such software could call on enormous resources in real-time: libraries, museums, archives of data, calculation packages in many fields, and simulation software.

Simulation

Simulation and modeling are now fundamental tools for understanding the world. Computer simulations appeared during World War II, when they helped the United States develop the atomic bomb and later the hydrogen bomb. As early as four decades ago businesses would test the effects of decisions on their profits using ever more complex simulations. For example, a railway company might investigate the result of installing a shortcut rail segment: how long would it take to recover the building cost? At the same time, one started seeing simulators for airline pilots. This flight simulation technology progressed rapidly, reaching a peak with the NASA space simulations.

When astronauts landed on the moon, they saw familiar landscape outside the windows (except on the first mission, which strayed from its intended landing site), for they had trained endless months using simulators that provided realistic pictures of what they would eventually see. These early simulators used a detailed model of the particular portion of the moon chosen for landing, coupled with clever computer-controlled cameras that would swing down to the model's surface as the simulation pretended to land. Such expensive models have now been replaced with software to provide simulated real-time video images. Again one sees expensive hardware (models and cameras) replaced with software -- a replacement made possible through relentless computer advances.

People not familiar with simulation see the NASA Space Shuttle simulators or airline simulators as useful training devices which could be dispensed with if necessary, using the real shuttle or airline. In fact, the shuttle was designed using a variety of simulators. Ultra high-fidelity aeronautic simulators helped design the external shape of the shuttle -- a complex task because of the many different regimes of speed and air resistance the shuttle had to fly through. Procedures simulators allowed NASA designers to test the proposed interior of the shuttle with real astronauts, using simulated activities, especially simulated failures. Suppose a major simulator ``accident'' occurs because an astronaut fails to notice a crucial meter reading. Designers may decide that the meter needs relocation or enlargement. Such changes are relatively inexpensive in the early planning stages: modify the simulator and make changes in plans for the real shuttle. The cost of relocating a meter on a completed shuttle is hard to imagine. Thus, using simulators, the astronauts helped design the shuttle and learned a great deal about it before construction of an actual shuttle started.

Another benefit from simulators like these is the capability to train for disastrous failures. Who would want to turn off two engines of a real Boeing 747 airplane to allow pilots to practice landing under such emergency conditions? These and greater failures are easy to try out in a simulator. Along similar lines, a recent Boeing investigation of a 1994 airplane crash used simulators to reproduce effects found on flight recorders, while in another case, the simulator itself contributed to a 1987 DC-9 crash.

Simulation techniques like these are only now starting to filter down to more mundane levels. As costs keep falling, one can simulate more and more activities with ever greater fidelity. For example, electrical engineers have always needed to study electronic circuits. In the old days they worked in a laboratory with circuit boards into which they would plug hardware components and wire them together. Now these laboratories are simulated with inexpensive computer hardware and software. The main defect of the software version is its perfection: the old devices were subject to random component failures, but such random problems are also easy to simulate.

How far can one go with these simulators? Consider electronic pianos. In my terms these are simulators of real pianos, since there are no wires or hammers. Piano simulators have gotten very good indeed, at least the best of them. If I listen carefully with my eyes closed, I cannot tell the difference between a new expensive grand piano and a top-quality electronic piano (not so cheap either). Piano experts scorn these electronic gadgets. They say there is no comparison between the real and the electronic. For example, they will hold down several keys, while playing others. On a real piano, the wires controlled by keys that are held down, released from their padded hammers, will vibrate in sympathy with the other struck wires. This feature is not built into current electronic pianos, so the sound is different -- subtly different to ears like mine. But this just becomes one more feature to implement on piano simulators. Current electronic pianos fall short in other ways, too, including the ``touch'' of the keys. One day, though, the grand piano may disappear even from concert halls -- real pianos found only in museums.

Virtual Reality

The public has embraced the term ``virtual reality'' for high-end simulators, those that simulate more of the real-world experience. This flashy phrase is partly justified by the all-encompassing nature of current and proposed systems. High-quality, enclosing 3-dimensional images, especially images that follow head movements, can provide startling realism. Proposals for future virtual reality systems use full-body suits that monitor all movements. An individual sees a 3-dimensional image that moves as he moves his head; he hears with changing stereo sound; he even gets tactile feedback from movements, such as grasping an object, as well as realistic smells.

A standard joke asserts that one would not want brain surgery performed by a physician who had trained only on virtual reality systems. But the medical community is putting forward precisely this activity, neurosurgery, as a good candidate for virtual reality training. Other medical applications abound, such as replacements for the messy and smelly (and expensive) anatomy course doctors have endured. Here doctors could avoid nastiness, but as with neurosurgery, medical schools will have to determine to what extent computerized courses can meet their needs.

Notice the change brought about by technological advances: In the past, high-quality simulators were available only to the ultra-wealthy of government and business. But soon much better simulations, re-labeled virtual reality, will be affordable by small schools, even by individuals. These virtual reality systems will transform whole fields of education, such as the music and architecture mentioned earlier, and anything involving subtle human skills that are hard to describe in books. For example, future systems will record the actions of master craftsmen in such accurate detail that a lost craft could be recovered without rediscovering it.

Telephone conference calls are common in business. Real-time video calls and video conference calls are now emerging. Soon it will be feasible to participate in a virtual discussion group that can interact like a real discussion group except for touching or shaking hands, the actual physical contact. Critics of the Internet as a learning tool often complain that socialization -- conversation over coffee or in a lecture hall -- is essential. However, improved technology will give most of this -- all but sharing the same cup of coffee or holding hands with a friend, and a virtual discussion group could include anyone in the world, any group of individuals in the world. Such virtual interactions are replacements for real contact, and as long as they do not completely supplant actual physical socialization, they should be beneficial, greatly extending an individual's possibilities for contact with others. Over the coming years society will experiment with many forms of computer-mediated contact, and part of the experimentation must include protection against reclusive activities by individuals, especially by alienated younger people.

The Future of Education

A revolution in education is coming, like no other before. A friend suggested a list of previous great educational advances: introduction of an alphabet and writing, the great classic libraries, the burst of new approaches to education among the early Greek philosophers, the introduction of the modern university in the Middle Ages, the invention of the printing press. Each person could add to the list, but only the invention of writing will be comparable to the full use of computers in education.

In contrast with many businesses, the education establishment has been slow to make use of modern computer technology. The promise of improved efficiency, of doing a better job with fewer resources, is viewed by many educators as a ``down-sizing'' threat, rather than as an opportunity. This applies in the U.S. across the full spectrum of education, from primary to graduate school. The education bureaucracy, with its emphasis on teaching methods over content, on facts over skills, and with its fondness for standardized tests, is an actual impediment to progress. There is such a gap between the possibilities for improving education and the current level of achievement, that future vast changes are inevitable.

Certainly, educators should stick with traditional ways that work. Many old methods and new experiments involve no computers at all, but may have great merit. For example, the traditional classroom can be dreadful, with students paying no attention to a teacher's droned inaccuracies (or worse, students learning those inaccuracies). But at its best, this model is good -- an outstanding teacher inspiring students with wisdom and wit. After all, students have always gathered round a great scholar or poet, to learn. And large numbers of less-gifted, but dedicated teachers have sacrificed to push their students to achieve. An encouraging recent trend rejects the notion that many students are hopeless, asserting flatly that most students are capable of high achievement. Other trends teach students to read critically and to write frequently.

A group of students discussing issues and readings with peers, perhaps aided by a discussion leader, is another good model for learning. Computer technology has relevance insofar as it helps like-minded young people communicate, and current computer communication also forces students to write a great deal. A final excellent model has students receiving individual tutoring. Here computers can supply the free time to enable such tutoring, and the tutor may himself be a student, learning from the experience.

Computers can make a variety of tasks in education easier, including much of the drudgery of homework, exams, and records. Selected subject areas are good candidates for automated machine learning, such as mathematics, language skills, and parts of the sciences; most other areas will benefit. This is not to replace teachers but to relieve them of tedium. Skinner himself never intended his teaching machines to replace teachers. The machines were to assist, particularly in the difficult tasks of providing immediate feedback and of letting students proceed at their own pace. Future software tutors will be far better than anything Skinner imagined, but a human's interaction will still be needed. Skinner did not go far enough in actual implementations of his ideas in classrooms. He should have proved his methods to the world, but he likely would not have succeeded due to technological limitations.

American education is moving toward project work, where students work individually or in groups on an extended project that involves a number of different subject areas. The available computer technology does not support these activities well right now, but future schools will have remote conferencing capabilities for their students. Members of a project team will be able to access worldwide resources. These members need not belong to a special economic or cultural group and need not be in the same geographic location. In this way the Internet acts as an engine to level opportunities for everyone. Eventually, one hopes for automatic language translation, so the members will not even be limited to the same linguistic group. Machine translation of natural languages has proved far more difficult than the artificial intelligence community initially envisioned, but imagine a future where diverse students can interact in their own languages.

Training in specific areas or tasks will also be available, for adults as well as children, including the new concept of ``just-in-time'' training to transfer skills as needed. Enhanced displays that overwrite a real scene with additional guiding information will provide certain types of computer-enhanced skills with no training at all.

Optimism about the future collaboration between computer technology and education is based on the capabilities of computers to do anything at all that people can articulate. It is in their versatility that these machines excel, though the decreasing costs and ease of accessing information world-wide also help. Education is the perfect application area for mankind's new creation. Pick another area, such as food service, and one sees the difference. Computers can greatly aid the task of feeding the planet's teeming population, but in the end a farm or factory must provide actual physical food, and an agency must move the food to consumers -- it cannot be virtual food. In contrast, education can in theory be reduced to the transfer of data, retrieving it and presenting it to individuals. The practice and the details, as opposed to the theory and the overview, will be a daunting task, just getting started in my lifetime, but as with other areas of human endeavor supported by computers, there are no limits to the help that computers can provide.