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Date:         Mon, 9 Nov 1992 11:08:00 EST
From:         "JEFFREY R. GALIN" <WPWP@PITTVMS.BITNET>
Subject:      Tools vs Environment

John,
        Thanks for the references below.  I look forward to exploring
them.

>
> There are of course multiple environments, interlocking, intersecting; tools
> exist within those environments and sometimes alter them.  The computer was a
> tool so powerful that it eventually reshaped the environment around itself,
> which is why Jay Bolter (in _Turing's Man_, 1984) called it the "defining
> technology" of the later 20th century; see also Lyotard's _Postmodern
> Condition_ (1979); Shoshana Zuboff's _In the Age of the Smart Machine_ (1988)
> remains the best account I know of the way introducing computers into a work
> environment transforms that environment.

ANd, as for your following comment, I agree that networked classrooms
are ideally built upon "material substrates."  Combining the
technologies can potentially lead to the large scale hypertext
"information environment" of which you speak.  Unfortunately, the labs
at Pitt
are almost all public labs and there are only three computer "classrooms"
shared by all departments in the university.  Synchronous work on a
regular basis is out of the question.  Asynch work can be done on VAX
NOTES or standard e-mail, but that's it.  So, I'm in a position to apply
the metaphor of hypertext to my actual class given the limitations I
offer.
        It's interesting to me how hardware and software configurations
really define what work can be done.  As much as the concept of
computers as "tools" has offered us, and still does, I still maintain
that the metaphor also limits our possibilities.  We have a massive
Computer Information Services department that runs the labs and offers
technical advice.  They make most of the decisions on what goes into
labs.  Special requests can be made, but the process is lengthy.
Shifting the thinking of what we do in our field of computers and
writing also depends on what those with resources and administrative
authority are thinking, what our own administrators in our departments
are thinking, what the deans . . . .

>
> What I was going to say, however, was that in order for hypertext to have the
> kind of impact we've been suggesting in recent postings-- integrative,
> multi-disciplinary, environmental-- there needs to be a "material substrate":
> i.e., a physical environment of ubiquitous, networked computers.  That network
> in turn gives rise to an "information environment" in which hypertext on a
> large scale makes enormous good sense.


        My interest in examining the metaphors we use to talk about
computers in the classroom is not intentionally stereotyped.  And though
these terms may be buzz words, they do in fact govern our work in real
ways.  I think it might be useful to examine such metaphors within the
context of the work we want to do with them and to imagine, as John
does, what ideal "information environments" might be for our students.
With a larger picture in mind, we can contend on individual bases with
our unique university situations.


Jeff Galin
galin@vms.cis.pitt.edu
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU