DOCUMENT RESUME
ED 302 179
AUTHORTITLE

INSTITUTIONPUB DATENOTE

PUB TYPE
JOURNAL CITEDRS PRICEDESCRIPTORSIDENTIFIERS

IR 013 538

Ambron, Sueann, Ed.; Hooper, Kristina, Ed.
Multimedia in Education. Proceedings of an
Invitational Conference on Multimedia in Education(Cupertino, California, June 19-20, 1986).
Apple Computer, Inc., Cupertino, CA.
87346p.; For individual papers from this conference,see IR 013 539-555.
Collected Works - Conference Proceedings (021) -Collected Works - Serials (022)
Learning Tomorrow: Journal of the Apple Education
Advisory Council; n3 Spr 1987
MFO1 /PC14 Plus Postage.

Computer Graphics; *Computer System Design;*Databases; *Design Requirements; *Educational
Technology; Encyclopedias; *Interactive Video;*Multimedia Instruction; Technological Advancement;
Videodisks*Hypermedia

ABSTRACTThis collection of articles exploring multimedia in
education was compiled from presentations at an invitational
conference on Multimedia in Education. Following an introduction by
Sueann Ambron ("New Visions of Reality: Multimedia and Education"),articles are grouped under six headings: (1) Computer Science andEngineering: "The Augmentation System Framework" (Doug Engelbart with
Kristina Hooper); "Issues in Designing a Hypermedia Document System:
The Intermedia Case Study" (Nicole Yankelovich, Karen Smith, L. Nancy
Garrett, and Norman Meyrowitz); "As We May Learn" (Stephen A. Weyer);and "NoteCards: A Multimedia Idea Processing Environment" (Frank G.
Halasz); (2) Education: "The Shakespeare Project" (Larry
Friedlander); "Cicero" (Bernard Frischer); and "Grapevine--An
Excursicn into Steinbeck Country" (Robert Campbell and Patricia
Hanlun); (3) Television: "The Voyage of the MIMI" (Sam Gibbon with
Kristina Hooper); and "Beyond Einstein--A Case Study in Interactive
Television" (Thomas Anderson); (4) Publishers: "Multimedia
Technology--An Encyclopedia Publisher's Perspective" (Peter Cook);
and "Geography, Images, and Technology" (George Peterson); (5) Images
and Interactivity: "Multimedia Technology Is for Casual, Everyday
Use" (Steve Gano); "Stand By for Fun--Experience and Interaction"(Douglas Crockford); and "The Microsoft Multimedia Encyclopedia"(Suzanne Ropiequet); and (6) Thought Pieces: "Assuming That..." (Anne
Nicol); "A Layered Theory of Design for Optical Disc Software" (MikeLiebhold); "Links or Stories--A Compromise" (Bernard Frischer);"Getting a Boost from the Real World" (Ted Kaehler); "Authoring with
Hypermedia" (Carol Kaehler); and "Navigation in Large Knowledge
Spaces" (Stephen A. Weyer). A summary by Kristina Hooper concludes
the proceedings. The text is supplemented by figures andillustrations, and some of the articles include references. (EW)fi
Multimedia
in Education

L

E AR N IN GTO M OR R OW

U S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION°Mee of Educational Research and Improvement

EDUCAT!ONAL RESOURCES INFORMATIONCNTER (ERIC)%This document has been reproduced asreceived from the person or organizetton
oncenating it.

0 Minor champs have bun made to improve
reproduction oughts
Points of VOW Of opinions Stated in this doe's

mint do not necessanly represent official

OERI position or policySP

R ING.19 8

7

The

Journalof theApple
Education

Advisory
Council"PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS
MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY

Saul Rockman

TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCESINFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)."Multimedia
in Education
Apple Education Advisory Council:
Learning Tomorrown
CJDear Reader:

Learning Tomorrow is a series of publications designed to bring you
information on how technology can be used m education.
This collection of articles exploring multimedia in education was compiled
after an invitational conference on Multimedia in Education held on June 19
and 20, 1986. Participants were selected because they are leaders in writing
about and building examples of multimedia.
The participants represent different perspectives, including computer scienceand engineering, education, publishing, and television. In addition, we addeda category of images and interactivity because of the growing community of
individuals who are focusing on interactive multimedia experiences rather thanextensions of experiences in more traditional media.
While we are excited about the results of the meeting, the views expressed by
the participants do not necessarily represent Apple's point of view; they are
instead, the diverse views of some of the best people in the field, presented togive readers an overview of the opportunities in multimedia.
We welcome your comments and suggestions on Learning Tomorrow.
Sincerely,

Sueann Ambron, Ed.D.
Manager of Market Development
Apple Computer, Inc.

CVI.

`ckKristina Hooper, Ph.D.
Senior Researcher
Apple Computer, Inc.

61162e-Credits

Managing Editors: Sueann Ambron, Kristina Hooper
Editor: Anne Kaplan-Neher
Creative Director: Tom Marchionna
Designers: Ellen Romano, Cheryl Dalton
Text Format: Andrea Stedman
Coordinators:
Ferhan Cook
Stri Ellcaim

Linda Franklin
Carol Johnson
Mary Patterson

5Contents

IntroductionNew Visions of Reality:
Multimedia and Education

3

Sueann Ambron
16
17

Section I. Computer Science and Engineering

120
123
153
169

Section IL Education

Doug Engelbart with Kristina Hooper. "The Augmentation System
Framework."
35 Nicole Yankelovich, Karen E. Smith, L. Nancy Garrett, and Norman
Meyrowitz: "Issues in Designing a Hypermedia Document System:
The Intermedia Case Study."
89 Stephen A. Weyer: "As We May Learn."
111 Frank G. Halasz: "Note Cards: A Multimedia Idea Processing
Environment."

Larry Friedlander: "The Shakespeare Project."
Bernard Frischer: "Cicero."
Robert Campbell and Patricia Hanlon: "GrapevineAn Excursion
Into Steinbeck Country."

194 Section III. Television
195 Sam Gibbon with Kristina Hooper: "The Voyage of the Mimi."

209 Thomas Anderson: "Beyond EinsteinA Case Study in Interactive
Television."
236 Section IV. Publishers
237 Peter Cook: "Multimedia TechnologyAn Encyclopedia Publisher's
Perspective."
263 George Peterson: "Geography, 'ma ;es, and Technology."
278 Section V. Images and Interactivity
279 Steve Gano: "Multimedia Techiology Is for Casual, Everyday Use."
293 Douglas Crockford: "Stand By For FunExperience and Interaction."
303 Suzanne Ropiequet: "The Microsoft Multimedia Encyclopedia."

Section VI. Thought Pieces
325 Anne Nicol: "Assuming That...."
331 Mike Liebhold: "A Layered Theory of Design for Optical Disc Software."339 Bernard Frischer: "Links or StoriesA Compromise."
343 Ted Kaehler: "Getting a Boost from the Real World."
347 Carol Kaehler: "Authoring with Hypermedia."351 Stephen A. Weyer: "Navigation in Large Knowledge Spaces."
324

357

Section VII. Summary Multimedia in Education
Kristina Hooper

1

LEARNING TOMOF,ROW

Introduction
Sueann AmbronApple Computer, Inc.

3

LEARNING TOMORROWNew Visions of Reality:
Multimedia and Education"Fifteenth-century Europeans 'knew' that the sky was made of closed
concentric crystal spheres, rotating around a central earth and carrying thestars and planets. That "knowledge" structured everything they did andthought, because it told them the truth. Then Galileo's telescope changed
the truth.
"As a result, a hundred years later everybody 'knew' that the universe
was open and infinite, working like a giant clock. Architecture, music,
literature, science, economics, art, politics--everything--changed,
mirroring me new view created by the change in the knowledge."(Burke p.9)
Multimedia, like Galileo's telescope, is a powerful tool; it will change the way
we look at knowledge and give us a new vision of reality. The change in ourview of knowledge brought about by multimedia will not take one hundredyears as it did with Galileo's telescope. The changes are alreadyhappening.They started with the wide acceptance of the microcomputer andcontinue as we move toward videocomputers, interactive television, andelectronic books. Three industriescomputers, television, andpublishingthat were quite separate during the sixties started to overlap in theseventies and eighties. By the nineties the three industries will be even moreintertwined. The products of these industries provide the content and media
for education. Consequently, the new reality of multimedia will change
education.
The purpose of this book is to give you a glimpse of multimedia in education.
Conference participants from the fields of computer science, television, andpublishing will share their vision of multimedia with you.

How do you explain something new for which the words have not yet been
invented? One way is to show it! That is why this book is basically acollection of examples. Computer-controlled multimedia is new, so examples
are necessary to define the medium, develop the vocabulary, and explore new
dimensions of content, software, and hardware. When you have finishedreading the book you should have a better idea of what multimedia is and why
it is likely to have a major impact on education as well as business.

5

LEARNING TOMORROW

What is multimedia?

41.."11

4+4

We'll start with a shirt history and a working definition of multimedia.
Multimedia without computer enhancement is not new. For example cavedrawings in France are a record of early man's images of animals. These
records were made with various media, probably using stick tools.
A more recent and varied example of multimedia is found in a kindergarten
class, where you'll find paints, crayons, filmstrips, books, records, andclayall examples of media, and all tools for multimedia production. The
products of this media-rich environment can include a picture of ladybugs
made with thumbprints, a green clay frog, and felt-pen illustrations forstories.

6

LEARNING TOMORROW.4

What is new and exciting is the ;iinovation of mixing text, audio, and video
with a computer. Computer-supported multimedia is a new technologybased medium for thinking, learning, and communication. Users can browse,
annotate, link, and elaborate on information in a rich, nonlinear, multimedia
data base. Going beyond the traditional pencils, crayons, chalk, paint, clay,
books and the other traditional classroom paraphernalia, computer-based
multimedia learning stations will allow students and teachers to explore andintegrate vast libraries of text, audio, and video information.

Automated nonlinear text was first described by Vannevar Bush as a"memex" device in which an individual could store books, records, and lettersin a form such that specific information could be retrieved rapidly. Theodor
Nelson used the term "hypertext" in the early 1960s to describe the idea of
nonlinear reading and writing implemented on a computer system forannotating and connecting ideas; Doug Engelbart developed a number ofhypertext systems in his SRI lab during this time. The term "hypermedia"
simply extends hypertext to include video, audio, and ar'mation in addition to
text. As used in this book, multimedia, hypermedia, and intermedia referloosely to the same class of presentations. I will use the term multimedia inthis chapter.
Multimedia can be examined in three parts: media, technology, and products.

MULTIMEDIA ELEMENTS
MEDIA
TEXT

r

TECHNOLOGY

Words
Numbers

AUDIO
Music
SpeechVISUALS

OPTICALCOMPUTER

STORAGE

Still Images
MoviesAniniation

PRODUCTS
VIDEO NOTEBOOKSVIDEOEDITINGTOURSSIMULATIONSADVENTURE GAMESTALKING BOOKSSURROGATE NOVELSTUTORIALSTEACHER LECTURE AIDSMedia includes text, audio, and visuals. The technologies that makemultimedia possible are optical storage and computers. Multimedia products
are just emerging; they include video notebooks, video editing, tours,
simulations, adventure games, talking books, surrogate novels, tutorials, andteacher lecture aids. Users and developers will start with conventions thatthey understandtelevision, books, films, computer games, computer-aided
instructionand then discover new ways to use the multimedia environment.
7

LEARNING TOMORROW

10

Not only will there be new products emerging from multimedia uses, but
multimedio also may change the way we think and solve prnblems just as inrecent years, word processing, spreadsheets, and data bases have changed
how we think about writing, accounting, and information access. Multimedia
will enable new ways of analyzing information to evolve and new insights tobe achieved in many discipline Some of these insights may come from
relative novices in the fields, because of the easy access to basic content.
Users can communicate with each other easily, so compound documents canbe created by many authors working simultaneously. Or a single author may
produce a very rich visual presentation. In addition, the results of the work
can be displayed in print, disc of video form.

The technology components of multimedia will change with time. Today, amultimedia application typically requires a computer-controlled videodisc
and/or CD ROM player. Eventually, there will be video computers with many
multimedia capabilities built in or available as modules. Multimedia will only
get faster, less expensive, and more capable of doing useful activities. What
are some of the useful activities for multimedia in education h "w will
multimedia be used in education?

11
8

LEARNING TOMORROWHow will multimedia be usrd in education?

I have presented what multimedia is and how it may change with time. Now I
would like to describe a few examples of what multimedia could be like forstudents, teachers, university professors, and business people. More detailed
examples of multimedia applications are the subject of this book. My purpose
here is to suggest who: is possible with multimedia.
A sixth-grade science student is asked to do a science project. The student isvery interested in the astronomical phenomenon of "eclipses," and decides todo her report about them. Instead of merely summarizing the encyclopedia
article on the subject all too often, the time-honored approach for preparing awritten report, the student collects various texts about eclipses from sources
on a CD ROM. In addition, she views an astronomy videodisc and copies adiagram of eclipses of the sun and moon, and a short movie clip of a total
eclipse of the sun, taken in Bolivia in 1966, that dramatically reveals structuraldetails of the sun's corona. She then uses off-the-shelf software to write title
and credits, to create an animation sequence for the path of a total solar
eclipse, and finally to dub in Star Wars music. Putting all the elements
together with a computer, the student creates her own multimedia videoscience documentary. With multimedia, the student has a new way ofcommunicating vividly what she has learned about eclipses.
A high school history teacher is preparing a lecture on civil rights. Instead ofjust lecturing to his students about civil nghts, the teacher really makes the
subject come alive with a multimedia videodisc that includes video news clipsof the civil rights marches of the sixties, and Dr. Martin Luther King's famous"I have a dream" speech. The teacher selects the text of relevant court cases
from a CD ROM, and visual and audio information from a videodisc, to create
a powerful, animated educational experience for students.
A university professor of developmental psychology is writing a textbook.
The professor and the publisher decide that a companion lideodisc of
milestones in human development would be a useful research and learning aid
for students, because the subject matter of early human development is so richvisuallyand is difficult to communicate with traditional text and still-image
forms alone. Furthermore, the existing vast quantities of film and soundinformation on the subject have histoncally been difficult to access.
Multimedia is an ideal way to show students, for example, the differencesamong one-year-olds in motor behavior. The professor proceeds to develop avideodisc that is integrated with the textbook. Since the material covered bymost textbooks is overlapping, the videodisc has broad appeal as a lecture aid
and can be used with many different textbooks. In fact, the market for thevideodisc extends beyond college coursesit's an ideal product for newparents.

9

LEARNING TOMORROWA data cr-mmunications company hires a new sales engineer. Instead ofsending him back to the factory for two weeks of individual product training,
the company eves him a computer-controlled videodisc of new products andapplications. The salesman could further use the training material to create avideotape for a key customer sales presentation. His locally produced
videotape would stress particular product applications of interest to his
customer, edited from the company-produced training videodisc. Multimedia
can save time and money in field training, and give a field sales engineer ahighly visual, customized, and persuasive way to communicate with acustomer.

In sum, multimedia will provide instnntors, students, and others with adramatic new environment for presentations. They will tic, longer be boundby the limits of illustrating processes on a chalkboard or in slide collections.
Vast libraries of audio, visual, and text material will be easily accessed by thecomputer. In addition, the user can integrate such existing computer
programs its word processors, graphics, and data files. Instructors andstudents will have the opportunity to create their own classroom videos forpresentation and personal video notebooks. Students and teachers alike will
be able to become "video producers" or "video publishers" utilizing the vast
data bases at their command for in sages, sounds, and text.
Researchers will use multimedia for new approaches to scholarship.
Multimedia will allow a level of analytic control not possible in viewing
traditional film, audio, or print materials. Multiple scholars will be able towork on the same multimedia database simultaneously, combining theiranalysis of different aspects of the field.

The business world will discover that "desktop video" is a powerful methodof communicating within the company ana to customers. For example,
businesses will have an efficient method of delivering consistent training at
off-site locations.

13
10

LEARNING TOMORROWWhy is multimedia important in education?

Multimedia is important in education because it holds great promise for
improving the quality of education. People have been dreaming about easy
access to information that has the richness of multiple images, and sounds,
and multimedia begins to deliver on the dream. Multimedia provides theability to illustrate ideas with visual, audio, text, or any combination of media,
so users can create new ways of communicating ideas. For example, insteadof just using text to teach about the Constitution, teachers can enliven classdiscussion with rich visuals such as paintings of the drafters of theConstitution, maps of colonial America, political cartoons, and a film clip
from the play "1776." Of course the visual information can be linked to text
from the Magna Carta, the Federalist Papers, or current court cases. In short,teachers and students can have a great learning experience exploring theConstitution.
Teachers can break free from the constraints of textbooks, and the chalkboard.
They can back up their imagination with classroom materials they have been
dreaming about. Concepts that are difficult to explain, such as meiosis,
become clear when you can freeze a frame on a videodisc and discuss it withthe students.
Students who have difficulty expressing ideas in writing can now have a new
way to communicate and a new class of material to learn from. Children who
are used to watching television, listening to music, and playing computer
games find multimedia a more compelling learning tool than the book-andchalkboard educational media of their parents' generation. Finally,
multimedia allows the user to be an active learner, controlling access to andmanipulating vast quantities of information with a computer.
I trust the examples in thisbook will help us all to begin
to envision the possibilities
of multimedia in education.
The first chapter is by Doug
Engelbart, who began manyof the discussions addressed inthis book years ago, wellbefore most people
understood what he wassaying. Our hope is that thisbook does justice toelaborations anddevelopments of thefoundation he provided for us
all.

wilion11111010116win.....

11

LEARNING TOMORROW.14

References

Burke, J. The Day the Universe Changed. Boston: Little, Brown andCompany, 1986.
Bush, V. "As We May Think", Atlantic Monthly :176, pp. 10-108; July
1945. Reprinted in CD ROM: The New Papyrus; Microsoft, 1986.

15
12

LEARNING TOMORROW

Sueann Ambron
Sueann Ambron, Ed.D, is the Manager of Education
Market Development at Apple Computer. Her
responsibilities include investigating new technologies
for the education market and building prototype
products that demonstrate the promise of newtechnologies. The National Geographic
SocietyLucasfilm collaboration is among themultimedia projects she manages.
Ambron completed her doctorate from Columbia
University with honors in 1973 and joined theeducation faculty at Stanford University. She has been
active in the use of technology in education since theearly seventies when, as a professor of education, she
was faculty sponsor for human factors students at
Stanford University and XEROX PARC. Later, she
was responsible for new education productde :,-'1e----1Pnt as a product manager at Atari.
.,, M incl., 'r of Software Products, she was.'ep,),1 .e for several award-winning educationalso; Bare products. Ambron has continued to work inchnology and education, including work in artificial
intelligence as it relates to multimedia.

.

Ambron has authored a number of professional books
and articles, including a best-selling college textbook
on chi' .1 development.

Ambron' s main professional interest is creatingsuperior educational products using new technology.
As an educator and futurist, she believes that "a great
product is one that makes lea? ning a compelling
experience."
13

LEARNING TOMORROW

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Doug Engelbart brought the perspectives of an engineer and societal
visionary to the task of providing computer support for human activities many
years ago, taking a different view of the problem from what was popular at thetime. He did not consider "the computer as technology" central to the effort, as
most engineers did (and typically still do). Instead, he thought that computers
could be keys in bringing communities together to solve particular tasks and toform effective teams by providing communication links. It was inspiring at theConference, for example, to see Engelbart's slides of multiple mice used bydifferent participants at a meeting, as well as to watch hypertext structures
used casually in the context of other tasks, but then to realize that even theseideas and implementations have not yet been made widely available. Amidst all
the hoopla of rediscovery of Engelbart's early work, much of his simple andprofound message has been missed.
Norm Meyrowitz and his colleagues at Brown University, Steve Weyer, andFrank Halasz have taken many of Engelbart's developriients and have used thecomputer tools now available to make explicit how certain systems mightwork. Meyrowitz takes the concept of linkage systems into "hypermedia,"
linking images and text in an educational framework. In this sense, his work
will eventually be evaluated by just how well it functions in a learning
framework with individuals who are not professional knowledge workers
looking for tools for their work; students will need to see clearly how thesystem will work fc,r them, and the tools will need to be quite accessible.
Weyer focuses his analysis directly on the learning process, which is thebasis for the browsing systems he designs. His task is not simply to retrieve
particular "facts" or even categories of concepts. Instead, he has made explicit
the notion that information be provided in a way so that the user can learn newthings, not just find descriptions of them. Stated simply, his emphasis has togo beyond linking everything and describing reasonable pathways between
items; his perspective demands that he provide tools that engage users andprovide them what they need to approach tasks cognitively. He must provide"an interface to knowledge," not simply the structuring of knowledge or thetools for this structuring (each of which is a mighty task in itself).

Frank Halasz has designed a system titled "NoteCards" which provides
knowledge workers with a framework in which to organize their ideas as they
are developing them, not "after the fact," when they have figured out what
they might want to present about a particular idea. This system is currently
commercially available, making it one of the few powerful tools for the"augmentation of the human intellect" which have moved from researchlaboratories into the "real world".

16

LEARNING TOMORROWThe Augmentation
System Framework
Doug Engelbart with Kristina Hooper

17

LEARNING TOMORROW

Doug Engelbart and I met in mid-November to discuss his work, and to try to
encapsulate the critical points in his approach for the audience of this book.
Our focus in this discussion was "Augmentation", the principle context for allof his work.
"Augment" is a transitive verb which is defined by Webster to mean "to makegreater, as in size, quantity, strength, etc.; enlarge". Doug uses this term toemphasize the role of technology in a human context; technology is to be
designed to increase human capabilities, to extend them in imagined andunimagined ways to change the basic character of communities and to makethese more effective.

This perspective on technology is becoming acknowledged quite widely as a
critical component in technology development. The use of word processors
and other computer tools to assist in human expression and to aid human

workto "augment the human intellect" in acting in the worldpresents thisapproach in contemporary society. Similarly, approaches to technology suchas those described in this book which begin with a basic human situation indesign, rather than with particular technologies, also exemplifiy his approach.
It is noteworthy, however, that in the early 1960s when Doug was developing
these concepts, they were quite unheard of in the computer science
community. The general approach then (and often now if one is to be realistic
rather than idealistic for the moment) was the development of technology for
its own sake, or for the replacement (or at least minimization) of human
involvement.
It is also important to notice that these concepts were quite antithetical toongoing practices, and questioned some of the most basic assumptions ofwhat was important in an electronic environment.
The kinds of approaches described throughout this book are made possible byjust such questioning of perspectives on technology. Hypertext systems areimportant and useful only when one takes an explicitly human view of thereading process in an information environment; examples of these systems in
Doug's Lab twenty years ago provide great prototypes for the linking systems
described often in this book for example. Similarly, the entire notion ofmultimedia presentations assume a human viewer who is benefiting from therichness of the presentations; from a technology point of view suchpresentations bring a range of processing problems that should clearly be
avoided unless these presentations are judged to be of value.

19

LEARNING TOMORROW

Clearly there are now widespread examples of Doug's influence in thecomputer environmentnot the least of which are the centrality of the act of
direct pointing (the mouse) and the concept of simultaneous views on
information (windows). Yet the crispness of Doug's analyses continues toinvite innovation and inventive implementation, for these analyses are at theirheart about the nature of human communities and the opportunities forchanges in these communities made possible with technology.
In the following pages I have outlined my recent discussions with Doug,trying to capture the precision of his comments and thinking in rather terse"one-liners" which approximate his descriptions of his framework. As thereader will note this presentation reads like a set of axioms, and not much like
prose. Given this, I have provided the reader with elaborations of the ideas
which have been reduced to their essence in Doug's formulations. My hope isthat my commentaryindicated in italicswill help the reader to appreciate
this approach. Both the confused and the interested reader are referred to thearticles listed in the Bibliography of this chapter for more detailed descriptionsof these issues.

