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Date:         Tue, 13 Oct 1992 08:18:13 -0700
From:         James Crosswhite <JCROSS@OREGON.BITNET>
Subject:      Computer Travels (long message)

  Computer Traveler here. I learned an enormous amount on my
travels, and part of what I learned was about computer
traveling itself. There's a wealth of intelligence out
there, but it's not the kind of intelligence that can be
easily written up as research--or, really, written up at
all. It's in the visual and kinesthetic and aural experience
of being in the labs themselves. This intelligence shows
itself when you actually sit down at a machine and try out
the work. Or when you watch and listen to students trying to
figure out the machines, the software, the new expectations.
(Nick Carbone's great posting on the way computer classrooms
can help to change patterned responses in students applies
to computer travelers, too.) Also, the lab managers and the
teachers and the students and consultants and everyone else
involved will say things to you, the computer traveler, that
you would never read or hear about otherwise. I have notes
that I could never write up as research, but which will be
invaluable to me in my planning.
  And unanticipated things happen when you walk through
other people's rooms. I saw things go wrong. I heard about
disputes and unproductive conflicts. I watched systems
falter. I also caught some of the spontaneous quickening of
minds as students began to use the networks for their own
purposes. I watched how they used the furniture, moved
together and apart. I watched how teachers negotiated the
spaces. I could see when they were slightly frustrated by
arrangements, when the arrangements helped them. In class,
they would sometimes suddenly walk over and tell me about
these things. Gifts. I could go on and on, but this is my
advice to anyone who gets a chance to start from scratch:
travel.

Now, how one travels makes some difference, too. There are
wonderful advantages to the view from 30,000 feet; there are
also some details that are missed from that height. The
first trip I made was by air. I loved it. I would drop down
on one campus, observe the local cyberways, and then go back
up to 30,000 feet to write up my notes. It's a great and
giddy perspective. One is not constrained by any particular
local reality. One can judge each program against a standard
that knows no constraints--the view from 30,000 feet.
  However, such a perspective needs to be complemented by an
appreciation of the conditions in which real programs live
and move and have their being. I soon realized (well, sort
of soon) that there was no way I could generate a fair
comparison of the different programs. I could list the
number of machines, sketch the layout, record the number of
consultants, and so on. However, I could never evaluate or
make judgments that would satisfy everyone. Each program has
local commitments and a local view, different resources,
different goals. None of them is meant to be a universal,
all-use program.

In fact, the more I traveled, the less I had to say. I kept
wanting to report on my previous travels to my new hosts. I
assumed that they would be as eager to see things from
30,000 feet as I was. Of course, everyone did want to know
what was going on at other places--but within limits. At
first, I was disturbed by the localism I kept bumping up
against. But I soon (well sort of soon) realized that the
view from 30,000 feet is of pretty limited use to people who
live on the ground. It's great to see the general contours
of the land, but it's not much use for getting around on
campus. I hope I learned quickly enough to prevent myself
from becoming an obnoxious visitor. It was easy enough for
me to think at 30,000 feet; after all, I had no program, no
responsibilities, no computer classrooms or labs to manage
or teach in. No constraints except my own imagination.
  In some ways, the view from 30,000 feet is fairly limited.
One way to expand it would be for everyone to get up there
at once--to have a fair discussion.
  Of course, I ended up comprehending my travels in terms of
my own attitudes and commitments. I knew what goals I was
pursuing. I could look at the other programs as offering
different means to some of those goals--as well as means to
goals we didn't share. I conceptualized what I experienced
in terms of the writing program Oregon already has.

 There are also other ways to travel. Last week, I drove
from Eugene, Oregon to Davis, California. I left at dawn,
drove in the fog through the southern Willamette Valley,
over the sunny Siskiyous, past Mount Shasta, down the
Central Valley to Davis. (I stopped in Ashland to say so
long to emerald Oregon for a while. I bought a yew spoon
there at the street market, and a cup of coffee--well, OK, a
latte). I spent the night at an old friend's house, and I
saw the Davis labs the next day.

But it was the trip home that gave the new angle. I had
driven over the Sierras, over Donner pass, down into Reno
for the Western Literature Association meetings. I drove
home from Reno by taking 395 up to Susanville, where I
turned onto highway 139. This is a gorgeous two-lane highway
which winds along the foothills, through sage and juniper
desert, then into pines for a while, then back into the
desert. It's perfect for someone who loves to drive. And the
October desert is gorgeous.
  I followed 139 up to the Klamath Basin Wildlife Refuges.
At the turn of the century, the basin had about 185,000
acres of lakes and marsh--six million birds in the fall,
part of an ancient flyway for birds migrating down from the
Arctic. You know the story: today, 3/4 of it has been
converted to intensive agriculture, with all that brings--
i.e. 5 million of the 6 million birds are gone.
  Still, it was a great stop for me. Herons, egrets, geese,
ducks, and there in the desert, beside Tule lake, a
sandstone cliff on which the Modoc Indians had carved
petroglyphs. The glyphs face Mount Shasta. Some of them are
bird-people. As I stood before them, birds on the lake began
to call out in unison, and the sound echoed loudly from the
cliff, as if ancient voices had suddenly come to life again.

Of course, I was transported into wild thoughts about
writing and what it is for.  The Modocs couldn't click on a
glyph and get the bird sound--but they certainly seem to
have had the idea, in a very big way.

So, I was meandering in the mind, writing a speculative
history of writing in California, looking at the glyphs,
glancing back at Mount Shasta, listening to the birds. The
thoughts finally broke off, and my eyes drifted back to the
farms and the big agricultural trucks throwing up gravel and
dust over the lake as they roared down the dikes, past the
birds, making money for Holly Sugar, for California, for UC,
for computer classrooms. The view from the petroglyphs at
Tule Lake is a view that urges a question: are the computers
and all the rest (at Tule Lake, one tends to think in "all
the rest" terms) worth it?

And there's no answer to the question because the question
itself is not alive (or even well-focused); it's not an
issue, at least not a clear one, not once you turn your back
on the birds and the petroglyphs and get back in the car and
go home to write your proposal.

But I I can't shake the feeling that taking this view should
make some difference.

I'll be back once more, to conclude these Travels with a
summary of the proposal I made.