Kristina Hooper

22
20

LEARNING TOMORROWComponents of an
Augmentation System Framework

The components of an Augmentation System are the bundle of all things
added to what a human is genetically endowed with, the purpose of which is
to augment these basic human capabilities towards providing the net
capabilities that a human or human organization can apply to the
problems and goals of hum= society.
This is part of an extensive framework which is not an end in itself; it isinstead in the formulation of a system that can be used to deal with a range ofdifferent issues of human society.
The definition of these "things" can get very bulky; also the description ofthese in a systematic way is a long term and difficult task, one easily
misunderstood and one requiring continual involvement /revision.

This is a long-term mode of analysis, a paradigm for viewing technology anda way to constantly incorporate it into daily life (as a way to influence futurelife); it is a continual agenda not a short term proposal /project /product ...

Category I: Language, artifacts, methodology and training
A broad-brush categorization of the components of an augmentation system
include three distinct though interacting elements: language, artifacts andmethodology.

Society must train humans to use these three different augmentation
components in an integrated way.

An example:
Augmentation systems have always existed, and been developed (often
unconsciously). Any time back through the ages, augmentation subsystems(by their nature augmentation systems are too big to grab in their entirety;
subsystems then provide a good unit for analysis) emerged as a result ofcontinuing socio-cultural evolution.

It is almost hopeless to sit down and design something this complex.

It is critical to realize that positive action can be taken in molding the classes ofaugmentation subsystems available, while at the same time the design of theresults of humans and organizations using these subsystems cannot be
predicted nor completely self consciously designed as an output. It is aprocess for analysis and involvement that is provided, not one particular viewof what is to be produced.

21

LEARNING TOMORROWThe kernel: What do you suppose the limits of capability would
be for an organization if it were maximally augmented?
Even the asking of this question is critically far ahead of most organizational
analyses (or human analyses). We tend to assume the status quo, and then use
training for specific goals (frequently concrete and simple and short range).
What happens if an organization or an individual seriously asks this question?
This may just be more that half of the benefit of this point of view.
Again, there is no arrogance in this; there is not one point of view of "goodfutures" or "rightful actions." The purpose of this methodology is to frame
analysis, not produce or dictate (nor guarantee) particular outcomes.
First, just where are we now in terms of maximum augmentation?

maximum
no augmentation
now?

it

now? now?

time
How can we get to the maximum?
What are the approaches and strategies that will work?

Evolution is the only viable strategy; we must get theevolutionary process going, directing this at "climbing the hill."
Pretty soon we will realize "bootstrap strategies."
There is a lot of thinking to do about that
Certain principles should drop out, including:

During any given period of time, there is a limited set ofresources that are applicable to directly exploring the ascent.
Various targeted.outcomedgoals can be expected which haveseveral components of value.
In simple terms, there are two categories of value:(1) how much would the outcome boost our capability in some specified "inline work" (with a group of planners, one might use resources to boost theability of these people to do their work), and(2) how much will the outcome boost the capability to climb the hill(bootstrapping, evolutionary support)?
22

LEARNING TOMORROW

24

For example, investing the limited resources in augmenting the capability ofsoftware engineers would yield both kinds of return. For (1), a great many
current-day projects are heavily dependent on software development; for (2),the continued evolution of augmentation systems for any one domain is going
to be heavily dependent on software engineering.
The new language component of future augmentation systems will generally
include a great deal more than programming languages. In every affected
knowledge-work domain, the new ways of thinkmg, working, andcollaborating will be associated with new concepts, new terminology, andnew kinds of portrayals (that is, with enhancements to our worlcing
language).
Innovations in tools, language, or methods ful

impact each other.

For the most part, explicit exploration has only occurred for the tools.

Currently, language and methodology, and the coevolution among all three(tools, language, and methodology) simply don't get explicit exploratory
pursuit.

With software, you develop tools for the second class of
support, for the improvements in capabilities in climbing thehill.
The cultural crunch will always be in software, not hardware terms.
Software teams will feed back, making each next generation better equipped.

Need methodologies and skills directed toward software, toward tools.
Yet, currently software designers are subjects of all this, they are not the
researchers.

It is critically important to acknowledge the ifference between what software
designers are really doing day-to-day and what they might be doing. We often
talk about tools, and software designers as tool ters. Yet certainly there are
only a very few software designers who have the training and skills required
to really make tools. Typically today's software developers are trained inengineering, computer science or hackin ;, most often in the narrow as
opposed to general sense. That's fine. It is simply important that we all
remember the differences, and realize we have yet to make any concerted
effort in developing electronic tool makers, and then in developing tools foraugmentation in any significant or sustained way.

If it is not the software designers, Just who are the people whowork with methodologies and training? Who are the people who
consider languages for augmentation that are not concretely
programming languages?
23

LEARNING TOMORROW0

In any given knowledge-work domain, there is a special set ofconcepts, terminology, and portrayals. And, the tools developed havean impact on the language.
This requires explicit exploration.
Currently this topic does not get this exploration.
Realize that this topic didn't get attention in the l960s when it was firstarticulated by Doug; this is easy to understand given the newness of the publicconcept within computing worlds. However, do not be deceived into thinking
it gets much attention now 'lest you lull yourself into inappropriate
complacency.

What seems necessary to me is the development of a completely new
discipline that embraces the whole augmentation system.

Think of it as similar to architecture, a whole-system discipline that integrates
in a co 1rdinaftd way the specialty fields of structures, heating, electricity,plumbing, and more.
It is interesting to consider from which existing university academic
department such a whole system might emerge.
It seems that old time Rhetoric Departments had an explicit formal focus on
information organization and on systema.:c explanation. Recently, this kind of
department seems more concerned with public speaking, or somehow with thetraditions of the classics (which did indeed emphasize this perspective to somedegree). Currently Departments of Library Science do approach this topic, but
typically, these departments deal with books rather than information as theirbasis. One would think that Departments of Computer and Information
Sciences might take a stab at it all, but these departments are generally focusedon technology. Sometimes Business Schools do address some of theseconcepts, in the context of organizational management; yet the translation totechnology-rich environmentsenvironments now possible that are typicallyconsidered futuristic by non-technologists--is almost non-existent.

What are the methodologies which I apply in collecting ideas andorganizing them?
Currently I have a set of haphazard ways to organize things. And we all have
haphazard ways of piecemealing methodologies of organization together.

Why not put together a whole "academic department" in this subject? Or a
specific department in a "work environment'?
Why not think of augmentation as a system, and provide it with formal toolsof analysis as well as extensive settings for experimentation?

2C
24

LEARNING TOMORROW

What are the practical strategies that will allow our society to
pursue high-performance augmentation?
My strater would be that the pursuit should start with small groups.
Small groups are preferable to large getups because of: shorter evolutionary
cycles; more economical scale of experiments; more "cultural mobility."
Small groups are preferable to individuals because: exploring highpvfonnance augmented collaboration is at the center of opportunity.
These small groups will be the scouting parties sent ahead to map thepathways for the large organizational group[s] to follow.

I have come to call these exploratory groups, "high-performanceteams."One early-role candidate would be to support working conferences; thiswould provide a very valuable service, and match well with earlyaugmentation possibilities.
It would Also provide very direct interaction with "outside-world" conference
peoplc. And it would be of limited duration, and its cyclic nature would allow
for debriefing and system updates.

Since there would be a new set of paricipants for each cycle with thisapproach, more (key) people would gain new perceptions of what highperformance augmentation can bring into their organizations.
Another closely related role for a High- performance support team would be as

an "integrator" for a larr Toject of special-interest community.
In this role the support team would support dialog, analyze the contributions,
integrate them into a "project handbook," and generate special "portrayals"(presentation or documents).

How can you chart the terrain ahead?
Basically, you need to send scouting parties ahead to map the territory forthe main party.

You need high performance teams!
This notion is key to the entire implementation of the augmentation approach.
It provides a very concrete place to begin engaging organizational systems,
and learning how to do this effectively. These teams may be planners, they
may be software designers, they may be facilitators. What is important is thatthey be chosen strategically for bootstrapping.

23

LEARNING TOMORROW

4 1"I

You also need outposts for these teams.
There are some teams currently scattered about by accident, but they are
typically not carrying out the systematic exploration that is needed "out there";
we need a plan for putting the teams out, and we need a large number ofthem.

I have barely begun to understand the profoundness of these assertions.
Particularly I am just beginning to understand that some of the best first teams
to work with are facilitators. For teams of high performance facilitators (ofinformation exchange, of cooperative work, of changing organizational units
from the inside) can 4...Ale a broad evolutionary effect on ongoing activities.
They can be critical in the coevolution of technological and personal changes,
which enable organizational changes. For they can contact manyorganizational units, planting the seeds of (and tools for) evolutionarychanges.

The first expenses should be put toward the development of
outposts.
The initial task is to determine just what people would do here.
Another central task is to determine just who would employ these teams.

It is important to acknowledge that such an approach is pareto-optimal;
everyone will benefit. Yet the questions of who stands Jo benefit themost,who will show returns most quickly, or "just who ;,s in this business",are real showstoppers. They are especially difficult in the current U.S.
business and research environments in which we find ourselves.

26

LEARNING TOIL ..BROW

The figures which follow provide a self-contained overview of Engelbart's
analysis to complement these text descriptions.
Figure 1.
It is important to consider a
two-part augmentation

Augmentation Systemsystem: The Human System
and The Tool System.

HI

\

I

Organization

Media

Procedures

Portrayal

Customs

Travel,View

Methods

Manipulate

Language

Retrieve

SkillsComputeKnowledge

Communicate

Training

27

LEARNING TOMORROWTOOL-SYSTEMCAPABILITIESMediaPortrayal
TravelsView
Manipulate;

Retrieve
ComputeCommunicate

SkillsPerception

Motor

Knowledge

Training

MentalBasic Human Capabilities
Figure 2.
Most of our capabilities arecomposites: Any Example
Capability can be thought ofas a combination of humansystem and tool-systemcapabilities come from thehuman having the necessary
skills and knowledge toemploy these augmentation
systems.

contributions. These30
28

LEARNING TOMORKOW

Advanced Capability Hierarchy
HUMANSYSTEMCONTRIBUTIONSSkillsPerception

Motor

Knowledge
MentalTraining
Basic Human Capabilities
Figure 3.
Our capabilities growhierarchically: each newcapability interacts with thewide range of existing(interrelated) capabilities.

31
29

LEARNING TOMORROWCollaborative Information Domain
Figure 4.
A document linkage systemforms a critical focus for theCommunity; it adds more andmore power to how
individuals in a Community
can collaborate. For example,
links give added value toShared Filet They also
can provide value to what is'Throw-away' ; they provide a way tointerlink this mail and makeit relevant to any otherelement in the shared domain.
The Journal in such asystem is the set of online"published works" of thecommunity. Individuals
commit to these documents
and deliberately make themavailable to everyone, forreading and for comment.
Since documents in thejournal can refer to relevant
documeas directly, readers
can quickly obtain the context
for considering newpresentations; this allows forvery rapid and condensed
recorded dialog on these newidea presentations. External

Documentsbooks onyour desktop, articles onlibrary bookshelves, etc.are
located through a Catalog
which also provides access to
Journal documents.
There are a number ofdifferent sets of documents
and partial documents. The
Community Intelligence
Collection provides
information about what isbeing observed by thecommunity of outside
activities; this communityspecric view of relevant
outside activities is important

for the survival and adaptationof the community. The
Handbook represents thestatus of the community at
any time; it is produced bydeliberate sifting, evaluating

and integrating processes of
the community.
30

LEARNING TOMORROW

Individuals
Figure 5.
Facilitation Teams provide
training and coaching to thecommunity. In addition theyenhance and make explicit theactivities of the community,
relating these to the document
linkage system of thiscommunity. In addition thisgroup can add value by
enabling records to be sorted
in standardized formats forlater easy access and analysis,
principally in the Handbook.
This facilitation allows forthe effective evolution of thecommunity. This
organizational evolution can
positively effect outcomes, aswell as positively influenceother organizational units; itis therefore an excellent focus
for the immediate investmentof tools.

Collaborative Information Domain

Notes, Ideas, Comments, Arguments, Possibilities,
Needs, Correspondence, External Documents,

Intelligence analyses, indices, structures, reports

Integrated, structured, indexed, HANDBOOK<4.`17r;\'''

31

LEARNING TOMORROW

Summary

As it was 1960, this enterprise is still just getting started. And it is having
trouble gaining the kind of foothold required for the scale of endeavorrequired. Yet the technological changes in the last twenty years do make someof the concepts raised by Doug more clear to more people. For though thepreceding discussion can be taken as a broad format for social change, thisapproach has clear technological implications.
The mouse was invented by Doug, for example, as a means to provide
humans with effective tools for interactions, with information and with eachother in group meetings. Hypertext conventions were developed in the earlydays in Doug's lab in order to allow individuals to expand and contract
information available to them, as well as to review documents, to generategroup documents, and to browse dense materials. And video teleconferencing
systems were demonstrated that allowed long distance communications, withshared computer resources.

And there are clearly more technologies to emerge from this perspective, as
well as new analyses allowed by the investigation of their use.

It's all coevolutionary. What is critical is that more and more people

understand Doug's central messagea timeless messageso that we can all
get on with getting better at all of this, combining our technological might with
our analytical and experiential skills.

34
32

LEARNING TOMORROW

Bibliography

Engelbart, D.C., "A Conceptual Framework for the Augmentation of Man'sIntellect," in Vistas in Information Handling, Howerton and Weeks (Editors),
Spartan Boon, Washingtor,, D.C., 1963, pp. 1-29.
Engelbart, D.C., "Coordinated Information Services for r, Disciplineor
Mission-Oriented Community," Proceedings of the Second Annual Computer
Communications Conference in San Jose, California, Jan. 24,1972also,
Published in "Computer Communication Networks," R.L. Grimsdale andF.F. Kuo editors, Noordhoff, Leyden, 1975. (AUGMENT, 12445,)
Engelbart, D.C., "Evolving the Organization of the Future: A Point of the
Stanford International Symposium on Office Automation, March 23-25,
1980, edited by Robert Landau, James Bair, Jeannie Siegman, Ablex
Publications Corporation, Norwood, N.J. (AUGMENT, 80360,)

Engelbart, D.C. "Collaboration Support Provisions in AUGMENT,"
Proceedings of the AFIPS Office Automation Conference, Los Angeles,
California, February 20-22, pp. 51-58. (OAD, 2221,)
Engelbart, D.C., "Toward High-Performance Knowledge Workers,"
Proceedings of the AFIPS Office Automation Conference, San Francisco,California, April 5-7,1982, pp. 279-290. (AUGMENT, 81010,)

Engelbart, D.C., "Authorship Provisions in AUGMENT," Proceedings of the
1984, COMPCON Conference, San Francisco, California, February
27-March 1, pp. 465-472. (DAD, 2250,)
Engelbart, D.C., "Workstation History and the Augmented Knowledge
Workshop," Conference Proceedings of the ACM Conference on the Historyof Personal Workstations, Palo Alto, California, January 9-10,1986, pp.
73-83. (AUGMENT, 101931,)

:4 3
.0

LEARNING TOMORROW

I

Douglas C. Engelbart
Douglas C. Engelbart is a senior scientist with
McDonnell Douglas /ISG, Cupertino, California.
His professional focus is on the application ofcomputer and communications technologies aimed
to bring exceptional new capabilities toindividuals and organizations that are heavily
dependent upon knowledge work.
A pioneer in office automation, Engelbart's
innovations at SRI International in the '50s and' 60s included the mouse, two-dimensional editing,multiple-window screens, cross-file editing,outline and idea processing, formatting directives,
integrated help systems, and a full-scale electronic
mail system. Other Engelbart innovations
currently being implemented include sharedscreen teleconferencing, composite text-graphics
files, in file addressing and cross-conference
links, multiple viewing modes for text, and theuniversal user interface front-end module.

In recent years, Engelbart's studies have expanded
into strategies for large organizations facing rapidchanges in technology, competition, and operating
environments.

36
34

LEARNING TOMORROW

Issues in
Designing aHypermedia
Document System
The Intermedia Case Study
Nicole Yankelovich, Karen E. Smith, L. Nancy Garrett, and Norman
Meyrowitz
Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship (IRIS)
Brown University'1
35

LEARNING TOMORROWAbstract

A hypermedia document system provides a set of tools that allow authors toshare a network of linked documents, link their own and others' documents
together, leave notes for one another, and retrieve information stored in
documents of different types. This paper describes the Intermedia systemdeveloped at Brown University's Institute for Research in Information and
Scholarship and then uses Intennedia as a case study to explore a number of
key issues that software designers must consider in the development ofhypermedia document systems. The major issues we address include a variety
of design options for linking together multimedia documents, the contexts inwhich those links exist, and the need for visual representations of the links
that exist within a given ec:itext.

:IC
37

LEARNING TOMORROW

Introduction

Annotating existing work and forging links between writings has long been an
important undertaking of knowledge workers. Today, computer-based
hypermedia systems model traditional handwritten margin notes, annotationsin illuminated manuscripts, and conventional "see also" references inencyclopedias [Enge68, Meyr85, Nels81, and Yank85]. Such systems
provide an electronic equivalent of the cooperative processes of knowledge
workers by allowing authors to create lanotate, and link together informationfrom a variety of media such as text, gl...phics, timelines, video, audio, andspreadsheets.
Hypermedia systems differ from the traditional methods in several importantways. Where the traditional methods imply sequential access, hypermedia
systems aim to allow multiple authors to add cemmentary to the same corpus
at the same time. And where the traditional methods are limited to paper
media, hypermedia systems are free to exploit the Worlds of electronic
information access. Where the traditional methods are associated with static
textual documents and manually created indices, hypermedia systems are able
to present visualizations of a complex, changing, dynamic world.
The design and implementation of a system with such potentia! power,
flexibility, and wide-ranging audience encompasses many klegrees of
freedom. For a given audience, what is the best way to organize links? Whatis the best way to symbolize links? What is the best way to present visual
renderings of the entire network of links?

This paper catalogs many issues associated with building a hypermedia
system. It draws on our experience in designing and building Intermedia, aframework for a collection of tools that allow authors to link together thecontents of text, timeline, and graphics documents o-yer a network of highpowered workstations [Meyr85, Meyr86, Garr86, Haan86, Yank86,
Yank87]. First we describe Intermedia. Next, to present the basic problem
domain, we discuss issues involved in the most elementary hypermedia
system, one in which a single user is able to link together read-only
documents. We then explore many of the same issues as they are complicatedby the ability to edit documents, and examine these issues in a multiple-user
environment. We then explain the uses of Intermedia, and finish bydiscussing some of the problems associated with hypermedia systems.

0 _c
38

3ARNINO TOMORROW

Description of Intermedia

2.1. Hypertext and Hypermedia
In the early 1960s, Theodor Nelson coined the word hypertext to describe theidea of nonsequential writing. A hypertext system is one that allows authors
or groups of authors to link information together, create paths through a
corpus of related material, annotate existing texts, and create notes that point
readers to either bibliographic data or the body of the referenced text. With acomputer-based hypertext system, students and researchers are not obliged tosearch through library stacks to look up referenced books and articles; theycan quickly follow trails of footnotes without losing their original context.

Explicit connectionslinksallow readers to travel from one document toanother, automating what one does when following references in anencyclopedia. In addition, hypertext systems that support multiple users allow
researchers, professors, and students to communicate and collaborate with
one another within the context of a body of scholarly material. For a survey of
early hypertext systems refer to Yankelovich, 1985.
Hypermedia is simply an extension of hypertext that incorporates other media
in addition to text. With a hypermedia system, authors can create a linked
corpus of material that includes text, static grape .cs, animated graphics, video,
sound, music, and so forth. Examples and descriptions of existing
hypermedia systems can be found in Backer, 1982, Bender, 1984, Feiner,
1982, Halasz, 1985, and Weyer, 1985.

2.2. ArchitectureIntermedia is both an author's tool and a reader's tool. The system, in fact,
makes no distinction between types of users providing they have appropriate
access rights to the material they wish to edit, explore, or annotate. Creating
new materials, making links and following links, are all integrated into asingle, modeless environment.
The Intermedia system is built on top of the 4.2 BSD UNIX operating system
and runs on IBM RT/PC and Sun workstations that support Sun's Network
File System (NFS). To create Intermedia, the software-development teamadapted an object-oriented .preprocessor to the C programming language
licensed to Brown University by Bolt, Beranek, and Newman as well asApple's MacApeactility for creating generic Macintosh applications [Tesl85]
and Cadmus's
ac tool box, both under special agreement with Apple
Computer, Inc. With an object-oriented development environment and a
UNIX -based implementation of the Macintosh Toolbox, the Intermedia
programmers constructed a system that began with a conceptual application
framework similar to the Apple Lisa [App183] or the XEROX Star [Xero82]
environments to which they added full hypermedia capabilities. For a moredetailed description of the underlying Irtermedia architecture, refer to
Meyrowitz, 1986.

43
39

LEARNING TOMORROW

2.3. The Applications
Five applications currently exist within the Intermedia framework: a text editor(Inter Text), a graphics editor (InterDraw), a scanned-image viewer (InterPix),a three-dimensional object viewer (Inter Spect), and a timeline editor(Inter Val). Any number of documents of different types may be open on thedesktop at one time, along with the folders containing the documents. These
applications conform as closely as possible to the Macintosh interface
standards detailed in Apple, 1985. Both programmer-level tools and welldefined user interface concepts contribute to the high degree of consistency
exhibited. across all Intermedia applications.
The InteiText word - processing application is similar to Apple's MacW`e[App184a], but with style sheets for formatting text rather than MacWrite-stylerulers. Using style sheets, the user can define a set of styles for a particular
document (for example, paragraph, title, subtitle, indented quote, numbered
point) and apply those styles to any unit of text between two carriage returns,
called an entity. When the user edits the definition of a style, all the entities towhich that style is applied reformat accordingly.
With InterDraw, a structured graphics editor similar to Apple's MacDraw[App184b], users can create two-dimensional illustrations by selecting tools
from a palette attached to each InterDraw window.
InterPix is a utility program that displays bitmap images entered into thesystem us; ; a digitizing scanner. These images can be cropped, copied, andpasted into interDraw documents. The 1nterPix application is being extended
to provide full bitmap editing capabilities.

Like InterPix, InterSpect is a viewer rather than an editor. It converts files
containing three-dimensional data points into three-dimensional
representations of that data. Users can manipulate the three-dimensional
image by rotating it, zooming in or out, or hiding parts of the model.
The fifth application, InterVal, provides interactive editing features for^reating chronological timelines. As the user enters pairs of dates and labels,.A.; application formats them on a vertical timeline according to user-definedstyles. As with a charting package, the display If the data is determined by acertain set of parameters that the user can modify.

2.4. Hypermedia Fmctionality
The hypermedia functionality of the Intermedia system is integrated into eachapplication so that the actions of creating and traversing links may beinterspersed with the actions of creating and editing documents.

41
40

LEARNING TOMORROWThe act of making links between Intermedia documents has been modeled as
closely as possible on the Smalltalk/Macintosh copy /paste paradigm [App185,
Go1d84] in an effort to fit the link-making process into a conceptual model
already familiar to users. If links are to be made frequently, they must be aseam,ess part of the user interface. The smooth integration of this new
funct on into an already ingrained user interface model is apparent in thesamp e session later in this section.
Unlike some other hypertext of hypermedia systems that allow links to bemade only to entire documents [Know86 and Shne86], Intermedia allows
users to create links from a specific location in one document to a specificlocation in another document. These "anchor points" in the documents arecalled blocks. In designing the Intermedia linking functionality, one of thedevelopment team's design goals was to allow anything that could be selected
to be made into an anchor for a link. The size of a block, therefore, may range
from an entire document to an insertion point, depending on the selection
region a user identifies as the block's extent. For example, in an InterText
document, a block might consist of an insertion point, a single character, aword, a sentence, two paragraphs, and so forth Small marker icons areplaced.laced near the source and destination blocks to indicate the existence of a
To help manage a large corpus of linked documents, links and blocks are
assigned a set of descriptive properties. Some of these, like user name andcreation time, are assigned automatically, while other properties are userdefined. Users access and edit link and block property information throughproperty sheet dialog^ A dialog contains a field in which the user enters aone-line explainer, similar to the subject field in some electronic-mailprograms. Link expli 'as are particularly important from a reader's
perspective. If a single block has more than one link emanating from it, users
choose the path they wish to follow from a list of link explainers presented ina dialog box.
Property sheets also contain fields for adding keywords. Although still underdevelopment, these keywords, along with the default information assigned tolinks and blocks, will provide users with a mechanism for searching the
document corpus. The result of a keyword search will be a list of explainers
associated with all the blocks or links meeting the search criteria. Each item inthe list will automatically be linked to its corresponding block, or, in the caseof links, to the corresponding source block of each link. For example, a
student would be able rt search for all the links created by a particular"refessor after a certa, late that contain the keywords "Browning" and"Dramatic Monologue

4 'Th
41

LEARNING TOMORROW

Some users may want to enter both block and link prop sties during the linkcreation process, while others may not want to take the time to fill them in atall. Property sheets are not automatically presented to the user by default.
Intermedia provides a Viewing Specifications dialog as a utility for settinguser preferences. To change the default behavior, users alter settings in the
Viewing Specifications dialog, turning link and/or block creation to"verbose." With the verbose setting, the property dialogs are presented to theuser immediately upon completion of block or link creation. If users havecreated links with the "fast" ratiicr than the "verbose" setting, they can still edit
block and link properties after a link has been established, by selecting amarker icon and choosing the "Link Properties" or "Block Properties"
command from the menu.
Link and block properties help to manage complexity within the Intermedia
environment, but the notion of context is even more crucial. In some systems,
links are global; all links are available at all times to all users. In such systems,
links become an integral part of the documents. In Intermedia, block and link
information is not stored within individual documents, but rather issuperimposed on them. Webs are provided to maintain the block and link
information, allowing users to work within their own context undistracted bydocuments, blocks, and links created by others sharing the same computing
resources. In the future, webs will also serve as the focus for filtering
operations. Opening a web causes a particular set of blocks and links to be
imposed on a set of documents for as long as the web is open. Thus, webs
allow different users to impose their own links on the same document set.
For example, an academic department mig'..t purchase all of Shakespeare's
works in electronic format. Rather than duplicating every work each faculty
member wants to link to, Intermedia's webs allow multiple users to create
their own links to the same documents, without having to see each other's
links. Although only one context may be viewed at a time, users can easily
switch contexts by closing one web and opening another. Of course, if users
do want to work together, any number may share a single web.
In addition to webs, Intermedia also has a system of user access rights thathelps to manage multiple users sharing large bodies of connected material.
Due to the hypermedia functionality c; Intermedia, the access-right scheme isslightly more complex than that of other UNIX environments where users
may have either read permission or write permission to files and directories.
Intermedia adds annotation permission to the other two forms of access rights.
This allows students to add hoxs to a document that they are not allowed to
edit.

43
42

LEARNING TOMORROW

2.5. Common User-Interface Concepts
Several user-interface concepts stressed throughout Intermedia enable users tolearn new applications quickly and predict the behavior of features they havenever used before. Like the copy and paste operations in the Macintosh andSmalltalk programs, some operations m the Intermedia system behave
idemically across all applications. The linking functionality is a primeexample. Users can specify a selection region in any docume, choose the"Start Link" command from the menu, define another selection region in any
other document, regardless of type, and choose one of several "complete link"commands. Likewise, to follow a link, a user exploring a web can select amarker icon in any type of document, and choose the "Follow" commandfrom a menu. As a shortcut, a user can double-click on a marker icon toinitiate the Follow, just as he or she might double-click on an icon in a folder
to open a document. Since following a link usually e- ails opening a
document, we anticipated that use would expect to be able to follow a linkby double-clicking on the marletz . jon. In a system that encourages rapidtransitions between applications, it is essential to limit the amount a browse
must learn in order to be a successful user of the system, in part bycapitalizing on those conventions he or she may already be familiar with.
Other features in the system, while not exactly identical to one another, areconceptually similar. Most applications, for instant e, allow users to control
the format or the display characteristics of data. The interface techniques forconceptually similar operations have been designed to capitalize on thesimilaritit One such example is the style paraaigm [Inte86, Smit82]. Styles
are sets >>i ttrties or characteristics that govern the appearance of datawitain .
mt. Users can define or modify a style by filling out or editing`forli.' ailed a style sheet (sometimes referred to as a property sheet). Boththe interText application and the Inter Val 1pplication contain style sheets thatcan be ised to specify different text formats such as paragraphs, indented
quotes, lists, an titles, or different timeline formats such as position of dates
relative to tick marks and position of labels relative to dates. In the graphics
editor, different styles may be applied to shapes such as line width, pen style,or fill style. Although not yet implemented, Inter Draw will also allow users to"borrow" the style of one shape and "apply" it to any others. This means thatthe combination of line width, pen style, and fill style can be defined once andthen applied as a unit to any existing objects or to any new objects. The
concept of styles will also be included in the InterSpect three- dimensionalviewer in the future. In this case, users will be abk: to define a set of viewing
parameters that specify a particular camera position. Just as styles in the text
editor do not alter the content, but simply the presentation, of the text, styles
in InterSpect will be used to define the manner in which the data is viewed.
By storing all presentation parameters in style sheets, it is possible tosubstitute styles with the same nano but different pa ameters for all types ofdata in the system.

4 (2

43

LEARNING TOMORROWRelated to the use of styles is the frequent use of palettes sets of controls
attached to a document window. Along with style-sheet dialogs, palettes
provide a means for defining and applying styles. In IntefText, for example,
all the styles defined for a particular document are stored in a style palette.
Two mouse clicks are all that is r tcessary either to change the style of an
existing text entity or to change from one style to another before beginning a
new entity. With a large screen and the ability to have a large number ofwindows open at one time, it is essential that all the tools needed for common
operations be close at hand rather than in the menus. When they are notneeded, however, all palettes can be hidden from view to unclutter the screen
and to improve the manner in which material is presented to a personbrowsing through the system.
Another example of a standard user interface concept that permeates thesystem and is made possible in a workstation environment with virtual
memory capabilities is the use of "infinite" undo and redo commands. Insteadof being able to retract only the last action performed, the user is ably to undotile effects of all actions performed since the last time a document was saved.
Any single action or set of actions that the user has undone may then be
redone. There are no content-modification actions in any Intermedia
applications that cannot be undone. This fosters a sense of security in users,
permitting them to experiment freely with their document with the knowledge
that they can return it to its former state at any time.
To aid programmers in incorporating the standard features mentioned above(suel as "undo" and "redo") consistently throughout all Intermedia
applications, the software-development team first extended Apple's objectoriented application framework, MacApp, and then implemented two generalpurpose, programmer-level building blocks within the extended framework.
The building blocks, c e for text and one for graphics, allow programmers toreuse text and graphic, objects either "as is" or in slightly modified forms,
cutting down on duplication of programming effort as well as enforcing
consistent user-interface techniques. With only MacApp and the building
blocks, programmers would be able to implement applications that conform to
the Macintosh user-interface standards; however, the requirements for theIntermedia system include a uniform method of linking together the contentsof documents created with any application within the system. To meet thisrequirement, the de elopment team extended MacApp to include a set offeatures necessary for supporting linking functionality. In this way,
applications not only inherit window, menu, mouse, and other genericapplication functionality from MacApp, but also inherit linking functionality
from the MacApp extensions, and text and graphic editing functionality fromthe building blocks.

45
44

LEARNING TOMORROW

2.6. Sample Session
To illustrate the user-interface features and the linking functionality discussed
above, this section of the paper takes the reader on a tour of the system. The
tour is designed to simulate the interaction that takes place during a hands-on
Intermedia session. The figures should aid in visualizing the system, while thetext supplies the action.

45

i I 11 II iowilm-=i i'iii

LEARNING TOMO 1ROW2.6.1. Figure 1
As you can see from Figure 1, the Intennedia desktop includes a window
manager, a graphical folder system, a menu bar, and a mouse interface. The
contents of the folders reflect the underlying hierarchical UNIX directory
structure. Unlike the Macintosh, Iritermedia does not store application icons inthe same folders with documents; instead, they are stored with several otherspecial - purpose tools in an application, or New, window that you can see inthe upper nght corner of the screen. The reason for this is twofold. First,
users do not have to search through folders to find the applications. Even if
the New window is hidden from view by overlapping windows, selecting the
New command from the File menu reveals it. Second, in a networked
environment, it is easier to have a single set of applications in an agreed-uponplace that can be maintained and updated by a system administrator.
The contents of the active folder in Figure 1 represent'a number of documentsof different types (two Intnfix, four InterVal, ten InterDraw, and seventeen
InterText documents) that are samples from a larger corpus of material called
Context 32: A Web of English Literature i( 411(186], created for the course"English 32: A Survey of English Literature from 1700Present." Any ofthese document icons can be selected, opened, and edited. In order to follow
or create links, aowever, we must first define a context by opening an existing
web er by creating a new one. If a web is not open, we can still open and edit
the documents; however, no link or block information will be visible. Rather
than beginning a new web, we select the icon titled Browning Web andchoose the Open command from the File menu.
O

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itemmtMengelegmgengteII
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46

LEARNING TOMORROW

47

gm

Mtge

Mote

teeleselze2.6.2. Figure 2
A global map, or visual representation of the link structure, opens on thescreen. Global maps are analogous to road maps of an entire country. They
depict every document in a corpus; one line between two document icons
indicates that at least one link exists between the documents. In a large corpus,
users can see only a small portion of the map at any one time. The global map
provides a broad overview; just as a traveler can see at a glance which cities
are the biggest hubs by the number of roads emanating from them, anIntermedia user can see which documents are central to the corpus byobserving the number of links connecod to them.
An examination of the global map open in Figure 2 reveals that the Inter Draw

document Browning's Literary Relations has the greatest number ofconnections and would therefore be the most appropriate starting point for our
exploration. Once a user selects an entry point into the corpus, the equivalentof a specialized street map is necessary. Local maps, not shown in this
scenario, serve this purpose by tracking the user's progress *.ough the
corpus and displaying only the currently active document and the links thatemanate from it. When the user activates a different document, either byfollowing a link or by opening one from a folder, the local map updates todisplay the new current document ant: its direct predecessor and successor
links.
I

vu.

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ra)

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51 I 1AWallater/dsanse1ls1

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tote

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hrI1r11tNM

Mot am.111G-1,

47

LEARNING TOMORROW

11-

4

-PI

2.6.3. Figure 3
After double-clicking on the "Browning's Literary Relations" icon to open it,
an Inter Draw document containing z diagram with an image of Robert
Browning opens. Notice that the three boxes in the top row of the diagram
contain marker icons (arrows enclosed in boxes). These markers indicate theexistence of links. To follow one of the links shown, we first select themarker above the text Biography by clicking once on it.

48

LEARNING TOMORROW

2.6.4. Figure 4
After selecting a marker icon, we pull down the I,termedia menu and selectthe Follow command.

49

LE/ RNING TOMORROW

2.6.5. Figure 5
We immediately learn, from the appearance of a dialog box, that the marker
we selected has two links emanating from it: one leading to a biography ofBrowning and the other leading to a timeline. We select the Timeline
explainer in the dialog box and click on the OK button to confirm ourselection.

5i
50

LEARNING TOMORROW

2.6.6. Figure 6
The traversal of the link is now complete and the timeline document, whichlists important events in Browning's life, appears. The author of Browning's
timeline chose to leave the events clustered m 5J-year intervals so that amajority of the events could be viewed in the window at once. In other words,
all the events between 1810 and 1859 are clustered under the tickmark by
1810, and all the events between 1860 and 1909 are clustered under the
tickmark by 1860.
Notice that when a link is traversed, Intermedir. automatically highlights theextent of the block at the other end of the link, indicating a particular scope of
information to the reader. In this case our attention is drawn to the first eventin the timeline.

We can now opt to recluster the timeline, but instead, we notice anothermarker icon above the second event on the timeline and decide to follow thelink. We do so by double-clicking on the Marker.
No

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Connection, withthe other ertd

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51

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(MO)
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Cam wenanClekesse Aplealla).

LEARNING TOMORROW

1:11MLfart

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MINIM

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from2.6.7. Figure 7
Another lnterDraw document opens. Notice that no dialog box appears thistime. When we select a marker icon that has only one link emanating from it,
the document at the other end of the link opens immediately, since there are noalternate paths to follow.

like the portrait of Browning in Figure 2, the illustration in Figure 7 wasentered into the system using a scanner. The bitmap was then displayed by theInter Pix application, and was cropped and pasted into this lnterDraw
document. After looking at the picture, we decide to close it by clicking in theclose box located in the window's upper left corner. Next we close theInter Val timeline.
n.

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Cli114,61.1C111110.1tf

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4taterert"Wursiliff,"srfossoInisio LMI le Plislwylor (Mon ind Mose Agnew o$741

52

LEARNING TOMORROW

2

2.6.& Figures 8 and 9
Now we are back to the original Browning diagram. After our brief
exploration, we decide to fill in the diagram by creating a new link. The firststep in creating a link involves defining a block to serve as the anchor for thelink. We select the text "Connection to Other Arts" as the source block of thelink and choose "Start Link" from the Intermedia menu. While a link ispending, we may perform any number of other actions unrelated to linkmaking. As with the "Copy" operation common to all Macintosh-likeapplications, the Start Link operation is completely modeless.

53

LEARNING TOMORROW54

LEARNING TOMORROW

2.6.9. Figure 10
Before completing the pending link, we return to the folder (not pictured) andopen an Inter Text document called Browning Arts. Once the text is
displayed, we select the heading of the document as the destination block of
the link, as shown in Figure 10. To complete the link we choose Complete
Relation from the Intermedia' menu. You will notice two different"complete" commands in the menu. These are similar to each other infunctioa, but each creates a different type of link. The "Complete Relation"command, which we chose, indicates a primary path, whereas the "Complete
Reference" command signifies that the information contained in the source
block is of more importance than the information contained in the destination
block.
Is

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Wet

hnekaketer/deeeWine=',v% =.g,/,,MIME Impel

.,.,

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pelnian, IN:leans "A AMCOR d GI flew
and "Abt Vogler.' In thls case, the lamest erne elm NI mother, am was anaccomplished pianist

Bremen° could Fay a Ohs, having probably Wan lessons In N gab
teens. But he Is more terra* br his poems about **Ka According W

Dente Gabeel Rossetti (the painter, post, and bunder d nine Pre-aphasia
movement), Bromine's imoseedge d painting and painters was "bawd Mat dea one I aver metancylopeedcally beyond that d Rusk% rimier elder
Ruskin, cataract was the oudur dModem Albers, The Stones of WaNce,

and 77m Mon &e.* of An: Modem He himself said d ens Bishop
Orders HIS Tomb a St. Pronto aturaVit Is Nally d that I sad d the..*U R011181010 In tarty peps ol Me Slaw of Veda put tea as manyF

Mast d arosenners lineetidge d Rsnalseance an cans tom Na
reading d the Blographle Urliwyek and Giorgio Vaster!, Urfa of Om&Mara The Mar nark vas Ns source br such poems as eFre Lippe LOW
and eAndres del Una' Ha also itsquabd at genies during the years heand Earabeet lived In Italy their homes In Flamm" Casa auldt is Just dam

the sent tom Ms PM Placa
And Ns weapon Ives other, yet an peril

55

LEARNING TOMORROW

NW

teeleweze2.6.10. Figure 11
After we issue the "complete" command, a link property dialog appears,
allowing ur to fill in descriptive information about the link We replace thedefault text, "Link 35," with the more meaningful explainer, Browing to
Arts shown in Figure 11. Before this particular session, we changed thedefault setting for link creation in the Viewing Specifications dialog so that alink property dialog would automatically be opened each time we create a link.
Ms

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Put mint ImpWner:

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In his sesty
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Prs-RapesIke
lissondthet ofany one liver mstencyclopeedically beyond that al Ruskin I Mee" Mahn
nueldnl remember, wee the Mho, d Abdirn Palnars, 7be Slow of Masks,
and 77m Saw UMW
AIMWOCOMM He hirneall said of .718 Bishop

Order, He Tomb et St. Presets Church:1i Is nu* d that I said 01 tm
central Renaissance In thirty pages of no Stain of Woke put killo as maw
F

Most al Bromine. linostedge of Renaissance an cams tam his
realm at the lillogrepAle lAkenmas and Giorgio Visage Uses of I.
Malys. The Mar salines N. source ix such poems as eFisi Lipp° Uppr
mid 'Andrea del Sena" He also timusraed art {planes during the were ha
and Elketeth avid In her Vier house In Florence, Casa CluliA Is Jul down
the attest Pom the PIII Place.
And his ueepcm In the ataxy& urdOod

56

LEARNING TOMORROW

WWI(adman2.6.11. Figure 12
Once a link is established, both ends are indicated with inarkers. In some
applications, these markers are enclosed in boxes for better visibility, but themarkers themselves are identical in all applications. Before making anotherlink, we add a quotation to the "Browdrig Arts" document. After typing in the
text of the quotation, we select the text, display the style palette with a menu
command, choose the Indented Quote style from the palette and click on the
Apply button, also located in the palette. With a simple text selection
followed by a palette selection and a button press, we have easily reformatted
the text without resorting to the more complex series of steps necessary inother word-processing programs.

limning andOlhar kb

Bromine ants almost es owri poems dam muelciene es about
psItem, Including 'A Toccata el OsiuWe,"IAssisr Musses elSexe-Cleitia"
Si 'AM Vogler.- In ale cesa the rime come tom las metier, atm was en
accomplished pianist.

Bromine could Au ahosing probe* tslum lessens In las eft
teens But he Is mom famous for his seems about sellers. Arroardinp
nuoimmeendtsea'Daft albasi Rsessill OM PION. Poet end bonder of Ite Pm-nephrite
movement), Brow *I

lolusledpe of Oran, end paean was Imscind Mel
wry are I ever reekencyclapsersely bossed Met el Ruskin Meer %atm
Ankh remember, ass the author al 1btant Paintaft7As Slower Mato,

Ind Ms Sown Lampe of hallsome. He Weal add el ethe Bishop
Orders He Tomb al SL Praxes ChurchI le nes* Met I slid el thecentral Renelseence In thins paps el Me hereof losiat put rio ee grimy

Meet el Bromine% imearsdp el Re rent* ert can tom lie
reading el Me Blogisphl* Ihlwrail and Gorski Visors LNwe of Om
Mors. The lea monk was las source for such proms as 'Fre Law LW
rd eAndres del Seta' Its eleo tegArred art "Wee hung to years heand Eltriboth laud In INN last house In Fbrentx Can Ouldl, Is Just doers
the steel tom the PM Piece

57
57

LEARNING TOMORROW:17-1:7M1

2.6.12. Figure 13
Now we decide to make another link to a new Inter Draw document that may
cvntain a painting in the same stylistic genre as Browning's poetry. The
destination block of the previous link is appropriate for the source block of
our new link, so we select the existing marker by clicking on it and then wechoose Start Link from the menu (not pictured). Now, to create a new
document, we activate the New window and double-click on the Inter Draw
icon.

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Edit

etas

Fy

127-'1O
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metecestemise

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MEM
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find

itredniteter,

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Orooning and th
radii wale Most as many mum about maddens

sisA

pointers, Including 'A Tweet& Oduppre "Amur !Maws al Sus- Gale.
and "AM Vlifibe In this ewe. Ile Miami cans tam Mr mother, Mn au an
aceomplbhed pint&
Downing could ply NM having pmbehlytelain lessons In Ns sally
Mono Out he Is more beets Yes lsa poems almul *lord AccertIng
Daria GeMiel Rommel (the pointer, poet and launder al 4

Pre-Dephesillemovernsntl Broardng's lurdedgs al mitre and minters was 'brood amid

ery ors I ever netencyanrardedy tepid tea al Ruskin Moser Jelm
Muslin, remember, nes the Whir al., &km PON" Dm Slone* of %WM
and 1/9 Sown Lapp of sednardunt He Meld add al eThe Bishop
Orders HS Tomb at SL Precede Churetrli Is nearly al Met I eW al Me
antral Renelesence

thirty pages al The Same Venice put Into es rearm

Mshep 0(11

Mast al Broming's Isintiedes d Roulesense rd awe ems Ni

Fre Lippe
Childs Flo
Andrea delroadirg al the EllegrepAle lAtIvermai and Oksglo Vend: L.W. of Ma
Peters. The Mier weasels Ns source kr such poems se eFra Uppo upp

Calton up(11

end .Andrea del Sena' He des tequented art galleries during thews's he
end Eltebath Ned In Itely: their house In Florence, Cu. Dtddi a Min demi

the strutted the PIM Filet
AM his weapon In the after. Ind undpoil

W. net pur dunce to hoerich*
A vntad-cod or tie Is? a you ehadd mill
WA Maw peidsr, WM you SIde me so

5$

LEARNING TOMORROW

2.6.13. Figure 14
After the new document opens, we see that there is no appropriate painting, so
we draw a picture frame in which we will paste a scanned image at some latertime. For the drawing, we use tools from both the tool and style paietterattached to the window. After the drawing is complete, we may hide one orboth of the palettes. When a document is saved, the size of the window andthe state of the palettes i.e. preserved along with all editing changes.

Remember that a link is still pending. In the absence of an appropriate
painting, we select the empty frame as the destination block of the pending
link and choose Complete Refe..ence from the Intel media menu. Thistime, a new marker will be added only to the destination block, since thesource block is already marked.

59

LEARNING TOMORROW

2.6.14. Figure 15
Before we end our session, we activate the global map window and choose
Save frc.ri the File menu. This begins a sequence that prompts the user todetermine whether to save the new links stored in the web, the documents .' it
contain new blocks or links, hew documents, and documents that have beenedited.
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Ilmndep.Arls

The tour through Intermedia illustrates the functionality of but one of several
hypermedia systems under development today. We have designed a userinterface that we believe creates an easy-to-use but powerful environment for
both the reader and the author. That user interface was the result of muchenumeration of possibilities, heated discussion, comparison of choices, andconsideration of what could be accomplished given today's technology.

The second half of this paper discusses the issues that we and other designers
faced in determining the hypermedia capabilities of our systems. To begin thediscussion, we first examine what the most elementary read-only hypermedia
system might look like and what design issues arc involved. We then move toa system in which a single user may edit the multimedia corpus. Finally, we
explore the issues of multiple users accessing a shared set of documents.

61
60

LEARNING TOMORROWA System of Read-Only Documents

The simplest nypomedia system is one in which a single user at a stand-alone
workstation examines read-only documents and creates and follows links
among these documents. This section explores some of the concerns thatappear in designing such an environment, including the issues of providing
appropriate (1) contexts for webs of links,(2) anchors for individual links,and (3) visual representations of the linked corpuses.

3.1. Providing Contexts
When an author links to a destination document that contains links fromprevious sessions, either all of the links of the destination document can bemcorpctated into the set of links on which the author is working, or thesystem can display the destination document as if it has no links at all.
In the first situation, the author would automatically inherit all of theconnections anchored in the destination document; all of the links would exist
in the same "plane" [Figure 161 By making links, an author would thereby
provide bridges to other worlds of links. This bridge is appealing in systems
vv iere the fundamental goal is to encourage the maximum interconnec-echressof information. This would, however, prevent authors from presenting a
lin_ied corpus.
41.

Rem* lea. Two disjoint vats °flaw

Rpm let If a user maws a Withohymn A and D, either.

4111%

Afr
Figura lec the hvo disjoint wawa* autcmalically combined, or...

Ran 16d. onY fM daatinallondocummt, not the Wow
document to which I fis connoctodis Incorporated Into theactive sot

The second option solves this problem by enabling the user to partition links
into private worlds, or separate contexts. Such contexts would be useful to ascholar who wants to organize material for a variety of research projects, eachof which may reference the same document.
Intermedia designers opted for the second solution with a construct called
webs. Until the user opens a web, all opened documents appear without any
links. To view documents with the links that belong to a particular web, a user
opens a web and then opens one or more of its documents. Although otherwebs may also reference the documents, only the links that were made in thecurrent web are available. As a result the user does not have to sift through theconnections of multiple context&
61

LEARNING TOMORROW

6

3.2 Linking
3.2.1 The Link Anchors
Textual anchors are currently limited to insertion points and are represented
internally by only one pointer. In Intermedia graphics applications, the user
specifies an anchor by selecting any number of graphics objects, regardlessof their proximity, and issuing the appropriate command. A graphics anchor isrepresented internally by a list of objects included in the anchor rather than by
the start and end points of a sequence.
Anything from entire documents to precise insertion points could serve as
anchors for links, depending on the purpose of the system ander
development. Between these extremes lie other possibilities: a link might beanchored to any number of user- defined text segments or graphics objects or
to a single word or graphics object.
The designers may make the decision between these alternatives by balancing
implementation and functional concerns. A system that allows a user to link
only to entire documents is easier to implement than the other options, but it
does not allow the user to reference specific contents. Being able to link toinsertion points is an improvement over linking to entire documents, and it
involves a manageable increase in implementation complexity. With insertion
points, however, references may be ambiguous. Some authors might place thelink at the beginning of a reference to signal that what follows is unp"rtant,while others might place the link at the end, as they are used to doing withconventional footnotes. If text segments or graphi s objects could be the linkanchor, the author would be able to indicate the reference clearly.
For some purposes, such as a system for indexing or for organizing
encyclopedia information, yet another design might be appropriate. Such asystem might provide automatic linking so that each link would becharacterized by a single keyword on one end and an entire document on theother.
As designed, an Intermedia anchor may typically be any legitimate selection inthat application, such as a user-defired r Nuence of characters or a
combination of graphics objects. With this design, a textual anchor could be
represented internally as pointers to the start point and end point in theunderlying model. However, due to complications caused by providing text
editing functionality (see Section 4), and time constraints in implementation,
we were not able to implement this design fully in the first version ofIntermedia.

PS
62

LEARNING TOMORROW

3.2.2. Indicating Links
For users to be able to follow links, the system needs to indicate to the users
where the links are anchored. The system could indicate the links in a numberof ways, including marking the beginning, end, or extent of the anchor. The
marking might consist of (2) a single icon at each anchor, where there may be
more than one link per anchor; or (3) highlighting the extent of the anchor
with font or color changes, outlining, or reverse video. The indication of links
could be done automatically by the system or upon the user's request. In
deciding how to indicate links, designers must consider the purpose of thesystem, the desirability of user control, and the potential problems of display
clutter and ambiguity.

Icons are an appropriate way to mark links in some systems. Systems that
require or allow anchoring links to insertion points would benefit from icons
because they provide a tangible link anchor. Furthermore, icons can be
designed to convey additional meaning such as whether they are the origin or
destination of the link and whether the link leads to text or graphics. For
example, imagine Penny Straker creating a hypermedia mail-order cat log oftraditional hand-knit sweaters. She wants to link from a picture of a sweater toinformation on price, ordering, size, yarn, and the history of the sweater. If
all of the icons had the same design, the shopper might have to follow eachlink to find the desired information. If, however, the icons were designed toindicate graphically the various kinds of information, the shopper would
know which to follow [Figure 17].

63

LEARNING TOMORROW

However, there may be problems with excessive or ambiguous icons.
Readers might find the icons intrusive, especially in a document with many
links. With one icon per link, many icons might need to be displayed at thesame location. For example, an article on Pennsylvania might mention
Gettysburg. An author might have linked from Gettysburg to articles on
Presidents Lincoln and Eisenhower, a description of the Battle of Gettysburg,and a copy of the Gettysburg Address. Four similar icons would be clusteredat the same place, and the user would have no way to tell which one to follow.
Even with tne different icon design strategy mentioned above, the display
could still become cluttered. Another strategy is to allow the user to control
whether icons are displayed. The user could turn off the icon display toconcentrate on the content of the document and subsequently turn it on to
examine linked references. A third possibility is to limit each anchor to one
icon, thereby uncluttering the display. However, because, information might
be lost, the system would need to provide more information about the links
that emanate from an anchor. Such additional information might include how
many links exist and to what kind of document each one leads.
Icons are sufficient for marking the ends of links when anchors are justi 'isertion points. However, if anchors can themselves have contents, icons...one cannot give complete visual information about the anchor. A supplement
to icons is the display of the extent of the anchor. Highlighting could consistof font or color changes, outlining boxes, or reverse video. Not only wouldsuch highlighting accurately show the extent of nonoverlapping anchors, but it
could also show the individual extents of overlapping anchors [Figure 18].

65
64

LEARNING TOMORROW

Figure 18

IRIS is charged with two specific respor_sibilites.
The Wet 1014 0,00c140t .°r1 von..07;:gf,:4(Piita0aiattqa .:. a:itit*at.

0-,.;.; a:0* 00fiticiri andPO:sithaki.Stiftk.:.-,.1 The second responsibility is toadminister and manage the "Scholars' Workstation
Project," a campus-wide effort directed toward

iRIS is. charged::. with, Awe- spe;c111,6**responsibilltes.

:The' hist is to conduct. anifir040ge,

isiiieihiientaticiri14*.:ttior d0.0lOponeii ,.;ai.

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.

:sc hole is hip; ...... The second responsibility IS to '.

:admintswr end manage "the- "Schalars* ikoritstation:Project," a campus-wide effort directed toward

citic
19 Charge
The',-;t
is to conduct and )encourage
4experimentation

in

the

dev(plopment

innovative use of technology

in

and

education andscholarship. The second responsibility Is to
Adminlitel.:Art4.
:Project," : a campus-wide effort directed toward

65

LEARNING TOMORROW

PIC

..

Although highlighting might provide some improvement over icons, it might
still clutter the display. As with icons, the user could control when the anchor
highlighting is displayed by toggling the appropriate switch. In addition, thesystem could provide a context-sensitive cursor that would invoke
highlighting only when it moved to a point within an anchor.
Intermedia uses a combination of icons and anchor highlighting to show links
and anchors. Each anchor has one icon, regardless of the number of links
attached to it. In graphics documents, icons mark the existence of anchors,and highlighting mdicates anchor extent. The user may select any number of
icons and ask that their extents be highlighted. Currently, text-document
anchors are limited to insertion points that are marked by icons. Because eachicon may indicate more than one link, when the user selects an icon and givesthe "Follow" command for an anchor with more than one link, Intermedia
presents a list of the links that are attached to the anchor. The user can thenchoose which link to follow.
Plans for future versions of Intermedia include allowing the user to control
icon display. Text will mirror graphics by allowing the user to attach links toarbitrary selections rather than just to insertion points.

3.2.3. Names, Keywords, and Keyword/Value Pairs
If a document has many links, the user would benefit from having additional
information for each link before choosing which one to follow. Imagine apoem with links leading to the poet's biography, to the poem's location on the
poet's timeline, to a document that describes the style of the poem, and to a
related poem by an earlier poet. All of the links are marked by identical icons.
If a reader who wanted to see only related poems had a way to know whichlinks were relevant, the process of choosing and following links would be
more efficient.

The system could ?now authors to attach titles, keywords, and arbitrary
keyword/value pairs to their links. Tk!. title would be an arbitrary character
string attached by the author. The user might select simple keywords from anavailable list or might enter each keyword freely without matching against
existing keywords. Keyword/value pairs allow more precise, detailed
keyword searching; for example, a professor creating material for a poetry
course might add a keyword/value pair meter=iambic to one link andmeter=dactylic to another link. The professor could later ask the system toretrieve links only where meter=iambic.
For all links, the system might also have common, predetermined
keyword/value pairs to which it assigns values automatically. Possible
keywords include the kind of document at the other end of the link, the title ofthat document, and the creation date of the link. Such inionnation not only
could provide additional information on all of the links, but could also be
available for querying. A sample query might be, "Show all links createdafter September, 1986."

66

LEARNING TOMORROW

Currently, Intermedia incorporates three of these features: titles, keywords,
and system-defined keyword/value pairs. The system fully implements titles
by providing a default title that the user can edit. A menu command provides
access to the title of any link. The functionality is partially developed for both
keywords and automatically attached information. Automatically attached data
include the date of creation and author's name (since, in Intermedia, more than
one author may have access to the same document). Authors can enter anarbitrary number of keywords for any link. Whereas titles and keywords may
be edited, the automatic information is fixed,'De use of keyword/value pairs attached to an anchor or link can vary. The
issues essentially can be broken into two areas: (1) definition of the search
criteria, and (2) feedback of results.
Defining the search criteria is itself a two-^art problem: it involves (1)deciding the extent of queries that will be allowed and the domain on whichthose queries can operate, and (2) determining the appropriate user interface togenerate such quenes.

Users must be able to spacify the scope of the queries that use keywords as acriterian. At its simplest, a search for block or link keywords could be limited
to the currently active document. At the other r.treme, it could extend to all
documents in the system. Alternately, it could be limited to all open
documents. Or it could be limited to those documents that reside in thecurrently opened web. Additionally, the user may be able to specify whether
the search domain should include keywords attached only to links, only toanchors, or to both.
Document and web owners mit, .L want to apply some permanent constraints
to the search scope. For example, the web owner might want to dictate thatlinks with the keyword "confidential" are never to be viewed by anyone
except him/herself. In the simplest scenario, a set of global web keywords
could be established that would always be added to whatever queries anindividual makes. In a more complex system, each user might have his or her
own "global" keywords that are added to the web owner's keywords, and an
owner might be able to apply permanent keyword constraints to eachdocument. On tlp of all of these owner constraints, a user would want to add
his or her own constraints. For most queries, these would likely be persession temporary query constraints, but for some, the user would want tohave the personal constraints applied automatically each time a web or
document was opened.

Discussion of the type of user interface needed to specify queries withappropriate scope and content involves a set of extremely complicated issues.
In short, these issues include ease vs. power of query language, temporary
vs. permanent queries, and graphical vs. textual specification of scope, among
others. Many of these issues are the same as those that have troubled
designers of data base management systems for years. To that end we will notdelve further into these. issues in this forum.
67

LEARNING TOMORROWAssuming a system designer can bind upon an interface that allows a user tospecify the scope and content of a query, the next issue is how to apply thequery, and next, how to present the results back to the user. In particular, thequery can be applied for one of two purposes: (1) to filter the user's domainof links and blocks, or (2) to collect the results that satisfy a particular search
criterion.
In a multimedia document system, a filtering query would typically result in
the removal of block andior link markers in the documents contained in thequery's scope. For instance, the query "Show only the link markers for the
link:, created by 'kes' for all the documents in the current web" would result it
the "hiding" of all the markers in all documents, other than those that had beencreated by the user les." In a collection query, that same request would resultin a list of all link explainers of all links for all .iocuments in the current webthat met the criterion. Where a filtering query changes the user's view of theactive corpus, a collection query enumerates the results without chnnging thestate of the work.

Hypertext can be used in a clever way to aid till user interface for a collection
query. In many data base syst...-ns, the result of a collection query is, too
often, a list of "hits" quickly typed out on the screenwhich must be quicld:'
copied by the user, or, sometimes, captured in a file; users must thenmanually enter the document name to browse ea' h item discovered. In a
current unimplemented Intermedia design, the results of collection queries
would themselves be collected in a hypertext document. Each "hit" referencing
a block or link would be identified by a text line that includes the documentname and block/link explainer. Most important, that line would itself be linked
to the block or link desti-..ation that was discovered. With this system, a user
could simply scroll through the collection list, choose "Follow' for each of thehits that seemed interesting, and travel to exactly the proper place in the
corpus, using the same user interface that he or she is familiar with fortraversing in the , hypermedia.

3.2.4. Enhancing Link Functionality
What kinds of links are appropriate for a particular hypermedia system? An online encyclopedia might have only automatically created links from keywords
to other articles. There may be no need to have more thar one lir.k type.
However, in a more general-purpose hypermedia system, users r ight create
links for different purposes. One user might create links only to connectfootnotes to their sources, while another user might want to link vocabulary
words in a text to their definitions.

With the basic manual link typea simple tie between two anchors ....ers
can still perform basic linking tasks, such as linking footnotes and dictionary
entries. But, by specializing links to do a specific task, the system could makeit easier to create certain kinds of links. Or? such type of link is a numbered
link. For example, a footnote link type might be represented by a special
automatically-numbered icon that appeared in the source document.

68

LEARNING TOMORROW

Automatic links would be generated by the system rather than the user, based
upon the contents of the target documents and the algorithms supplied by theuser. For instance, a vocabulary link type might automatically link each word
in a document to the appropriate location in a dictionary file; each word in theuser's files essentially becomes a source anchor while each entry in the
dictionary becomes a destination block pointed to by one or more source
anchor words.
Additional link types coulee provide functionality that is not possible with justa simple tie between two anchors. For example, link destination could depend
on such factors as the user's level of expertise, the actual content of the sourceor destination anchors, or whether the user had previously taken the same
path. These conditional links would be useful in some educational and training
situations.

An action link, rather than bringing up a new document, could cause a certain
operation or computation to be performed each time it was followed.
Essentially, the link is attached to an action formula, like that of a spreadsheet
cell, that is evaluated on the follow; it can use the content of the source ordestination anchors as values if desired. In a more complex system, theformula could allow references to other links/link computations. If parts of theformula could themselves be references tr hypermedia commands, each oneof these action formulas can be thought of , ; a potential system macro.
The first implementation of Intermedia does not provide numbered, automatic,
conditional, or action links. Future plans include both footnote and automatic
dictionary links as described above.

3.3. Visualizing Connectivity
Additional tools could be useful in helping the user understand the information
structure of the linked network. One such tool might be a graphic
representation, or map, of a web of links
The scope of such maps is an important consideration. A global map could
portray the entire linked structure, similar to a highway map of the UnitedStates. However, global maps become difficult to display in a way that is
helpful to the userboth in systems without partitioned c ntexts and insystems with partitioned contexts but with a large number of documents.
These "flat" representations often become tangles of lines. Three-dimensional
global maps could untangle the lines somewhat to clarify the linking structure.
However, users might be confused when viewing such a map.

iJ
69

LEARNING TOMORROWAlternately, many systems show a global map by picking some document as
the root and representing the network of links as a hierarchical tree. If there
are cycles in the network, these --hemes either duplicate the relevant subnodeof the hierarchy (since the maps are typically generated only for what iscurrently in view, infinite recursion is prevented) or draw lines back to apreviously drawn node. In the latter case, a tar gle can again result, so manysystems have viewing modes that allow users to see the hierarchy both withand without cycles.
In all of these systems, the notion of fish-eye views [Fum86] allows the user
to focus in detail on the most important information while seeing, in less detail
but in spatial context, much of the information that surrounds the main
information.
A subset of a global map could simplify the user's cognitive world model. A
local map cot...,Ishow those ifthat emanate from the current document, likean inset of a mad map that shows only the roads that lead directly from
Providence to other cities. A local map might exist as a static snapshot of thepossible links from one anchor or document or as a tracking map that updates
itself as the user moves from one document to the next, always keeping thecurrent document as the central focus.
In a system in which links can lead to anchors inside documents, systemdesigners need to dew mine what level of detail is appropriate to show in amap: a document to all of its related anchors or to only its related documents,
or an anchor to related anchors or just to related documents. Global and local
maps have different potential levels of detail. A global map could show how.
anchors are linked together or how documents are connected. Furthermore, aglobal m ip could provide both levels of detail and illustrate how both anchorsand documents are connected [Figure 19]. With local maps, there are more
possibilities. As with global maps, local maps could show links between
anchors, links between documents, or a combination showing both levels ofdetail; but unlike the global maps, the connections would be shown only fromthe focus, the current document, or the anchor. In addition, because local
maps have a focus, they can show the documents that are linked to or from thecurrent anchor, or the anchors that are linked to or from the current document[Figure 20].

Additional map features could include a label on each link and an indication of
Lr.t.. direction ^r each link. If filtering is implemented, the map could represent
a subset of b. Neb as processed through the active filtev The user could
control them features, or the system could impose then,.
Intermedia provides both global and local maps showing document
interconnection. Future versions will provide additional map functionality.

7
70

LEARNING TOMORROW

Figure 19b. ...Nnks between
documents,

Figure 19c ...or in both Welt&

Figure 20a Local maps might show
finks between the anchors in thecurrent document to other anchors,

Figure 20b. ...the current docurrunt toother documents,

Figure 20c ...the enchors in thecurrent document to other documents,

Figure 20d. ...the current documert toother anchors,

Figure 10e. .. the current wit-bort°
documents,

F'

Figure 19a Global maps might ahoylinks between anchors,

deal

4*

,
71

LEARNING TOMORROW

201. ...or the current author toouter anchors.

A System of Read/Write Documents

To be effective for cooperative work, a hypermedia system must provide anauthoring as well as a browsing capability. Adding this capability to a
hypermedia system increases its complexity. Designers need to determine how
the system should respond to editing outside of the confines of anchors,changing the contents of an anchor, and deleting anchor contents.
The effects of editing are influenced by the cognitive model of anchors that thedesigner decides to present to the user. An anchor can be either a list of
distinct objects or a boundary that the user specifies at link creation. The
former scheme means that the user can clearly define the anchor, but thesystem has to store more information per anchor. The latter is more efficientas far as storage is concerned, but the potential for ambiguity is greater.
Different media might benefit from clifferert schemes for representing
anchors. For example, anchors in a text editor are well represented by all of
the text falling between two endpoints. In a structured graphics editor, on theother hand, anchors are better represented as a list of graphics objects. Even
with a defined cognitive model, the designer must anticipate and resolve
conflicts that can occur during normal editing. The remainder of this section
r'iscusses the details of these concerns.

4.1. Editing Content Within Anchors
With a pure boundary scheme, a text editor would represent an anchor madefrom the string "green eggs and ham" as all of the characters between the "g"in "green" and the "m" in "ham," regardless of what might be changed
between these two endpoints. When the user inserts the word "fried," thephra3e would read "green fried eggs and ham," and the anchor would now
reference the entire phrase. Therefore, by editing, the user could change theaneor contents. In many cases such simultaneous changes of document
content and anchor content would be appropriate.
However, the integrity of a link could be at stake if the change is at theboundary of the anchor or if there are substantial changes to the anchor
contents. If the user links "eggs and ham" to a recipe, then later inserts"green," so that the phrase now reads "green eggs and ham," the link may nolonger be appropriate. Similarly, if the user links "I do not like green eggs andham" to a biography of Dr. Seuss and then substitutes "scrambled" for"green," the link might not be valid. Instead of automatically updating the linkanchor to include the editing changes, the system could eliminate the link on
the assumption that any changes to the anchor would invalidate the link. A
more flexible system could alert the user that there were changes to an anchor
and allow him or her to determine whether the link should remain.

70'm
72

LEARNING TOMORROWThe list scheme may solve some of these ambiguity problems, but it
introduces new problems. With the pure list scheme, the user can select two
wheels in a picture of a jeep and link them to a description of snow tires. If theuser then adds an axle between the wheels, the axle would not automatically
become part of the anchor, the system would appear to e correctly
anticipating the user's intention. I lowever, this scheme presents new design
problems, such as how to let the user add objects to an existing anchor andhow the system should respond to changes in any of the anchor's objects. For
example, the user might want to add the ',ther two wheels to the anchor. And,
if the wheels were replaced by cement blocks, the author would probably notwant the link to remain.
In Intermedia, anchors in graphics documents are object lists, and the additionof a graphics object does not automatically change existing anchors.
Currently, anchors in text documents are limited to insertion points. Futureversions of Inrermedia will implement the endpoint paradigm for anchors intext documents.

4.2. Editing Content Outside of Anchors
A system with read/write documents needs to ensure that editing changes
outside of anchors do not change what is referenced by the anchors [Figure21]. This is a problem only in editors of linear data, such as text, that use theboundary scheme. In such editors the insertion of new data "bumps" existing
data. Therefore, the system might need to adjust its internal anchor
representation to insure that the proper part of the document is presented as ananchor to the user. By contrast, unrier the list scheI tee, editing changes outsideof an anchor would not affect the identification of the objects to which a link isanchored.
Figure 21.
(a) The user has established alink anchor. (b) When theuser inserts a new paragraph,the system needs to adjust thelocation of the anchor
highlighting.

In June 1983 Brown University estcblished the Institute

In June 1983 Brown University estcblished the institutefor Research In Information and Sc holarship (IRIS) as

for Research In Information and Sc holarshlp (IRIS) asa Manca financially self-supporting rese arch organization

upporting rarch organization

sponsored by the University

sponsored by the University.

iiipothotigis

findhoytwovi ovw*h

OilitiOrigiodhnology and Infonr .31Ion systems canenhance learning and help scholars In their dolly
knowledge work. IRIS thus

airs to provide scholars

with a set of computing tools thatvAll allow them toapproach their research and teaching with greater
flexibility.
11,1;

73

LEARNING TOMORROW

'fir,

;1'1

th,

43. Deleting the Entire Contents of an Anchor
When the user deletes the entire contents of an anchor, should the system alsodelete the attached links? Although it would be possible to implement such ascheme by leaving the link information attached to an insertion point anchor, it
might not be appropriate to maintain a reference to something that no longer
exists. For example, if a reference to Dylan Thomas's "A Child's Christmas
in Wales" linked to a copy of the poem itself, an author would probably notwant to maintain the link if the reference were eliminated. Alternatively, if thewanted to cut the reference only to replace it with more accurate
information, it might be appropriate for the system to attach the link to the newcontent. There is no way to predict whether the link would still be relevant. A
modification to the above alternatives (in which the system arbitrarily
maintains or eliminates link information) is to leave the decision to the user ona case-by-case basis.
Intermedia retains the link even when all of the anchor's contents are cut, toavoid being destructive. The user can then explicitly remove the link if
necessary. This solution allows the user to control what links are left in each
instance and recognizes that actions on content and actions on link information
are different.

73
74

LEARNING TOMORROWA Multiuser Environment

If a hypermedia system is to be useful for cooperative work, it must provide
ways for multiple authors to read, link to and from, and even edit the same setof documents, while also allowing authors to protect their work fromunauthorized access or changes. At its simplest, this functionality could be
implemented in a system that gives authors sequential access to documents.
However, it would be more useful for cooperative work to have a fully
networked environment in which multiple authors would have simultaneousaccess to documents.

The possibility of multiple users examining and editing docummts
simultaneously introduces complexity to any system. In hypermedia systems
the complexity is increased because the user might not need to edit a document
but might want to link to or from the document contents. Interactive linking
adds another dimension to the traditional read/write access-rights paradigm.
The issues involve control of access to documents and webs, data storage
design for both document and link data, contention management, and update
schemes for propagating editing changes.

5.1. Access Control
In a system that promotes shared, cooperative work, it is important to control
access to document contents and link information. Appropriate access control
assures the integrity of information, allows individuals working together tohave full access to their shared da,a, and prevents unauthorized users fromviewing or modifying such data.

5.1.1. Document AccessTypically, systems provide two categories of document-access privileges.
Read access allows the user to view data, while write access allows the user tomodify data. These categories are still important in the hypermedia world, butthey are complicated by the hypermedia notion of annotate access. Such acategory would be appropriate for systems that encourage users not only toread documents and follow links, but also to create new links as they browse.
With annotate access, users could create links without having the right tom? ce changes to the content of the document. Presumably, these access rights
are additive, meaning that write access encompasses annotate and read access,and annotate access includes read access.
The annotate privilege could be: (1) limited to writers of documents, (2)assigned to all those with read access, or (3) designated as a separate
category. The first case is most appropriate when it is necessary to prevent
readers from changing the system in any way, such a: in delivery of training
materials. The case in which it is appropriate for everyone with read acces, tomake links is in a system that encourages maximum connectivity of
information, as in a university course that emphasizes discovery of
meaningful relationships among data. The third case provides the flexibility
and protection necessary for effective inoperative work.

75

LEARNING TOMORROW

Intermedia provides all three document-access categories. Readers may
examine the contents of a document and follow links. Annotators, in addition
to L.. mg readers' rights, can add links and can modify their links, but cannot
alter the contents of the document. Writers have all of the capabilities ofannotators and can also modify the contents of a document.

5.1.2. Web Access
A system with webs, or separate link contexts, could also control access to thewebs. The web-access paradigm might follow the document-access categories
of read, annotate, and write. Users would need read access to navigate thelinks associated with a web. As in the document-access paradigm, users
wo-..ld need annotate access to add links to a web. Writers would have all readand annotate rights plus the right to delete or rename the web. To determine if
the user could access or change any document and follow or establish any
link, the system would need to match the web-access rights against theparticular document-access rights of the user. For example, to browse a web,the user would need not only read access to the web but also at least readaccess to each document that ;le or she wanted to view.
5.1.3. Assigning Access Rights
After designers specify the categories of access rights, they need to determine
how these privileges should be assigned. One possibility is that the creator ofthe document or web be the only person with rights to modify any contents orlinks, and all other users have only read access. Another possibility is todesignate a document as either private or public; once a document is launched
into the public domain, all users would have all rights to it. Alternatively,
users could have only "constructive" rights, as opposed to "destructive"
rights, allowing them to add information but not to remove any informationfrom the system.
Intermedia designers addressed the problem by designating one owner foreach document and web and allowing the owner to designate individuals as
having :ad, annotate, or write access to that document and web. Such users
may be referred to either individually, by specified lists of users, by groups,
or by default as the remainder of the universe. When a document opens, its
access rights are combined with the rights of the currently open web to createan access-rights capability for that document. For example, if the documentaccess rights allow annotation but the web-access rights allow only readaccess to the web, the document capability would be set to allow only readaccess. This allows individual owners to specify the rights they desire for
their document, while allowing the owner of the web to set limits for that
web.

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5.2. Storing Document Content and Anchor Information
Between sessions, anchor information could be stored with document content
or separately. Because the anchor information is closely related to the content,
it seems natural to store the two kinds of data together. In a system in which
only one user at a time can annotate or edit a document, this approach might
be appropriate. But if the hypermedia system allows (1) multiple simultaneous
annotators, (2) different webs imposed on the same document at the sametime, or (3) static documents such as those available on compact disks, thesystem designer must consider a different approach.
If the system allows multiple simultaneous annotators, it would be unwise to
use the one-file system; allowing multiple users to write to the same filesimultaneously presents potential concurrency problems that are not handled
by most operating systems. Rather, the system should provide a way for
multiple individuals to access and update the anchor information without fearof write collisions. Furthermore, in the one-file scheme, the document would
have to store anchor information for all webs. Each application would need tofilter the link information on a per-web basis.

The approach that we have taken is to store the link data independently fromthe document contents that they reference. Such data is stored by a data basemanagement system on a per-web basis. When a document opens, the database is queried for all of the document's link information in the currently
opened web; the links are then dynamically added to the document's internal
data structure. The data base management system provides concurrency
management at the record-locking level over a network of workstations, sothat no two individuals can update the same link information at the same time.
Updates to the data base are not made at the time of link creation/deletion, but
are batched together using a transaction-based scheme and are added to thedata base when the web is saved. Because the link information is stored
independently from a document, user A can have web A opened on a set ofread-only documents, user B can have web B opened on the same set of
documents, and both can add or delete links and save their respective webs
without modifying the document files at all. Additionally, we anticipate thatsuch a scheme will facilitate adding hypermedia structure to large-scale CDROM document sets.

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5.3. Contention Management
If the system does not limit the number of users with write access at the
document level, it must provide a scheme to manage simultaneous users withequal rights at run time to assure data integrity. Plans for contention
management, which are well known for -aNnventional read-write accesssituations, are complicated by the addition of annotate access to the system.
For each document there are eight possible combinations of current status:
below, s = single, m = multiple.

writerannotatereader

s
s
s
s

s

s

s

m

m

s

m

m

m
m

s

s

s

m

m

m

s

m

m

m

On this table, "s s s" denotes a single user accessing with write, annotate, andread capabilities, and "s s m" denotes a single user accessing with write andannotate capabilities, but multiple-user access for reading.
The hypermedia system designer needs to determine which combinations are
acceptable. Some are fax more difficult to implement than others. Of the first
four, "s s s" and "s s m" are the easiest to build. "s m s" and "s m m" aresignificantly more difficult to implemert than the previous two because of the
concurrency problems involved with multiple simultaneous annotations. They
require that the access to information in the web stay synchronized while
multiple users add and delev links from the web and another user
simultaneously makes changes to the document contents. The last four include
multiple writer privilege and require complex chalk-passing andsynchronization protocols to enable multiple individuals to edit
simultaneously.
In Intermedia, when a user opens a web or opens a document from within aweb, the system computes a capability for that user for that session for that
ooject. For this computation, the system matches the user's rights to accessthe object (document or web) against the system's maximum allowed accesslevel (one version of the system, for instance, might not allow multiple
simultaneous annotation even if the individual has those rights). Once ilis
capability is computed, the document is opened on a read-only basi 3 if theuser has read rights. If not, the user is presented with a dialog that signals thelack of rights, and is unable even to read the document.

7$

LEARNING TOMORROWIf the document is opened on a read-only basis, the user is free to browse
through the document and fellow links. The fast time the user attempts tomake a change that affects the contents or the links of the document, thesystem checks first to see if another individual has locked that document for
writing/annotation. If so, the user is told that he or she is unable to makechanges to that document currently, but is free to read it and follow links fromit. If the document is not locked, the system checks to see if the document
capability allows writing/annotating. If not, the user is told that he or she isunable to edit/annotate, and appropriate menu items are disabled. If the
document does have the appropriate capability, it is locked in the data base toalert other users who may be tying to annotate or edit it. The user interface issuch that individuals attempting simply to read documents and follow links ina corpus that gives them appropriate read rights never see any signs of an
existing access-rights scheme. Only individuals annotating or editing the
corpus are aware of potential contention conflicts, and this only when there
are actual locks or version mismatches that the author wants to be aware of.

5.4. Annotating/Editing Effects on Documents
Notification of updates is another issue to consider in a multiuser
environment. There are four possible ways the system could respond to auser's changes: immediate update, immediate notification, passive
notification, or no notification. The complexities of these options differ
depending on whether the underlying documents are read-only or read/write.
The basis for immediate update is that a user should always have current
information. Every new link could be broadcast across the network and would
appear immediately whenever that document is open. In a read-only
environment this would cause little disruption for the user. The appropriate
indication of the new link would appear, and the user could then access thelink. However, in a read/write environment this option would pose not only
severe implementation problems, but also several conceptual problems.
Presumably, if the system were to update links immediately, it should also
update the document contents immediately to preserve the integrity of theinformation. It could be extremely distracting to a reader if the contents of adocument were to change automatically because of editing by another user
currently accessing the same document.
Immediate notification differs slit itly from immediate update in that changes
to an open document would result in a message being sent to all current
readers of the document, letting them know that someone had changed the
document. Users could then request to have their version of the document
updated. This would give the reader more control over the changes presente,,,thereby preventing the problem of unexpected display changes.

k.) ,i79

LEARNING TOMORROWPassive notification would inform users, via a facility such as electronic mail,that there had been changes to documents since they last opened them. Such
notification would be particularly helpful to users who had made links to these
documents; they could then determine whether or not the links should remain,
considering the changes in the document.

The simplest solution for implementation is not to provide any notification ofchanges. Open documents would remain as opened, but the next time thedocument opened it would reflect the changes. These last two alternatives,
passive notification and no notification, imply that most link information is not
so timely that it needs to be known immediately.
Intennedia currently provides the no-notification scheme as an interim
solution. We are investigating ways of allowing asers to determine the level of
notification they would prefer.

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Future Research

There are other issues in hypermedia that we are anxious to explore in futureversions of Intermedia. One such issue pertains to sophisticated navigational
tools. Such tools could show what links the reader followed to get to thecurrent document, could allow the author to define paths for readers to follow,
and could let the user leave a "bookmark" in the corpus to make it easy to"jump" to that place later. We also want to implement filtering so that the user
could concentrate on links of particular individual interest in the current
document and perhaps throughout an entire with. Furthermore, we areplanning on looking intr.; "hot links" that would force an instance of theinformation at one end of the link into the document at the other end. A
hypermedia system that would automatically keep track of versions of
documents [Nels81, Deli85] is also an area for future exploration.

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pplications of Intermedia

To assess the pc wer and utility of hypermedia, IRIS is conducting a series ofexperiments at Brown that introduce the Intermedia system into existing
courqes. As in the English literature course, students in a plant cell biology
course are using Intermedia's editors, utilities, and linking functionality towrite term papers and to explore a corpus of material about the cell and its
processes. Pnor tr the beginning of the semester, the professor wrote,collected, organized, and linked together primary source material for the
corpus, including current research papers, digitized electronmicrographs,
diagrams, lecture notes, and three-dimensional models of cells. In writing
their papers, students use the same editing tools used by the professor,
including links to relevant primary source material in the corpus. The
professor annotates student papers at various stages in the writing process,beginning with the outlines. These annotations consist of notes about thecontent of the paper and links to material that the professor feels the student
should read, examine, or explore before committing to a particular assertion orargument. Finally, after the papers are "submitted" for a grade, the students inthe course are Vied to read and comment on each others r -pers. Like theprofessor's comments, the students' annotations inclr4e reactions andcriticisms, 07 point to other student papers or to prn. Any source material.
Since the corn 'ents become part of the corpus, each student has 0-opportunity to read any or all of .-e comments left by others and comment :sn
the comments, thuv enr-;:ng in am electronic dialogue. At the end of thecourse, the professor evaluates the quality of eacl student's research paper aswell as the quality of his or her comments.

In the cell biology experiment, the Intennedia sp. em is being used throughout
organize, reorganize, andthe authoring process, pro, rieirg facilities tc
cross-reference free-form text and graphics. The experiment aPo irustrates
how a group of authors and editors can use a hypertext or hypermedia system
to v ark collaboratively, using 6.. tool to comm. ficate as well as create.
In the Intermedia system, hypermedia functionaLy is incorporated into an
integrated work environment with consistent, modeless, direct-manipulation
appFcationF. Strict adherence to predefined user-interface paradigms
throughout she system eases the difficulty of learning a set of different
applications. The ability for users to apply what they have alrzady learned
from using one applicat' 'n is particularly important in an environment, such
as Intennedia, that encot ages frequent transitions from application toapplication.

c)
82

LEARNINJ TOMORROWProblems With Hypermedia Systems

Hypermedia is a powerful concept for multimedia communication. The goal ofpresenting a "sear less" environment one in which a reader can become anannotator or an authorpresents interesting user-interface problems. The goalof presenting the same seamless environment over a large corpus of
documents that can be read, annotated, and edited simultaneously by multiple
users over a communications network presents comparably difficult
implementation issues. And the goal of presenting a new paradibm for sharing
information in such an integrated fashion poses similarly difficult questions ofsocial interaction and the management of such systems. With Tdffennedia, wehave made a first attempt at resolving some of these issues, and we hope that
this paper viii help us and others as we continue to look at the complicated but
fascinating unanswered questions of hypem---dia.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Helen De Andrade for designing the figures for this chapter
as well as many of the icons, palettes, and dialogs within the Intermedia
system.

The development of Intermedia has been the culmination of over a year ofintense, coordinated effort ay the members of a large team, all of whom
equally share the credit for the determination and resolution or the issues
explored above. In particular, Charlie Evett developed a large part of theIntermedia architecture, the graphics building block, and the Inter Draw
application. Ed Grossman, Matt Evett, and Tom Stambaugh developed thetext building block and the Inter Text application. Steve Drucker and Bern
Haan developed the Intermedia framework. Page Elmore developed the web
data base and the web map capability. Ken Uttmg added printing capability to
the system.
In addition, Mike Braca, Dave Bundy, Dan Stone, and Scott Bates provided
the base operating system, the data base, and the operating system extensions
that enabled Intermedia to run. Brian Chapin and Sam Fulcomer configured
the systems corntless times. Eric Wolf developed the program fordecompressing scanned images. George Landow, David Cody, Glenn
Everett, Rob Sullivan, and Suzanne Keen Morley produced the enormous
corpus Context 32: A Web of English Literature and heroically subjected
themselves to the ordeal of teaching an English literature course with thesystem in its inf.- ,y. Andy van Dam, Marty Michel, Bill Shipp, and Don
Wolfe provide advice and support throughout the project. Kate Archambault
translated much gibberish into English.
This work was sponsored in part through a grant by the Annenberg/CPB
Project and a joint study contract with International Business Machines
Corporation. In addition, we greatly acknowledge Larry Tesler of Apple
Computer, Inc., Jeff Singer and Stan Fleischman of C, klmus Computer, Inc.,and Mark Nodine of Bolt Beranek and Newman for their assistance in making
available key software that made Intermedia viable.

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LEARNING TOMOR: OW

References[Appi83]

Apple Computer, Inc. Lisa Office System. Cupertino, CA, 1983.

[App184a]

Apple Computer, Inc. MacWrite. Cupertino, CA, 1984.

[App184b]

Apple Computer, Inc. Mac Draw. Cupertino, CA, 1984.

[App185]

Apple Computer, Inc. Inside Macintosh. vol. 1, 2, and 3.
Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., Reading, MA,
1985.

[Back82]

D. Backer and S. Gano. "Dynamically Alterable Videodisk
Displays." Proc. Graphics Interface 82. Toronto, May 17-21,
1982.

[Bend84]

W. Bender. "Imaging and Interactivity." Fifteenth Joint
Conference on Image Technology. Tokyo, November 26, 1984.

[De li85]

N. De lisle and M. Schwartz. "Neptune: A Hypertext System for
CAD Applications." Tektronix Laboratories Technical Report no.
CR-85-50. Beaverton, OR, 1985.

[Enge68]

D. Engelbart and W. English. "A Research Center for
Augmenting Human intellect" Proceedings of FJCC, vol. 33,
no. 1. AFIPS Press, Montvale, NJ, Fall 1968, pp. 395-410.

[Fein82]

S. Feiner, S. Nagy, and A. van Dam. "An Experimental System
for Creating and Presenting Interactive Graphical Documents."
Trans. Graphics, vol. 1, no. 1, 1982.

[Furn86]

G.W. Furnas. "Generalized Fisheye Views." Proc. CHI '86
Boston, MA, April 13-17, 1986, pp. 16-23.

[Garr86]

T.. Garrett and K. Smith. "Building a Timeline Editor from
Prefab Parts: The Architecture of an Object-Oriented Editor."
Proceedings of OOPSLA .Portland, OR, September 1986.

[Gold84]

A. Goldberg Smallu. t-80: The Interactive Programming
Environment .Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc.
Reading, MA, 1984.

[Haan86]

B. Haan, S. Drucker, and N. Yankelovich. "An Object-Oriented
Approach to Developing Consistent, Integrated Applications."
IRIS Technical Report.

[Hala85]

F. Halasz and R. Trigg. Noteauds. Xerox Palo Alto ResearchCenter, Palo Alto, CA, 1985.

[Inte86]

Intrleaf. Workstation Publishing Software: User's Guide. Ten
Canal Park, Cambridge, MA, 1986.

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LEARNING TOMORROWPC

[Know86]

Knowledge Set Corporation Laser Facts Monterey, CA, 1986.

[Land86j

G. Landow, D. Cody, G. Everett, and R. Sullivan Context 32
Brown University, Providence, RI, 1986.

[Meyr85]

N. Meyrowitz, et al "The Intermedia System: Requirements"
IRIS Report, Institute for Research in Information and
Scholarship, Providence, RI, September, 1985.

[Meyr86]

N. Meyrowitz "Intermedia: The Architecture and Construction of
an Object-Oriented Hypermedia System and Applications
Framework" OOPSLA '86 Proceedings Portland, Oregon,
September, 1986.

[Nels81.]T. Nelson Literary Machines Swarthmore, PA, 1981. Available
from author.

[Shne86]

B. Shneiderman and J. Morariu The Interactive Encyclopedia
System (TIES) University of Maryland, College Park, MD,
1986.

[Smit82]

D.C. Smith, C. Irby, R. Kimball, and B. Verplank "Designing
the Star User Interface" Byte Publications Inc., April 1982.

[Tes185]

L. Tesler "An Introduction to Mac /.pp 0.1" Apple Computer,
Inc., Cupertino, CA, February 14, 1985.

[Weye85]

S. Weyer and A. Borning "A Prototype Electronic Encyclopedia"
ACM Trans. Office Information Systems, vol. 3, no. 1 January
1985.

[Xero82]

Xerox Corporation 8010 Star Information System Reference
Guide Dallas, TX, 1982.

[Yank85]

N. Yankelovich, N. Meyrowitz, and A. van Dam "Reading andWriting the Electronic Book" IEEE Computer, vol. 18, no. 10
October 1985, pp. 15-30.

[Yanic861

N. Yankelovich"Intcnnedia: A Systm for Linking Multimedia
Documents" IRIS Technical Report.

[Yank87]

N. Yankelovich, D.Cody, and G. Landow "The Creation of aHypermedia Corpus for English Literature" In pressSIGCUF
Bulletin.

86

LEARNING TOMORROWNorman Meyrowitz
Norman Meyrowitz, manager of IRIS's Scholar'sWorkstation Group, graduated from Brown
University in 1981 with a degree in computerscience. His major research interests are in theareas of text-processing, user-intelace desigr,,and object-oriented programnAg. He was thesenior author, with Andries van Dam, of the most
up-to-date and widely referenced article on
computer-based text editing, "Interactive Editing
Systems." Under a contract with IBM, Meyrowitz
nas completed research in integrated page-makeup
systems and object-oriented programming under
Smalltalk-80. He has authored over a dozen
technical publications and several major IRIS
proposals, including one in 1984 to the
Annenberg /CPB Project, which granted $1.5
million to :PIS's Educational Software Project. In
1980, Meyrowitz designed one of the firstwindow systems based on UNIX ®.
At IRIP Meyrowitz manages a group of .12
charged with the design and development of enduser software, and provides technical management
for the Intermedia, Educatimal Software, andSignifier Projects. iff also serves as Brown's
technical liaison with Apple Computer, Inc. andsevere 1 other vendors.
r :',
87

LEARNING TOMORROWAs We May Learn
Stephen A. Weyer
Apple Computer, Inc.

'

F)
89

LEARNING TOMORROWVannevar Bush's classic article of 40 years ago, "As We May Think,"[Bush45] charred a challenging peacetime course for information researchers.
The problem then was an increasingly specialized "growing mountain of
research" that, ironically, might hinder further scientific progress because ofdifficulties in sifting through this mass of material. His proposed "Memex"
would have been a lit -,.ry-in-a-desk with typed items, photographs, andlonghand annotations recorded on microfilm More than just an extensive andefficient storage medium, however, it would also have provided powerfulways to consult and modify the human record, accessible by association as
well as by indexing. Any two items could be joined together by the trier,including the user's own materials and notes. Chains of these associat'ans
would form a "trail" with many possible side tails. Trails could be named
and shared with other information explorers.
"Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will a, ready-made with a mesh of
associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the Memex
and there amplified." In addition to scientists, lawyers, patent attorneys,chemists, and historians, "there is a new profession of trailblazers, those who
find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous massof the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes not only his
additions to the world's record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding bywhich they were erected."
In closing, Bush ponders not only whether a Memex may be necessary forour complex civilization to survive and understand itself, but also whether the
media of storage and mode of interaction might more directly involve thebrain, bypassing the tactile, oral, and visual levels of represent ion. Neural
input and output, as replacements for multimedia user interfaces, still seemdistant possibilities (except in science fiction novels such as Vernor Vinge's
True Names or William Gibson's Neuromancer).
In addition to its filing-cabinet functions, there were hints in its design ofbeing able to use the Memex for numerical and logical manipulations. With
the benefit of hindsight, we might have asked Bush to add further symbolic
processing, so that an automatic file clerk of sorts might have assisted us insearching, organizing, and interpreting the data. We might also have asked: if
Memex becalm indispensable to the work of his professional scientists, how
might it revolutionize the work of amateur scientists, artists, and learners of allages and abilities?

J
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LEARNING TOMORROW

With the advent of inexpensive, powerful personal workstations and disk
storage, CD-ROM and WORM optical storage, high-bandwidth networks andhypertextlike software systems, much of Bush's vision has begun tomaterialize. While building and experimenting with such systems, it's
important to begin looking beyond Memex and beyond browsing, not only
because browsing breaks down when there are too many trails (this point is
ce of individual
elaborated later in the paper) but also because the ireof hypertext systems, wetrails will often relate to educational purpose; ins
need to consider "hyperknowledge assistants." This paper's title (which I
hope is not too pretentious in its e; tension of Bush's title) is meant to draw
attention to the educational potential of such a system"learning" in addition
to "thinking." The name "Memex" seems to connote memory and storage;
perhaps we should call our system "Mimex" to emphasize simulation andlearning from examples.
The basic theme of this paper is that the system, rather than being only apassive tool or repository for information, should become a partner with the-learner in searching, interpreting, and creating knowledge. As important, weshould lcok at information from the perspective of the learner and his/herneeds, rather than by what the technology can do or what the informationindustry currently provides. Considering such symbiotic systems andinformation needs should help us to rethink many of our assumptions about
electronic info:mation systems. We need fundamentally new organizing
principles for knowledge, and new navigation and manipulation tools for thelearner.

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Intelligent Multimedia Knowleage Systems
for Learning

In this section, I will touch briefly on the importance of the aspects ofmultimedia, learning, and intelligence in broadening our perspective on
information systems. Mist current information systems deal only with text;
the, retrieve informatior but provide no help in analysis or synthesis, andtreat the user's query and its stored data and information as "just bits" rather
than as "meaning." Literal retrieval and exhaustive browsing are sometimes
necessary, but morn; often the learner will want to define similarity in more
personal or intuiti' e ways and to filter and conform the information to suit hisor her own need' .
Multimedia se .sations are essential in characterizing and understanding theworld arounci us perception and expenence are highly dynamic andpersonal, not well portrayed by static text. To provide flexible access, aknowledge base must describe textual, visual, and aural images with morethan a nameidentifying and classifying important characteristics. In
addition to requirements for the representation of content, a multimedia
perspective should change the style in which we present and organize
knowledgehow text, animated pictures, music, and speech are combined to
explain a principle of physics or organize a roadmap to a new subject area. To
support access for the needs of presentation, the knowledge base must include
advice related to when to use a still image with voice-over versus using fullmotion video, for example, for particular purposes and learners. Hopefully,
experts in cinema and curriculum design can merge techniques to constructeffective and enjoyable learning experiences. Thus, a multimedia approach isimportant both to convey recorded comer and to make effective interfaces. In
the spirit (-f next generation "hyperknowledge" systems, the reader shouldlink disc n. ons of "multimedia in the other papers in this collection toconcepts of "knowledge" and "interface" occumng in the rest of this paper toremind us of this additional perspective.
A learning perspective implies exploring conceptual understanding as well as
narrowing to practical application of knowledge, to include academic
education, informal lifelong learning, and professional and industrial training.
Besides providing help in mining information from librarylike repositories, anintelligent system must help in refining and creating knowledgeit shouldhave many of the qualities of coach, tutor, and colleague to encourage thelearner to question, conjecture, create, and experiment. Although an
educational information system might help us find "the answer" more
efficiently (still an important skill in information seeking), the emphasis must
be on creating questions, proposing so' utions, and contributing tounderstanding. Talking about "learners" instead of "users" should help makethese information needs primary in our minds over information sources.

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Adding intelligence to a multimedia educational information system could
mean many things. We could build expert systems in many narrow domains,or expend effort to create an autonomous intellect equal or superior to ourown. A more widespread interpretation of the meaning of artificial
intelligence (AI) is to augment human intelligence via better development andauthoring environments. Instead of regarding an intelligent system as ahuman replacement, we can consider the system as an adaptable tool,
intelligent medium, or helpful assistant or partner [Lenat83; Stefik86;
Fischer86]. Part of this means improving the organization of
informationthus conveying "knowledge" embedded in a neighborhood ofconcepts rather than as isolated facts. Another aspect of intelligence is to "gobeyond the information given" [Bruner73] to nv.ke inferences aadinterpretations. Intelligence in filtering or guiding means taking advantage ofthe relationships between concepts (for example, inheritance, ordering) to
begin to guess what the learner understands (or misunderstands), to anticipate
what he could do next or to prescribe a preferred path. To be intelligent, asystem must grasp something about the purpose of the knowledgewhat it
can be used foreven if it does not deeply understand the information itself.
To be intelligent, a system should be prepared to explain its actions (a generalexpert-system characteristic), but also be able to take advantage of
explanations that the user offers. Learner and system should be able toconverse at the level of examples, to develop analogies, and to -propose
generalizations.

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Learner Intentions and Ne.,ds

In early attempts to supply electronic informati
we have often modeledsome of the artifacts such as books and libraries and little of the content that issuch a vital part of the learning process. For example, a teacher, a written
teacher's guide, or discussion group can add much to the understanding of abook. Card catalogs can be useful in a librarybut wouldn't you rather haveaccess to a knowledgeable librarian or research assistant?
What is the educational intent of searching? A helpful electronic assistantmust know something beyond "the learner is collecting information"
something more like "the learner wants information to answer the following
question or to help test the following hypothesis." A good tutor should have agrasp of a student's understanding and know why and when to offer
knowledge that could be relevant or helpful. This is easier said than done
And yet it is a critical step in solving the problem that is of interest; simpler
approaches typically give us answers to the wrong problems.
In some situations and for some learners, a quick, small dose of facts may be
exactly what is desired. However, the infort.. ition retrieved can suit many
purposes depending on how it is presented. For example:
Tell me.
Inform me.
Amuse me.
Challenge me.
Guide me.
Teach me.

Give me the facts, no embellishments.
Facts plus optional background and other joints of view.
Find me interesting connections or perspectives.
Make me find or create creative connections.
Let me browse but give over-the-shoulder advice.
More step-by-step guidance, fewer irrelevant links.

These needs, among others, are often not considered in irormation systems.
Dervin [1983] succinctly contrasts "...two perspectives for looking at
information transferone, an observer construction, sees information as abrick to be tossed front system to person [an empty bucket]; the other, a user
construction, sees information as clay to be molded and shaped by theperceiver. The observer construction has been and still is the dominant
perspective in the social science literature relating to information transfer andin the practice and design of information systems....In the context of such[absolute information] assumptions, an emphasis on information takes
precedence over an emphasis on users. In the context of relativistic
information assumptions, we would expect our information systems to lookquite Afferent. For one thing, the user would become the emphasis, themisty- d'etre. Instead of an emphasis on factualizing, there would be anemphasis on personalizing.... Instead of an emphasis on document transfer,
there would be an emphasis on making sense."

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LEARNING TOMORROW

Figure 1 illustrates the differences between these two perspectives on
information systems and user activities. Current on-line systems are heavily
biased toward the tidier, central view of information; hypothetical users ofMemex would be encouraged to annotate, interpret, and personalize. As we
begin to construct hyperknowledge systems giving access to large amounts of
information for many different individuals, will we be able to maintain thisbalance between providing personalized access and efficient access? In
addition to obtaining content, can we help learners understand how to request
and interpret it? In addition to helping to better ask "What?" can we makemore explicit the questions: "When is it appropriate?" "From whom did it
come?" and "With what effect?"Figure 1.
Two perspectives on
information systems:
Absolute information "brick"delivered to user versus
user crer:es meaning in
information "blob"

factualizing

Information

User2

Userl

Who is in the best position to articulate the needs and intentions of learners?
Ideally, the learners themselves, even if inexperienced; however, what of thejudgments of teachers, AI-based tutors, parents, the local community, or
national or global committees? Choice of curriculum materials raises
controversy when it touches on such issues as creationism vs. evolution,banning of certain novels for teenagers, sex education, and so on. Ironically,
electronic information systems can provide broader access to information(assuming we can provide equal access and avoid the widening social andinformation gap between nave nets" and "have-nots") at the same time as
they provide increased control for narrowing access. Censorship is really aform of filtering imposed by someone else that is difficult to be aware of or toundo. A key question is whether an electronic assistant should be somewhat
subversive in making us aware that there are other points of view and the bias
(perspective) of each, even if we have deliberately chosen to ignore them inour dedicated (or close-minded) attempts as entrepreneurs, scientists, religious
seekers, or learners. At the same time, how can we avoid being deluged withmultitudinous perspectives and opinions, some of which are more importantor relevant to our needs than others? (See the later discussion of whether all
links are created equal.) In many situations, the constraining guidance offeredby editorial and tutorial assistants may best serve the learner otherwise
overwhelmed by complete freedom of choice. Clearly, the dialog between
system and learner to describe the right kind said right amount of informationis never really complete, and must be periodically reexamined and refined.
96

LEARNING TOMORROWSJIn order to adapt to the learner's needs, the system will need to build a modelof preferences, skills, and what the learner has previously looked at (howlone ago, and how well understood). For example, what consties "news"
is highly related to importance, uniqueness, and incremental valuethe first
several stories about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster are likely to be highly
important regardless of my stated interests, thus overriding a narrow
information filter. Assuming that additional stories are frequent and highly
redundant in background information, a filter should then yield the significant
differences or periodic summaries, not entire hourly stories. Many such
"important" stories or subjects may compete for the learner's (or informed
citizen's) attention. What is an important or unusual story or interesting
interdisciplinary connection, though somewhat an editorial or author decision,
is much more dependent on the learner's background.

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LEARNING TOMORROW

Information vs. User-Oriented Organization

Some organizations of knowledge will certainly reflect concertual
relationshipsmultiple classifications of the world's knowledge (such as,
Encyclopaedia Britannica's Propaedia or the CYC project [Lenat86]) to suitdifferent cultural and learning styles. These correspond to the "observer
constructs" or "absolute information" [Dervin83] discussed earlier.
Ccnceptual relationships involving entities and events seem factual, forexample, biological taxonomies (family of mammals), royal genealogies,
sequences of events in world history (without necessarily implying causeeffect relationships), geographic (for example, France is in Europe, next to
Belgium), and widely accepted scientific relationships (such as that between
mass and energy).
Beyond the no-nonsense "tell me the facts" uses, lie pedagogical uses andorganizations based more on "user constructs," that is, learner perceptions andneeds. Pedagogical relationships between concepts admit to less of an
absolute classification or agreement among experts; they correspond more toorder and style of presentation, to personal interpretation, perception, andbelief. In contrast to structuring the content itself, user-oriented organizations
address questions of intent, function, appropriateness, source, andimplications. For example:
These provide the following kinds of more detailed explanation of X.
rlere is a diagram to summarize X.
Here is how Walter Cronkite might have described X.
These provide increasingly complicated examples of X.
Here are a series of experiments that can be used to prove (or disprove) X.
This argument supports proposition X under assumption Y.
This is a criticism/annotation of X.
Here are parameters to cause simulation X to fail in the following situation.
If X hadn't occurred, here's what might have happened.
How is person X similar to you?
This is analogous to X if we emphasize aspect Y.
This situation is similar to (different from) X in the following ways.
Dervin [1983] lists some possible related practices in a "user-based
information system":Frequent use of question-answer formats, as in the so-called "Dear Abby"
format.
Frequent use of reporting values, motives, and frameworks for observing
along with results of observing.
Frequent reporting of conflicting observations resulting from different
frameworks, frequent use of case studies in presenting information.

.1

98

"

LEARNING TOMORROWIn addition to organizing the information itself (the "answers"), a useroriented approach should provide a structure for the possible approaches tothe information (the "questions" 1. Simple lists (as above) are notsatisfactory. Reverse links from information (as answers) to possible
questions are not enough. We would like a question browser or problem
browser that would relate types of vestions and suggest appropriate
strategies. How can kinds of questions be classified? Which typify thephilosophic or pragmatic approaches of certain disciplines or individual
practitioners? For example, what interesting questions would a biologist see
in this situation, or how would Einstein (Newton, Galileo, Aristode) haveaddressed this question? Creating a taxonomy of learner needs, styles, andproblem-solving approaches may seem like an overwhelming task, but it is anecessary one if future systems are to aid the learner in more intelligently
utilizing information, or to guide the learner.

(1n
99

LEARNING TOMORROWAn Example Question:
Making Historical Comparisons

For example, if the learner has as a goal making comparisons by identifying
similarities and differences, this suggests certain strategies for locating
information, whether researching the best refrigerator or spreadsheet to buy or
describing related work in a scientific survey article (for example, how is
Memex like X?). In previous work [Weyer82], I gave students history
problems such as "Compare the falls of the Roman and Han [Chinese]
Empires," and provided electronic search and bookmark aids so that students
could flip back and forth easily between the appropriate sections of an on-line
history book. "The Huns attacked both err, res" may not really be anadequate response to the question, even though it may be discussed for each
empire chronologically and textually near the date of actual downfall. A moresenous analysis would identify many earlier factorssocia' economic,
geographicalthat may have led to weakness, and compare these across theseempires in a static table format. An intelligent assistant might help us
generalize the question to other empires or related problems. "Fall of anempire" is really a special case of "change in government" and "culture
shock"what factors differentiate it from civil war or scientific paradigm
shifts? Beyond providing particular answer templates or tools to transformthe question, an intelligent assistant might test deeper understanding byencouraging the student to try to influence the course of history, in games
such as Chris Crawford's Eastern Front (an Atari 800 game to understand thefailure of Hitler's invasion of Russia) or Balance of Power (a Macintosh gameto explore political influence and intrigue in the modern nuclear world), or
perhaps to create his or her own simulation of civilization in order to predict
revolutions or declines.

90
100

LEARNING TOMORROW

Similarity-Based Searching

Searching in a user-oriented information system should be in terms cf thelearner's own concepts and words. In order to match phrasings not supplied
explicitly by the user, natural language parsing, thesaurus tools, or graphicalconcept organizations must be available. Another possibility is that although
the learner might be able to state a general description of the area of interest, inmany situations a particular example is at hand, and the learner wquld like tofind more "just like it, almost." For example, after reading about the fall of
the Roman Empire, the learner might be interested in "similar" events. Thismay be easy if the author of the materials has provided explicit links to thedeclines of other empireshow much more powerful if these links could be
declared in terms of the attributes the author considered important insuggesting the connection.
If adequate indexing has been done to identify significant concepts such as"Hun invasion," "political corruption," "mercenary army," and "immorality,"
then other events with some of these terms could be matched. However,manual indexing is time-consuming and often inconsistent, either for different
trained indexers or even the same indexer over time. Automatic indexing is
usually based on word frequency and can be improved by grouping words
into index phrases; current systems do not collapse synonymous references toa single term, handle proper names properly, or suggest terms that do notoccur in the document at all. Without indexing, it's easy to find a few relevant
items using free text on most on-line systems but very difficult to be moreexhaustive. However, a promising demonstration has been done on themassively parallel Connection Machin (64,000 processor machine fromThinking Machines), where most of the Fiords in a document are used tomatch similar documents [Stanfill86].
There are several problems in finding similar items in current on-line systems.
The problems of cumbersome syntax or differing query dialects between
multiple information systems have been solved somewhat by searchintermediaries or information gatewaysprograms with user interfaces tomask and map some of the complexity related to logging in, making queries(usually Boolean in syntax), and displaying results. Still, matching is too
often based on exact occurrences of index terms or text words. Although
manual use of word root truncation and thesauri of synonyms help to a limited
extent, what is rea'Ay required is a way of mapping these words into concepts
located in semantic networks. Items that fail to match exactly may still belocated within a small neighborhood of nearby concepts. It should bepossible for the learner to define the radius of generality, specificity, and/or
relatedness for a concept, as well as to set the level of importance in theoverall combination of concepts used in the description (for example,
corruption should probably include bribery and political favors, and correlate
inversely with honesty; corruption is probably more important than leadpoisoning in identifying similar situations).

IC
101

LEARNING TOMORROW

Based on examples, it should be possible to define "interest neighborhoods"
by locating each attribute of the example in the concept index and moving,narrowing, or expanding the focus of the concept. This is similar to theapproach of the Rabbit system [Tou82]query by reformulation, where theuser refines a query by explaining what's wrong with an example.
Alternatively, it might be possible to deal entirely with a collection of
examples, with the user giving feedback like "good," "OK," or "bad" for eachexample as a whole without going : to detail whymarking individual
sentences, paragraphs, or articles as good examples of what the learner isinterested in [Stanfill86]. If explanations of reasoning to the user are ahallmark of Al systems, then we should intuitively expect the reverse, thatgiving examples and explanations to the system could be used to demonstrateand debug the learner's intelligent behavior.

10z

102

LEARNING TOMORROWBeyond Browsing and Memex

Traditional systems often im

se a sense of tunnel vision on thesks in a library via card catalog and orderform: you must guess at how it is described; when looking at the results of asearch, it's often unclear what else of relevance that you missed. Hypertext
systems now coming into use hold the promise of letting us look at the library
shelves to perceive neighborhoods of information and many interesting
connections within and between subject areas (for example, cross-references
between encyclopedia articles, bibliographic references to books). Initially,
the ability to see the relationships between mary nuggets of knowledge isappealing. However, there are many problems to be overcome.

informationlike accessing

Without help, browsing everything can be as ineffective as searching blindly,
thus creating a higher level of "information gridlock"ou- electronic access is
to much more information than was available in earlier generations, especiallywith technologies like CD-ROM storage and fiber optic networks. A large
number of interesting associations between pieces of information will beavailable (and an overwhelming number of perhaps less interesting
connections from the view that "everything is connected to everything else").
Browsing this universe directly without intelligent filtering to create smallerneighborhoodsor guidance to prioritize trail selectionwill be frustrating.
Although there is much leverage to be gained by thinking of on-line
information systems as "books or "libraries," this metaphor can overshadow
the dynamic nature of the information and its uses. We may think of thesystem more as pages to peruse rather than as a tutor to converse with or as alaboratory to conduct experiments in (for example, model-view-filter-guide
metaphor [Weyer85]). To prevent "dusty-tome syndrome" (a disinterest or
distaste for paperlike presentations), electronic "books" must become
nonbooks in both function and name.

Knowledge is not staticto be user-oriented and malleable, it should be
adaptable to the user's preferences. To illustrate this at the conference, I
showed a videotape of a prototype electronic encyclopedia more fully
described in [Weyer85]. Figure 2 shows text displayed in boldface tohighlight active cross-references to other articles and provides conversions ofmeasurements from English to metric units. Figure 3 shows a snapshot froman interactive simulation for the concept of harmonic motion; parameters canbe adjusted via the sliders, and the spring animates.

103

LEARNING TOMORROW

Hyperknowledge systems should be able to generate new content via rules,
look for inconsistencies, form hypotheses about pedagogy and understanding
from tht, learner's actions, explain their own actions, and participate in theauthoring process by classifying and critiquing individual annotations andrevisions and refereeing debates by a community of learners (both human andartificial). Is there a real difference between author and reader, teacher andlearner? As knowledge accumulates and ferments in the system, it should not
all be treated equally. If the learner believes that knowledge that is heavily
editorialized and filtered is better for his or her purposes, than, say, electronicmail discussions or political advertisements, then that value judgment should
be an explicitly represented bias in the source selection.

All links are not created equal-they should depend on what you have seen
before, on your current goals, your confidence in the sources, and on theauthor's guesses about what is most important for which of these contexts andpurposes. Links need to be constantly annotated-why I find it useful, why I
think someone else might be interested, why the system suggested it to me.
The learner must communicate intentions so that a system can highlight andprioritize what's important, and hide connections and details considered to be
unimportant (the learner could always reveal more and ask why some things
were revealed and not others).
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105

LEARNING TOMORROW.

Guiding

Although work in search intermediaries and better browsing and hypertext
techniques may improve searching and browsing in information systems,
fundamental change is more likely to arise from trying to create intelligent
assistants who know not only more about what we want to find but also why
we want to find it Natural language understanding has reached a similarbarrier: new progrus in understanding is not likely to come from further workin syntax and semantics, but from emerging theones of discourse. Discourse
includes not only a history of the conversation (most natural language systems
are impressive only on single utterances) but also the speaker's intentions andlistener's expectations. Natural language itself could provide much of therequired richness of dialog between learner and guide/assistant. Even if theuser interface is not based on natural language, however, theories of discourseshould influence its design.
Intelligence in an agent will not be synonymous with omniscience, evenassuming that the learner can articulate what he or she is interested in finding
and understanding. Although there can be a high correlation bctween an
accurate description and relevant retrieved results, it is by the nature ofcommunicating about information an imperfect match. There is a surprising
discrepancy among human indexers about the appropriate terms to classify adocument, though perhaps this can be improved with appropriate tools[Lenat86]. The phrasing of a query is not something that happens correctly
the first time except in trivial casesrefinement and clarification are a naturalpart of the process. A resulting interest neighborhood will not contain all of
the relevant items, and it will include irrelevant ones as well (that is, it will not
exhibit perfect "recall" and "precision," in respective information
jargon)exploration, expanding, narrowing, highlighting, and rejecting
should be expected. In trying to make our assistant emulate expert humanbehavior, we must realize that this seeming imperfection in communication isnormal and, indeed, essential in modeling learning.

106

LEARNING TOMORROWConclusion

The powerful vision typified by Memex can be made even more compelling bytransforming information into knowledge, by elevating the needs andimportance of the learner, and by evolving a flexible tool in the direction of
becoming an adaptive partner. Multimedia techniques are important not only
io convey detail, motion, and emotion of knowledge content but also to create
new organization and navigation interfaces to access this knowledge. Even if
we regard our "hyperknowledge assistant" as only an information system, thepreceding discussion should lead us at least to new ways of thinking about
searching and browsing. If we consider it additionally as an exploratory andguided learning environment, learner needs and questions must become thefocus.

Next steps? Many are the same as in [Weyer85]; we need more experience inhighly interconnected hypermedia systems, intelligent tutoring systems,
knowledge organizations, programming and authoring environments,
conceptual and example-based description, natural language discourse andunderstanding systems, and models of user intentions, understanding, andbehavior. Integrating these pieces will be a major conceptual, as well assoftware engineering, task. It is my hope that the vision I have attempted topresent here can be elaborated and made practical before another 40 years haveelapsed.

r
107

LEARNING TOMORROW

References

Bruner, J. Beyond the Information Given. New York: W.W. Norton, 1973.
Bush, V. As We May Think. Atlantic Monthly, 176: 101-108; 1945 July.
Also reprinted in Lambert S. and Ropiequet, S. eds. New Papyrus, Microsoft
Press, 1986, pp. 3-20.

Dervin, B. Information as a User Construct: The relevance of perceived
information needs to synthesis and interpretation. In S. A. Ward and L. J.
Reed (Eds.) Knowledge Structure and Use: Implications for Synthesis andInterpretation. Temple University Press, Philadelphia, PA, 1983, pp. 153183.

Fischer, G. Enhancing Incremental Learning Processes with KnowledgeBased Systems. In H. Mandl and A. Lesgold (Eds.) Learning Issues forIntelligent Tutoring Systems, Springer-Verlag, New York; 1986 (in press).
Lenat, D., Prakash, M., Shepherd, M. CYC: Using Common-Sense
Knowledge to Overcome Brittleness and Knowledge-Acquisition Bot:ienecics.
AI Magazine. Vol. 6. No. 4, pp. 65-85. Winter 1986.
Lenat, D., Borning, A., McDonald, D., Taylor, C., and Weyer S.
Knoesphere: Building Expert Systems with Encyclopedic Knowledge. In
Proceedings of the 8th International Joint Conference on Artificial
Intelligence (Karslruhe, West Germany). 1983, pp. 167-169.

Stanfill, C. and Kahle, B. Parallel Free Text Search on the Connection
Machine System. Thinking Machines Corp. Technical Report No. 86-5,
March 1986.
Stefik, M. The Next Knowledge Medium. Al Magazine. Vol. 7, No. 1, pp.
34-46. Spring 1986.
Tou, F., Williams, M., Fikes, R., Henderson, D.A., and Malone, T.
RABBIT: An Intelligent Database Assistant. In Proceedings of the American
Association for Artificial Intelligence (Pittsburgh). August 16-20,1982.
Weyer, S. A. The Design of a Dynamic Book for Information Search.
International Journal of Man Machine Studies. Vol. 17, No. 1, July 1982, pp.
87-107.
Weyer, S. A. and Borning, A. H. A Prototype Electronic Encyclopedia.
ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, Vol. 3., No. 1, Tan.
1985, pp. 63-88.

108

LEARNING TOMORROWStephen Weyer'II

Stephen Weyer has worked for 16 years inenhancing learning environments on computers,
improving access to knowledge, and providing
advanced programming tools. At Stanford, hedeveloped and tested Logo environments involving
animation, sound, and model trains. Over the next
9 years at Xerox P A.R.C., he taught andextended Smalltalk, and developed information
retrieval tools, browsing interfaces, andapplications for the office, library, and school.
For his dissertation work at Stanford, he designed
an on line world history book and evaluated its
use by students to answer questions. In contrast to
this emphasis on structure and search techniques,
his work on a prototype electronic encyclopedia at
Atari explored issues related to dynamic
information: active objects, videodisc images, andsimulations. During two years at Hewlett-Packard,
he managed an AI programming environment
project (a frame-based knowledge browser). At
Apple, he is balancing and combining these
themes of exploratory and guided learning
environments, information browsing and creation,
and artificial intelligence for representing andpresenting knowledge.

1r 7,
109

LEARNING TOMORROW

I

Note Cards: A.

Multimedia Idea
Processing
Environment

Note Cards is a computer environment designed to help people work withideas. Its users are authors, researchers, designers, and other intellectuallaborers engaged in analyzing information, constructing models, formulatingarguments, designing artifacts, and generally processing ideas. Note Cards
provides these users with a rich and extensible set of tools that support avariety of specific activities ranging from sketching on the back of an envelope
through formally representing knowledge. Together, these tools provide anenvironment for capturing, representing, interrelating, managing, andcommunicating ideas. In this environment, users can develop their ideas,transforming informal and unstructured jottings into formal analyses andstructured presentations.
Note Cards is a hypermedia system. Its basic framework is a semantic networkof electronic notecards connected by arbitrarily typed links. This network
serves both as a medium in which the user can represent collections ofinterconnected ideas, and as a structure for organizing, storing, and retrieving
information. Note Cards provides the user with tools for displaying,modifying, manipulating, and navigating through the network It also includes
a set of well-defined methods and protocols for programmatically manipulating
the network. These basic components constitute the core for NoteCards
extensible environment for idea processing.
There are four basic constructs in Note Cards: notecards, links, browsers, andfileboxes. Each notecard contains an arbitrary amount of information
embodied in text, graphics, images, voice, or any other editable or presentable
substance. On the screen, a notecard is usually displayed in its own editor
window. Links are used to represent binary connections or relationships
between cards. Each link is represented by an "active" link icon located at ananchor point in the link's source card. Clicking in the link icon with the mousetraverses the link; that is, retrieves the destination card of the link and displays
it on the screen ready to be read or edited. Browsers are cards that contain
editable node-link diagrams showing the structure of some portion of the
network. Fileboxes are cards that provide the user with a hierarchical filing
structure for organizing collections of cards into topics or categories.
Note Cards was developed and runs within the Xerox LISP environment on
the Xerox 1100 series workstation. The system includes a well-documented
programmer's interface that provides programmatic access to all of thesystem's functionality. This Interface can be used to tailor the system toparticular tasks or users. In addition, NoteCards can be integrated with othersystems running in the LISP environment such as mail systems, data bases,
and rule-based expert systems.

113

LEARNING TOMORROW

10

Note Cards' multimedia characteristics derive from its type mechanism, whichallows users to add facilities for handling arbitrary new types of notecards tothe system. The basic system handles text, graphics, and images, with theability to integrate all of these media into a single notecard. Users ofNote Cards have created several dozen additional card types, including
animation cards, voice cards, video cards, and action cards. Many of these
new card types stretch the notion of "displaying" a notecard. The video cards
control a videodisc player that plays a designated video segment on a separate
screen when the card is displayed Action cards contain a short program
describing an action that is carried out when the card is displayed.

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Although it is an experimental system, NoteCards is currently being used for awide range of applications. The majority of these applications center aroundthe creation, management, and analysis of loosely or irregularly structured
information. Examples of such applications include researching and writing
complex legal briefs, analyzing the arguments presented in scientific andpublic policy articles, and managing the general personal and pi mjectinformation for small group research projects. In all of these applications, theuse of NoteCards focuses on authoring and structuring a network ofnotecards, with subsequent access to this network primarily by the original
authors.

1
114

LEARNING TOMORROWA significant minority of Note Cards applications focus on the presentation of
nonlmear multimedia "documents." For example, Note Cards has been used as
the 'was for a number of interactive, nonlinear tutorial and reference manuals.
More important: Note Cards has been used for the design, development, anddelivery of interactive computer-assisted training for copier repair technicians.
This application includes interactive video as well as interactive graphics
simulauons within the NoteCards framework. One important feature of thisapplication is that the same system was used for both course
design/development and for course presentation.

Observation of NoteCards in use has shown that much of its power derives
from the fact that it presents a uniform, spatial, direct-manipulation interface toa wide variety of different kinds of information represented in a variety ofdifferent media. The same access operation (following a link) can bring up atext file to be edited, start a running animation, carry out a data-base search,
play a video sequence, or execute an action. All of these "pieces of
information" are uniformly represented as notecards and can be integrated into
a NoteCards network fur access and organizational purposes. Moreover,
NoteCards provides the ability to easily view and edit not only these pieces of
information, but also the organizational structure into which they are placed.
Observation on NoteCards in use has also shown several limitations inherent
in the system. NoteCards (and hypermedia systems in general) rely too
exclusively on navigational access to information. A significant improvementin functionality would accrue if navigational access were augmented by searchmechanisms that allow query-based access to both the content and structure of
the hypermedia network. NoteCards is also limited in its facilities forsupportiriilat:, 4L:.e work within a single network. It is not uncommon for

one user i re 101 in ,; web of information created by another user, since
NoteCar_. mak,f. no 'f .)rt to enforce a (as yet undiscovered) rhetoric ofhypemirlia. 71es.
other limitations form the basis of our ongoing

reseeml- into n Am generation of hypermedia systems.

115

LEARNING TOMORROW

References

Halasz, F.G., Moran, T.P., & Trigg, R.H. "Note Cards in a nutshell." To
appear in the Proceedings of the ACM /SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors
in Computing Systems (CHI+GI 1987), Toronto, Canada, April 1987.

Trigg, RH., Suchman. L.A., & Halasz, F.G., "Supporting collaboration in
NoteCards." Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Supported
Cooperative Work (CSCW '86), Austin, Texas, December 1986.

116

LEARNING TOMORROWFrank G. Halasz
Frank Halasz received his Ph.D. in Cognitive
Psychology from Stanford University in 1983. His
thesis research explored the role of mental models
in learning to use complex machines. In 1983, hejoined the Intelligent Systems Laboratory at Xerox
PARC, where he developed NoteCards (ahypermedia-based idea-processing system) andinvestigated the use of such systems to support
authoring and argumentation. In 1986, he joined
the Software Technology Program at theMicroelectronics and Computer Technology
Corporation (MCC) in Austin, Texas, where hecontinues his research in human-computerinteraction, specifically the design of computerbased tools to support intellectual work. He iscurrently building the ultimate hypermedia system,and exploring its use by teams of designers in theearly, decision-making phases of large software
projects.

A

117

LEARNING TOMORROW"fr-.."147

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An emphasis on educational uses of multimedia systems was articulated by theeducators at the Conference, in the context of solving specific problems they
had encountered in their work which were amenable to the incorporation ofmultimedia systems. Larry Friedlander, for example, deals with teachingcollege students Shakespeare as theater rather than as literature. He
acknowledges that texts alone, or even occasional theatrical experiences on asmall scale when logistically possible, simply do not allow students tounderstand Shakespeare's contributions or to develop any "feel" for the
performance aspects of theater. More important, he finds that the componentsof theatrical presentations that are controlled by directors and actors areinvisible to typical audiences; analysis of these techniques by beginners is
stifled at the onset. Multimedia presentations particularly using videodiscs
for presentations of movies of "great perfonnances" and graphical simulations
that can be manipulated by students for explorations of techniques of thetheater ("The TheaterGame")let Friedlander address these problems. They
provide a beginning for solving the problem of communicating to students
what Friedland& knows as a professional; they provide a way to combine
what is accessible in texts and what requires more visual and kinesthetic
experiences. The presentations give Fnedlander the basis for tools for student
manipulation of these "types of media" so that students can begin tounderstand what the study of Shakespeare requires and the issues that
performers who present F'Ialtespeare's works must address.

Bernard Frischer has run into similar issues in trying to make the Classics"come alive" for his college students, and is trying to use multimedia tools toprovide "an everyday view" of ancient civilizations. Once he can get students
to think about the people who populated the plazasthe kinds of shoes theywore, the arguments they had, the views from their bedroomshe can begm
to provide these students with analyses of those people's activities. He candiscuss the Hieratic: of the era, as well as the politics, in context. He canprovide students with tools to wander around ancient cultures much as they dovacation centers, picking up information about these cultures quite easily andcomfortably. And then he can give them guided tours to make the points madeby the theorists of those eras.

120

LEARNING TOMORROWAt a high school level, Pat Hanlon and Bob Campbell have found that
they, too, have been lacking tools to provide their students with contexts inwhich to address particular topics. Similarly they have found few available
resources which have been integrated to provide teachers with the means forcreating these contexts day in and day out. As an example, to understand The
Grapes of Wrath, they find it important that students know a bit about the
Depression (which many don't). Also, they have found that to understand thedeliberate structure of a novel such as this, it is important that students
understand a bit about the author of the novel and about alternative media
forms such as magazines, movies, and filmstrips available for thecommunication of similar messages. Of course, Hanlon, Campbell, and otherteachers have known this for a long time. And curriculum developers andlibrarians have been working to provide materials that can assist teachers andstudents in gathering together these critical perspectives. What multimedia
tools can provide is a sensible, integrated scheme for doing this: to takeadvantage of existing sources by indexing them and putting them in one place(a task well suited to Campbell's library background), to integrate audio-visualand text experiences in classrooms and labs, and finally, to make everything
neat and compact by putting it in "one box" (or at least a small number ofboxes functionally connected with a computer).

1'^
1

121

LEARNING TOMORROW,,.)The Shakespeare

Project
Larry Friedlander
Stanford University

123

LEARNING TOMORROWAbstract

The Problem
A broad spectrum of important subjects cannot be successfully taught within
the constraints of the traditional classroom. The creative arts, for example, arenotoriously resistant to standard teaching practices. As a result, many of ourculture's richest and most vital traditions, such as theater, become tame andimpoverished in the classroom: unidimensional.

What Is To Be Done
The extraordinary development of technology in recent years allows educators
a dramatic new possibility: how, at last, to teach those complex, elusive

subjects like the creative arts. The Shakespeare Projectthe mostcomprehensive effort to date linking the arts and humanities to both the powerof the computer and the flexibility of the videodisc offers er' -ators aradically new way to teach not only Shakespeare and theater, but also thosedisciplines like psychology, sociology, and communications, which depend
upon the observation of complex, visually "dense" and hard-to-record events.
Through its innovative interactive videodisc computer program, theShakespeare Project grants students options never before possible, bringing
even novice students into intimate contact with the entire process of theatricalcreation. Using the Shakespeare Project, students go beyond a mere readingof the text: they see a performance, study it in detail, interact with it, isolate
and analyze its components, simulate its processes, and make the play's world
their own. The Shakespeare Project freshens students' perceptive
powersopening them to the marvelous richness not only of theater, but of
all human interactions. By offering a new form of learning, the Shakespeare
Project will thus create a new type of learner.

Who Will Do It
The Academic Computing and Information Systems of Stanford University issponsoring the Shakespeare Project. Stanford professor Larry Friedlander,
who has been teaching Shakespeare and acting for more than 25 years, will
direct the project. Staff from Stanford Instructional Television Network(SITN) and Instructional Research and Information Systems (IRIS) will
implement the project, assisted by a panel of distinguished advisors especiallyassembled for this project.

125

LEARNING TOMORROWProject Summary"Educators should reconceptualize the "good" student, not as one who sits,listens, agrees, cooperates, and regurgitates, but as one who is criticallyaware, curious, questioning, and active but sensitive in critical disputation".
Jarvis, Lifelong Learning

The Problem
A broad spectrum of important subjects cannot be successfully taught in the
traditional classroom. It has often been argued that fields like the creative arts
can be "learned but not taught"that creativity does not lend itself to thestandard teaching practices so prevalent in disciplines such as math or
biology.
Theater, for example, has proved itself particularly elusive in the academic
setting because of its complex, "mixed' naturethe way it daringly combines
elements of painting, music, literature, dance, psychology, and evenanthropology. Like the novel, theater is a narrative with a relatively stable but"dense" text. Like dance or music, theater also moves forward in time in waysthat don't easily allow the viewer to stop or study the "text." As a social
spectacle, theater also recalls the complexity of public ritual, while its concern
with interior motivation and role-playing connect theater to the intricacies ofpsychology and philosophy.
One can understand how difficult (if not impossible) it is to convey thecomplex, elusive qualities of such a mixed form in the traditional classroom,
where a great, complicated play such as Hamlet is usually taught merely as a"text," as a branch of literaturean approach that robs the play of much of its
creative essence. All too often in the academic setting, theaterone of ourculture's oldest and most vital traditions becomes tame: unidimensional.

The Solution
The extraordinary development of technology in cent years allows educators
a dramatic new possibility: to teach complex, elusive subjects that have
hitherto resisted the academic setting. The Shakespeare Project is the mostcomprehensive effort to date linking the creative arts to the power of thecomputer and the flexibility of the videodisc. It offers educators a radicallynew way to teach Shakespeare and theater (or any complex, hard-to-record
live event, be it an intense session between psychologist and patient, or acomplicated maneuver among players on the football field).

Through its innovative interactive videodisc computer program, theShakespeare Project grants students options never before possible in the
traditional classroom. Using ti.e project, students can:126

LEARNING TOMORROW

"Attend" rehearsals with directors and performers.
"Discuss" a play's key issues with interviewed actors.
View and instantly compare several intriguingly different versions of aparticular scene.
Design their own "versions" of a crucial scene on a computerized, digital
stage.

Peruse an "archive" of hundreds of historical photographs documenting
the rich array of sets, costumes, and props.
Browse through an "electronic" wardrobe and prop room, choosing
costumes that suit their own interpretation of a play.
Create their own "case study" of a character's motivation and psychology.
Skip through the expanse of a play almost instantaneously, making
comparisons that reveal the large, embracing structure of the complete
play.
"Read" a staged performance with the ease and freedom with which we
now read a textstopping, starting, viewing, re-viewing, and Alecting
segments for detailed study.
In short, the Shakespeare Project allows expert or novice students to study,
design, and enjoy theater. The project familiarizes students with the entire
process of theatrical creationfrom finding an interpretation and a guiding
concept, to choosing appropriate designs, to actually envisioning andexecuting the details of performance. Using the Shakespeare Project, students
go beyond a mere reading of the text: they see a performance, study it indetail, interact with it, isolate and analyze its components, trace its processes,
and make the play's world their own.
Innovatively allowing students to move from theory to practice, fromdiscussion of critical problems to the testing of those problems inperformance, the Shakespeare Project freshens students' perceptive
powersit opens students to the marvelous richness not only of theater, butof all human interactions. Students gain a rare learning experience: how todeal with creative situations in which there are no "right" or "wrong" answers.
Students who, sadly, have been trained to confuse timidity with "correctness"learn the importance of "letting go"of allowing their imaginations free play.
Exposing students to problems that have no fixed or single solutions, theShakespeare Ptrject provides students with a greater tolerance for complexity,
for what the great Romantic poet Keats praised as "negative capability"theability to exist "in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts." In short, students using
the Shakespeare Project can move closer to being the flexible, open,
responsive and self - confident adults that our culture needs.

127

LEARNING TOMORROWThe Background
The Shakespeare Project grew from a longstanding concern with the teachingof the creative arts. To enhance a student's understanding of an artist like
Shakespeare, educators have long looked for ways to supplement ordinary
curriculum (which tend to emphasize only the plays' texts) with a wider,richer view of the entire theatrical process.

In 1984, Stanford University funded development of an animated theater
simulation. In 1985, IBM, impressed with the initial results, contributed
additional landing for a feasibility study to develop videodisc-based theater
lessons and tools. During the preliminary stages of this feasibility study, it
became clear that the advantages of the technology beii.g considered applied toa wide spectrum of disciplines. Stanford professors from psychology,
anthropology, athletics, and the arts gathered to discuss how interactive video
could help express the rich and complex human interactions that form thebasis of study in their fields.
It was agreed during this preliminary stage that the Shakespeare Project,already under way, would serve as a model for development of similarsystems in other disciplines, and that the tools and lessons of the Shakespeare
Project would be designed to be as transferable as possible. It was also agreed
that the purpose of the feasibility study was this: to test whether, in fact, acomplex theater conc::t could be taught through videodisc and computer
technology.

We designed and built a prototype, not to be used as a kernel for future
development, but to test our basic assumptions. The prototype consisted ofthree basic programs:
A videodisc-based "tutorial" called Page to Stage that taught how aperformance is created by interpreting the text.
An annotated visual data base of theater and art history on videodisc,called The Browser.
A computer animation program, The TheaterGame, that allowed students
to simulate design and staging choices, and to create an actual scene on thecomputer screen.
The two videodisc-based components were programmed on two computers,
an Apple Macintosh and an IBM Vision attached to a videodisc player. The
student worked at a keyboard, facing a screen that displayed film, graphics,
text, imtructions, and student responses. Students controlled the pace anddirection of their learning by touching the screen to select items from menus ordisplays.

128

LEARNING TOMORROWPage to Stage included four videodisc-based lessons: text, subtext, beats,
and blockingabout three hours of instruction in all. These lessons showed
two-minute segments of Hamlet, with three versions of the same scene.
Students analyzed the way the scene was "built up" from a text andinvestigated how and why performers arrived at certain interpretations of ascene (see Figure 1).
Figure 1.
A computer screen from Page
to Stage showing thestructure of the lesson.

The lessons showed that differences in performance sprang from different
readings of the same text. Performers work by first analyzing the text, thendeveloping a psychological "script" for the scene, which is called a subtext.
They then transform this interpretative material into a performance.

.1 1`) 'y:
129

LEARNING TOMOR. ..WFor example, Jean Simmons, playing Ophelia against Olivier's Hamlet, hasdecided that Ophelia is terrified of Hamlet, but also deeply in love with him.
She must convey this interpretation to the audience by the way she speaks herlines. Her first line in the nunnery scene is, "Good my Lord, how does yourhonor for this many a day?" As she begins she does not look at Hamlet, butstonily recites the first three words almost to herself in embarrassment andfear. Then, feeling his gaze upon her, she glances at nun, melts in of iectionate
tenderness, and sighs in a completely different tone, "How does yo, r honor
for this many a day?' The actress has translated her psychologicalinterpretation, her subtext, into performance choices, or beats. St...ients thenimitated the performers' promdures and, working with a new text, built up a
full performance, ending by staging the scene on our TheaterGame, which
will be described later.

The Browser. The . totype's second component consisted of a data baseof approximately 1,111 images and 200 pages of text on Shakespearehis
life, productions of his playsand the lustory of theater from the ancientworld to the present. As students looked at an image, they could touch thescreen to read an explanatory text. The text also suggested other related
seq'iences of images that students might explore. For example, if students
looked at a picture of a court scene in Hamlet, they might be directed to
pictures showing Elizabethan court life.

TheaterGame. The prototype's third component involved a staging
simulation on the Macintosh computer. Using the TheateiGame, students
could select stages, props, and characters in various costumes. They could
create a computer "movie" with the actors and actresses moving through ascene according to the text and the students subtext. The TheaterGame was
not tied to any one scene or play, and worked equally well for Shakespeare,
Ibsen, or one's own work.
At Stanford, we used Page to Stage and The Browser with stv dents from two
small undergraduate classes, "Shakespeare Through Performance" and"History of Theater Design," and from a large survey course, "Art andI iterature in Western Culture." We tested the TheaterGame at Stanford, at San
Francisco State University in a special graduate program in directing in thedrama department, in an English class at San Francisco's Lowell HighSchool, and at Bank Street School (an experimental elementary school in NewYork) with a group of 10-year-olds who used it to create stories.

Researchers observed students working on the tutorial, and interviewed themafter each session. Researchers found that the tutorial's most immediate
strength was that the students tremendously enjoyed using it. Students were
fascinated by the chance to see different versions of a scene, they liked
looking at and really noticing the details of r actor's performance, they liked
having a library of examples with which to play, and they appreciated theexpert comments on the scenes. In general, they felt a privileged and intimate
connection with the material, as though they had been invited backstage by
Olivier himself.
130

LEARNING TOMORROW

125

Part of their delight was in the sense of freedom and adventure they gained
from watching the widely differing versions of a scene. This experience of thefreedom possible, indd necessary, in interpretation acted as a kind of
personal permission for them to explore on their ownpermission to thinkwildly and boldly. This new sense was reflected in students' class work, in awillingness to make risky choices and to appreciate the daring andoutrageousness of Shakespeare's own imagmation.
Slowing down to work through a text or a scene, instead of floating throughthe experience vaguely accumulating impressions, forced the students to pay
careful attention to the significance of each moment, each detail, and to cometo a precise decision about each moment of choice. As one student said, "(Ilearned) to be simple, taking analysis line-by-line (moment by moment) rather
than in general."What most struck them were those elements they had never previously
considered when thinking of theater: the significance of an actor's pause, theuse of space and timing to create emotion, and the way these details affected
their reactions as spectators. "I think the only way to understand beats is towatch them. You cannot learn about beats simply from the text," remarked astudent.

Working on the character's motivations and interior monologues, they saw
that theater represents the actions of real human beings, operating out ofconcrete circumstances and needs. Another student commented, "I analyze toocomplicatedly (sic). The computer's analysis was always simpler and more
emotionally concrete than mine. I should get simpler and more 'basic' about
feelingsthat is, away from 'why' someone is behaving a certain way andmore about what the behavior actually is."The quality of the workmanship and creative skill now visible to the students
was an impressive learning experience in itself. Again, a student remarks,"(there are) endless possibilities and nuances of interpretation . . . these are
not flat characters, but characters with a whole history and network of feelings
and motivations."

Instead of valuing Shakespeare for some vaguely felt quality of "seriousness"or "depth," students glimpsed the exquisite care and precision of the text andof the performers' interpretive labor. They were able to see how difficult theperformer's task is, and thus were able to acquire some standards with which
to measure the accomplishment. "I learned . . . how actors and actresses,
without saying anything, can express a great deal."

1'
131

LEARNING TOMORROWStudents enjoyed simulating and participating in the creative work,
collaborating with the performers, comparing their responses with theexpert's, and making something of their own. It was important to the students
that their activities and responses mattered. For example, students enjoyedhaving a record of their own reactions and of their work; it made their feelings
seem significant.

In short, the prototype was a considerable success: "I think this is a great
programvery enjoyable. It entertains and intrigues while it educates."

The Next Step
Benefiting from its exploratory work on the prototype, the Shakespeare
Project has expanded and refined its design in the creation of On Stage. On
Stage adds new lessons and capabilities, as it integrates the three componentsof the prototype into one simple work space.

On Stage will consist of three programs:

A Scholar's Kit, which allows students to analyze a scene and a play ingreat detail.
A Director's Kit, which allows students to design a scene creatively.
A Director's Notebook, which supplies a simplified version of thefirst two programs for use at home on a personal computer
The programs will run on a computer that controls a videodisc player. The
performances and still images will be recorded on two videodiscs.
Using the Scholar's Kit, students select a text or performance for study, andare given a "menu of procedures" they can use, in any order, to analyze thework. Each procedure allows them to work closely with one aspect of theplay, the language, the psychological motives and constraints, theperformance techniques, the sources and uses of the design, the structure ofconflict and resolution, and so forth. (see Figure 2).

132

LEARNING TOMORROW

Figure 2.
The Scholar's Kit. The screen
shows the choices available,
along with the Text andPerformance windows. The

Interpretation

Glossary
Notes
Text
Subtext
text

student has chosen
Interpretation and has selected

Performance

DesignPerformance

Hamlet III. I. 56-60

Ask a Professionala text, which is shown in thelower part Gf the screen. The
controls at the right side andbottom of the windows scroll
the text and conirol the
playback of the video.

The Text

Hamlet III. L 56-60

Ham. To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and wows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a s. of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die--to sleep, (60)

The Director's Kit lets students choose the cast, costumes, and stage designfor their interpretation of a scene and then make an animated "movie" orrecord of their work. The students are directors and designers. They maketheater, discovering the process, the chain of choices, that leads to opening
night (see Figure 3).

133

LEARNING TOMORROW

Figure 3.
The Director's Kit. Students
start by choosing from themenus. Here the student haschosen to examine
Renaissance costumes.

Design

Casts
Sets
Costumes
Props

Interpretation

Performance

Classical
Medieval

Renaissance
18th Century
19th Century
20th Century

An archive of hundreds of costumed actors and props can be viewed on thevideodisc. The students browse through this electronic wardrobe and prop
room, make selections that suit their interpretations, and place all theseelements on a staging space, where they will, in fact, work out the scene.
Students move characters across the stage to create blocking patterns, which
are recorded and can be played back (see Figure 4).

134

LEARNING TOMORROW

Figure 4.
The Director's Kit. The
student has chosen the desired
costume and will transfer it to
the stage area. When all thedesign elements are selected,
the student can animate thescene.

The Director's Notebook stores the students' work together with portableversions of some of On Stage's lessons, so that the work can be saved andused at home or school.

130
135

LilibillIll

LEARNING TOMORROW

Figure 5.
The Director's Notebook. The
screen shows a text from
Hamlet, with thecorresponding interiormonologue, glossary, andanimated stage. The student isin the process of developing a
subtext for the scene.

FILE

TASK
411

TOOL

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Hamlet 1111135-141

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logue Editor

Hamlet's thoughts and feelings

Oph. 0 help him, you sweet heavens. (135)

Ham. If thou dost marry, III give thee this plague for thy

OpheruL you cannot ever esc

dowry : be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow.
thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee b a

In On Stage, students do not follow a rigid tutorial format, but choose
activities as they need them. If they are unfamiliar with a particular concept,. they can request a "mini-tutorial," and can also go to a library of annotatedexamples where they can practice at their own pace.

The sequence of activities is determined by the students' goal, whether it be tointerpret a scene, to describe a character, or to design a performance. The
resulting work is arranged and recorded for them on disc or tape, and can beused for further study. In Tasks and Methods (Section 5), we will describe
the multiplicity of activities available in these three programs, but we may now
pause to mention three representative ones.

Watching a scene and comparing different versions. On Stage
allows a close, comparative viewing of several versions of a scene. Viewing
different productions of Hamlet one after another, for example, changes theway that students perceive theater.

Consider the nunnery scene in Hamlet. Hamlet seems very angry with
Ophelia, tells her he does not love her, and accuses all women of infidelity
and treachery. At the same time, however, he expresses his longing and love
for her and accuses himself of unworthiness. What is going on? What ishappening in Hamlet's mind? Does Hamlet love Ophelia, or does he hate her?
How can students make sense of all these contradictory bits of information?

r
136

131

:.EARNING TOMORROWOn Stage allows students to address questions like these by viewing several
versions of the same scene. For example, in one version with Nicol
Williamson, Hamlet is rather seedy and lascivious. Here the performers have
solved the illogicalities in Hamlet's language by imagining that Hamlet isplaying with Ophelia's feelings because he wants to seduce her.
In contrast, in the Russian version a tortured, handsome Hamlet is discovered
brooding under the stairway in a dark hallway by a fragile Ophelia, whom heproceeds to humiliate and terrify. This Hamlet's illogical behavior is portrayed
as stemming not from sexual teasing, but from the repressed violence andparanoia of a man who both loves Ophe ha and suspects her of treachery, andwho resents the attraction he feels toward her.
Notice that both versions present appropriate, compelling solutions to thesame puzzle; yet they are utterly different. The entire meaning of the scene haschangedthe very story, events, and emotions.
As students articulate and evaluate different interpretations "they are more
likely to realize that interpretation is an art rather than a science," and they are
emotionally freea from the tyranny of the "right" answer. They develop theirown standards of judgment and taste and are encouraged to undertake a boldinvestigation of the possibilities of theatrical interpretation.

Creating a subtext. On Stage also allows students to master one of thecentral concepts in theater, the subtext. Actors create an inner life for theircharacters by imagining the characters' basic assumptions, their goals andintentions, their feelings about the situation they are in and the people they arewith. These decisions about the characters' inner life form the subtext of theinterpretation, the level of feeling and motive operating beneath the text.
As students using On Stage observe a character, they try to imagine what thatcharacter is thinking as he or she acts. For example, as Hamlet says "Are you
honest?" he may be thinking "I don't trust you" or conversely "I love you."
Students type this "interior monologue" on the keyboard, and it appears as a
subtitle on the screen. Working with this monologue, students formulate thecharacter's general motives and needs, what obstacles face the character as heattempts to get what he wants, and what strategies he employs to overcome
the obstacles.
In order to create a subtext, students have to become active and engaged
viewers, to "slow down" and carefully watch and judge. They must observe
the actor closely, and by empathizing with the character, imagine thecharacter's psychological state and the precise flow of his motives andthoughts. They also have to notice how thoughts spring from motives and selfinterest; and how motives in turn flow from deep assumptions people haveabout their lives. They thus make visible the constant and fascinating tension
between what people want and think, and what they actually do.

' i.
137 LEARNING TOMORROW

1,32

Analyzing relationships between characters. Plays are long andcomplicated events. One way to grasp the overall shape and movement of thework is to follow major characters through the course of the action and notethe ways they change and develop. For example, students using On Stage
may be reading the text of the nunnery scene from Hamlet and want toexamine the relationship between characters. They can select any two
characters (see Figure 6).
Figure 6.
Choosing the characters. The
screen displays the charactersfrom the nunnery scene withlines connecting them.
Students indicate a line tochoose the pair they want tostudy.

The program then offers the students a selection of the most important scenes
between the two (see Figure 7).

138 LEARNING TOMORROW

Figure 7.
Choosing the scene.
Examining the relationshipbetween Hamlet and the king,the student has selected thenunnery scene and will workwith the text, the context, andthe performances.

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,,
e % 0%-,,,. ee"e ee eee e,.-e,.-e.-,4,...-,e...-,e .-,e .-e,.-e.-e...--e,.9.-, ee;;:,49% : 1 ,%1%,%,%,%,%,,%,%,,,,,The student's goal in On Stage is to construct a full portrait of the charactersby analyzing each scene for the evidence it contains about the characters'
lives, emotions, thoughts, and beliefs. They can examine the language for
information and clues, and then assess how this evidence has been interpreted
and presented by the different performances. Of course, each performance
will have interpreted the evidence differently. Students can accept a parti mlar
interpretation or come to their own decisions.

They assemble this evidence in a character portfolio trying to reconstruct acomplete history, description, and analysis of the character, including
information that is missing from the text. They then plot how the characterchanges and develops. Students use the portfolio to argue a case, citing
sources, and advancing interpretations of specific moments in scenes. They
can include evidence from performances by "clipping" images and segmentsof scenes and "pasting" them in the portfolio, thus creating a kind of
multimedia essay.
Students learn how to discover and assess evidence, to evaluate choices, andto see the interconnections among characters. They can take the portfolio thatthey have created and use it at home or in class, to further analyze the play.

139 LEARNING TOMORROWThe Summary
On Stage does not overwhelm the students with technology, nor imprison
them in narrowly conceived learning paths. It offers a simple, open space forstudy and creation.

With On Stage, students control the pace. sequence, and goals of theirlearning. However, they are also guided t: ri supported at every turn bytutorial and example; and are supplied with the information, concepts, andtools they need. Woiting through the lessons, they have the satisfaction ofcompleting many intriguing tasks. At the end of their work, they see theirefforts in the product they take away with them.
Instructors will remain in control of the teaching and the content matter. On
Stage does not reflect any specific approach to Shakespeare, but simply
provides tools and the basic materials for study. Teachers can easily rearrange
these materials by linking film segments and images with text, animations,and graphics, and in effect, design completely new lessons. By substituting a
new videodisc with materials from another play, On Stage can be directly
adapted for use with a dramatic work by any playwright.

On Stage is extremely flexible. It can be used by one student or by groups ofstudents; at home, in a classroom, or in a rehearsal hall; by beginning students
or professionals; as a one-time resource or as the basis for an entire course.
Finally, as we will describe in the next section, On Stage's programs can beadapted for use in other disciplines that also focus on events that are difficult
to present in the classroom.

11:
140 LEARNING TOMORROW

Significance?

This project is on he cutting edge of computer animation and creates a whole new class of"electronic marionette" applications for teaching that can be generalized to nomheatricalapplications. Barbara Bowen, Manager, External Research, Apple Computer, Inc.

The invention of books revolutionized our study of the spoken word.
Language was taken "out of time," so to speak; readers could move at theirown pace through the work, without regard for chronological order. Details
could be examined at leisure, comparisons made with other pieces of speech,
and wholly new utterances could be created by selecting and combining
unrelated parts. These wondrous capabilities have remained the foundation of
our methods of learning for many centuries.
Advances in technology now promise an analogous transformation of ourstudy of live events. All the pieces are in place, and solutions are appearing
rapidly. On Stage can contribute a significant part to this transformation
through programs that permit film to be handled like text, taken out of time,
examined, annotated, recombined. While On Stage's immediate goal is achange in the way we can teach theater, On Stage will also contribute to awidely based change in education as a whole.

Current Status of Teaching Shakespeare
Inadequacies of current approaches. Shakespeare occupies a uniqueplace in our schools and in our culture. No other figure is held in such highesteem by both the critics and the public. The fascination with Shakespeare isendless and deep: festivals flourish, new popular works based on the plays
appear regularly, and he is studied throughout the land, from the lowest to thehighest levels of our schools.
The plays were written for the mass audiences of Shakespeare's time, andthey still can enthrall the widest range of viewers or readers. Yet a
considerable group of students never overcome the initial obscurity of thelanguage and the unfamiliarity of the theatrical conventions.
Film and television offer students competing models of performance andparticipation that do not prepare them for the kind of concentrated effort
required by the plays, whose visual and sensual impact is lost in a traditionalclassroom.
On Stage is designed to supplement the strengths of traditional methods ofteaching, and to remedy their inadequacies. There are three ways
Shakespeare's plays are currently taught: by reading the text, by watching aperformance, and by working on a production. Each way provides something
irreplaceable, and each has its limitations.

.P C
141 LEARNING TOMORROW

Approach Through Text. Shakespeare wrote plays, not books. As
David Riggs, eminent historian of Elizabethan stage, writes,
Wz. forget that when Shakespeare died in 1616, half of his plays,
including masterpieces like Twelfth Night, Macbeth, Antony andCleopatra, and The Tempest, had not been published and had little chanceof ever finding a reading audience; Shakespeare regarded them as theproperty of his acting company, the King's Men. Perhaps the greatest
single frustration of teaching a Shakespeare lecture course today is theprospect of spending an entire quarter teaching students texts that were
never mcant to be read.

Even when we consider the text not as a replacement for the play, but as arecord of a performance, problems remain. Thz text gives only a partial
record of the performance. To complete a reading of the text, students must
imagine the play being performed. But to ask students to create a performancein their minds is to demand of them what is difficult even for the mostexperienced professional, for the text does not clearly describe theperformance. Rather, the text suggests a pattern of possible choices to bemade by a group of workers within the context of a specific performing
situation. It is only as these decisions accumulate ("I will pause here; I willturn there; I will design blue costumes or metal furniture") that the "meaning"of Lie production slowly emerges. Any o'ie production of Hamlet is a uniquecreation arising from the one-tune collaboaation of playwright, designer,
director, and p---formers.

In fact, there can be no final, "correct" version of the text. Diametrically
opposed interpretations may be equally powerful and legitimate. When the
only experience students have is the text, it is hard for them to understandhow different choices could be equally valid. Are there not rules that control
interpretation? How can one actor be "better" than another if they both arefollowing the same script? Only by teaching students :o regard the text as aset of suggestions for a pertly Itt.nce can students grasp the standards of
judgment that govern theater.
,,ed to help students imagine a performance from the text, by giving themextensive and intimate contact with performance. This is true in other fields:
notation in dance, musical scores, diagrams of a football play, trai; scripts of atherapy session, a doctor's written diagnosis of an illness, missals in achurch; all these are pc:c: records if students lack extensive experience of theevents to which they refer.

142 LEARNING TOMORROW

Approach Through Watching a Performance. Watching the play on
stage or on film obviously solves one major problem. Students see the event.
However, there are other problems:Students watching a performance tend to assume that they are seeing theauthoritative version. Any performance, however, is merely one possible
realizatioi of the script. Students need to develop standards of taste inorder to compare and evaluate different performing versions.
On film, the world of process, creation, and choice is invisible. In order tojudge the performance, students need to understand what choices weremade in the course of the production.
A performance must be studied slowly and carefully, for it is so densely
packed with detail and implication that even the best students can only
absorb a fraction of the experience.

Compared to text, film is an inflexible medium. We can "flip" through abook, isolate passages, read and reread, quickly compare widely separated
passages. We are in firm control; our interests, rhythms, habits, and needs
determine the study process. We make decisions, we select, underline, omit,
review; in fact, we imagine a world. We need a comparably flexible andinteractive way to work with film.
In brief, students need to know what to watch in a performance and how toevaluate what they see.

Approach Through Participating in a Performance. Students' actual
participation in performance provides a powerful supplement to reading text
and viewing film. Students vividly experience the complex unfolding of theinterpretive event as they ent, into the social, sensual, and theatrical worldsof the play. However, as a general and embracing method of teaching dram,it, too, h_s problems.
Students need to experience a fully realized, excellent production, for thefull range, daring, and power of theater are revealed only in professional
work. Often neither teachers nor students have enough experience toproduce an exemplary version of a play.
Practical theatrical people are rarely trained to think abstractly about theirwork, nor to help students to articulate and generalize broader implications.
Students, worrying about cues and lights, usually do not ponder large
questions and meaning.
The ater is extremely costly Most schools cannot offei ..teatrical
opp.rtunities to all student:

In summary, students need to see, study, and participate in theater. On Stage
offers students the chance to do all three in an integrated manner.

143 LEARNING TOMORROW

1S

The Teachers
The criticism of Shakespeare in our century, starting with the work of suchgreat pioneers as Granville-Barker and Chambers, has greatly benefited fromapproaches that combine traditional literary scholarship with a deep
knowledp of the world of theater. On Stage Id lows these kinds of insights to
be demonstrated in the classroom.
On Stage will appeal to teachers as a eh %nce to incorporrte their feeling fortheater directly into the classroom. Professor Ron Rebholz, a distinguishedteacher of Shakespeare at Stanford, described exactly that desire in his letter of
support for On Stage:

I have been following, on the sidelines but with great interest, thedevelopment of your Shakespeare Project.

Obviously Shakespeare wrote his plays to be performed. Withoutslighting the attention they deserve as great literary texts, I know weagree that they should, first and foremost, be taught and studied as texts
to be created and re-created on the stage or in comparable media, like film
or videotape.
As a teacher of Shakespeare for 25 years at Stanford, I have been
frustrated by the limited opportunities to teach the plays and get mystudents to study the plays as works for and in performance. Simply to
get them to see the plays I once, several years ago, organized a year-long
Shakespeare film festival; and the possibilities of seeing the plays havebeen enhanced by the advent of videotape versions, especially the BBCPBS series. But seeing and studying are two different things. I havesince incorporated in my couises staged readings, directed andperformed by the students, of scenes from the plays we study, but thequality of the scenes is not high and the experience benefits mainly those
who do the readings. If I understand the thrust of your project, it willoffer a completely new and exciting possibility of all my students
studying the plays as they have been and might be performed.
I don't have to tell you the extraordinary educational value of theexperience offered by your project. It will show students the many
possible ways of staging scenes 'Id playing characters and theimplications of the actual choices for the interpretation of the whole play.
Most important, it will make them grasp the point that I have been trying
for years to make them grasp in my fumbling ways: Shakespeare wrote
plays, there are virtually limitless ways of performing them, and someways are better than others in capturing the "spirit" of the text and in
affecting the audience.
I know many teachers of Shakespeare throughout this country and in
Britain, and I am confident that they will all greet your project as a
genuine and welcome revolution in their teaching of his plays.
144 LEARNING TOMORROW

116111111IM

Response to news of our project has been gratifying. Professor Rebholz's
sentiments are echoed in the more than 50 letters of inquiry and su
wehave received from all over the country. Professionals whose w
isintroducing technology into the curriculum have been particularly excited bythet sf such a new system. We have been invited to participate inconferences in Prague and Brussels on art and technology, and our programs
have been written about in many papers and magazines. Both the BBL: andthe SFS' in Berlin will feature the TheaterGame on television programs next
winter.
We are particularly proud of the list of internationally prominent scholars,
editors, and artistic directors who have consented to work on our advisoryboard. We feel this interest flows from the recognition that On Stage is a new
solution to a critically important educational problem.

The Students
On Stage is designed to enhance the educational experience of the averagecollege student and to extend the world of Shakespeare to the nontraditional
learner.

Courses on Shakespeare. On Stage, because of its emphasis on student
design and collaboration, should lead to a more fluid and open environment
for both students - I faculty, freeing the teacher from the restraints of alecture format, al.:.
wing students considerable independence.
In lectL

3, thi I.,-,:essor could demonstrate basic irieas about staging andinterpretauon, or could show variant scenes, or do 'ample stagings on thesimulation pr am. Students could also work privately on workstations,following their L:wn interests, or could do research for papers or student
productions. If teachers wished to provide a special focus for their classes,
they could author new lessons that reflected their own interests.

Teaching Shakespeare demands that instructors deal with issues from
intellectual history, psychology, history of art, and poetry. Instructors
necer3arily focus on one or more of these approaches, and often do not havemuch time to devote to teaching theatrical form. On Stage could be used as aweekly activity to supplement lectures. Discussion groups .night focus on
student assignments done at home or experimental staging exercises in theclass itself.

Survey Courses. Many universities require all students to take comesthat offer some Shakespeare. In such a larp survey course, On Stage could
be used in discussion sections and demonstration purposes in class.
Lecturers in such courses often have little foundation in theater and little timeto spend on any one subject. With Cn Stage, students could quickly learn
enough about theater to guide them through the readings; they could study on
their own at home or in a computer lab, and then do a written assignment.
145 LEARNING TOMORROW

140

Special Courses on Shakespeare in Theater. On Stage could form thenucleus of an entirely new kind of class, which integrates the criticism andpractice of an art form. Last spring, Professor Friedlander, the principal
investigator of the Shakespeare Project, experimented with the creation of sucha course, called "Shakespeare in Perfimrince," using components of the
prototype system.
The students were of all ages, backgrounds, and majors, and did not generally
have previous theatrical or artistic experience. Students read plays andcriticism, discussed dramatic theory, and applied performance methods tosolve problems of interpretation. Students used the prototype for assignments,
demonstrated the results in class, then actually performed scenes.

The result was a fluid interchange between kinds of learningtheoretical andpractical. The goal was to let students grasp the translations from ene domain
to another, to understand how criticism aids performance, how performancech.. Ices solve interpretive issues, and how concepts translate into design
choices.
The course created an environment in which students felt free to make daring
choices, and to support and inspire -me another. Students with no special
talent for theater actually did very nice workmuch to their surprise. They
learned to watch others and themselves critically, to evaluate creative choices,
to find complex standards to measure their own and other.,' work. They also
learned to play, to improvise, to have fun; they discovered that relaxation,
curiosity, and joy are powerful aids to creativity.
This kind of course demands teachers who have interest and expertise in bothcriticism and performance. It is somewhat expensive, since the class cannot bevery large, but it provides a pr verful environment for expanding students'
thinking about art and their on experience.

Increased Access for Nontraditional Learners. Often, students who
resist literary and analytic approaches can be caught by the power of visualexperience. And once caught and engaged, students can move faster andfurther than they would have imagined. Because On Stage allows so many
levels of approaches, students have opportunities to fulfill many goals,
receiving immediate rewarus for their efforts.
On Stage provides students with all the instruction they need to use its
programs. On Stage can thus reach out to students who, because of poor
verbal skills or lack of formal education, are effectively deprived of nourishingcontact with classic theater. With no preparation or background, students
could watch different versions of scenes; spend time in our practice libraries,
looking at annotated segments of scenes and reading explanatory backgroundcomments; browse through archives, picking costumes and cast; and movecharacters around a stage.

146 LEARNING TOMORROW

141

On Stage would also appeal to the numerous "lay" people who love
Shakespearewho take their families for weekends to the major festivals, but
who lack formal training in theater. The many institutions that provide
nontraditional learning, such as community colleges, public libraries, and theeducational arms of major theaters and festivals, could integrate On Stage into
their programs, granting people a rare chance to learn what happens "behindthe scenes," thus deepening their enjoyment of live performance.

Finally, it would not be difficult for a teacher of English, possessed of a love
for Shakespeare but with no background in theater, to learn enough from On
Stage to include teaching about drama in class; or in fact, to create a new
course offering on theater. In this way, many small or poor schools could
afford to add theater to their curriculum.
In summary, On Stage would significantly expand the public's access totheater and theater education by inspiring the creation of new classes, by
reaching out to learners alienated from traditional education, and by enlarging
the repertoire of public extension courses.

A Model for Teaching Art, Not Science
On Stage provides a model for instruction in the arts in generil. Theater is notscience or math, but an art form; and we need to teach it in ways appropriate
to its nature. The form of a work of art is complex, and not easily analyzed.
What we say about a poem is less rich than the poem itself. Teaching art, weneed to convey a correspondingly rich, complex, and multiple view of the art
object.
Our goal is to guide the stude to full comprehension of the work without
reducing its complexity and pou cr. We need to find a correct lx lance
between mastery of the field (information and history), and developing thestudent's ability to respond to the experience. We believe that students arecapable of enlarging and deepening their insight into the field even if they are
not trained or talented in theater.
The center of our instructional technique is not a series of right or wrong
answers, but a series of concepts about theater and art. Students see how
great performers solve problems, and they read what experts say about those
performances. They then imitate the procedures both through working out
interpretations and by designing theater. In the process, they develop atolerance for the uncertainty and multiple possibilities inherent in all forms of
art.

14;
147 LEARNING TOMORROW

F

Traditionally in the arts, teaching information, while important, is not central.
Instead, students learn by exposure to great works, and by acquiring
techniques of observation and description. In poetry, for example, students
are asked to read many poems, then they learn to analyze the language, andfinally they read criticism, as models of the analytic or interpretative process.
In short, they sharpen their taste and perception by sustained contact with theworks and with high examples of critical response.
On Stage provides similar instruction: students watch many performances,learn analytic concepts and procedures, see many examples of expert analysis
and response, and then design a performance themselves.

Our Approach to Learning. Social learning theory (Bandura, 1977)
supports the major premises of our instructional design. Bandura's research
has found that people k.cini a great deal through direct observation of events,
even when the events are dramatized or portrayed in media such as film or
television (Bandura, Ross, and Ross, 1963). Vicariously, viewers constructinternal models of behavior that they can later trazslate into action.
This theory reminds 'lie of the complex transformations that are so central totheater. The actor translates his internal motivations and cognitive processes
into behavior, action, and speech. In order for spectators to appreciate theevent, they, too, must grasp these relationships, internalize them, understandthem in a unified way, and finally respond.
Bandura emphasizes that this complex process is sustained by the excitementof completing "proximal" goals, which are short-range and easily fulfilled. In
On Stage, students learn in short sequences, and can easily manage tocomplete any one cycle of observation, description, and prciuction.

Bandura's model further emphasizes the importance to learning of selfregulating, self-directing, and self-reflecting qualities. Because theenvironment is swiftly changing, people must continually remain open to newmodels of experience that they can absorb, internalize, and use.
By moving from study to design, students can externalize and explore theirown learning. Guided instruction takes students through the tasks in anorderly and nonthreatening way, which permits students with no particulartalent for theater to extend their capabi:ities. On Stage offers students multiple
pathways to multiple solutions, allowing them to create at their own level,
inspired by the the highest examples.

A Model for Applications in Other Disciplines
While On Stage's programs have bee:i developed for use with a theater
videodisc, they can be applied with relative ease to visual materials from otherdisciplines.

148 LEARNING TOMORROWBackground. At Stanford, a group of faculty began discussing suchapplications in the spring of 1985. The initial planning meeting was attended
by representatives from the departments of Humanities, Geology, Athletics,
Drama, Computer Science, Communications, French, and Italian, and by the
director of Stanford's Audio-visual Labomto_y. Other faculty members havesince indicated their interest in working toward a widespread introduction ofvita vdisc-based instruction into the classroom. The group decided to create a
portfolio of applications that could use the programs developed for On Stage.
Applications. Faculty interest in these applications is reflected in the lettersthey have written describing their initial ideas for applying On Stage to theirdisciplines. Kris Samuelson of Communications says that the introduction ofsuch programs would be "like opening new windows to learning." Elizabeth
Larkham of Dance remarks, 'This tool would make dance choreography,
technique, and production come alive for the student in war that mightsurpass experience of a live performance."
Other instructors arc equally eloquent about the effect of having students
interact with these complex events. Professor Zimbardo of Psychology
writes, "The wonderful thing about this new methodology is its energizing of
the learner's involvement with the text, the scene, the decisions to be made,and the predictions of outcomes of various interventions. Then in an instant,the response options materialize, then can be reviewed until the fundamentals
are mastered at the student's own pace."

Zimbardo especially welcomed the power of the program to convey thenuances of behavior, and to teach students how to observe with precision: "I
could definitely use the technology so well developed by your team to help
students better realize certain fundamental principles in social psychology,
such as the significance of alternative "construals" of the same environmental
situation by different actors and observers. I can think of no better way to aid
me in the teaching of the subtle dynamics involved: (a) in dyadic interactions,(b) in nonverbal communication displays, (c) in cross-cultural behavioral
differences, (d) in the ways gender roles bias or filter the perceptions ofreality, and more."
Professor Zelditch of Sociology emphasized how important visual materials
are in his field: "I teach a course called American Society in Film andLiterature. Students taking this course read one novel or play each week andse' one film each week. The focus is entirely on sociologythat is, not on
aesthetic methods or values. Literature and film are used as a method of
increasing insight into the society that produces and is portrayed by it." Oneadvantage of using On Stage he cites is in the possible fmancial savings: "Ialso foresee a long-run reduction in costs. It costs me about the price of ateaching assistant to rent films through the Meyer Film Service each year. The
initial costs of videodisc would be greater, but after that the costs should
decrease substantially."

149 LEARNING TOMORROW

x4

Instructors such as Zelditch and Samuelson already depend on film and video
and could "move up" to interactive video, using both On Stage programs andits workstations. .Another professor in socidogy, Henry Walker, foresees
this technology's increased role within his discipline:
Professor Bernard P. Cohen and I have just received a generous grant,
which will permit us to fully computerize our laboratory facilities during
the upcoming year. It is my understanding that the technology you aredeveloping permits interfacing microcomputers with videodisc
equipment. If our department had access to such technology, we could
replace much of current instructional and research materials (which areon videotape) with videodiscs. Since it is easier and simpler to locate
and play back information on videodisc than videotaped material, I am
sure that those of us who presently use videotape would increase our
instructional use of video materials. In addition, I suspect that some of
my colleagues who do not presently use videotape as a teaching aid
would be enticed to do so.

Professor Walker also reiterates Professor Zimbardo's excitement at theopportunities for research offered by Or Stage:
The most exciting prospect for us would be the capability of using thetechnology in our undergraduate courses which have a strong researchemphasis. Several of our courses require students to observe social
interaction that has been recorded on videotape, and to simultaneously
record what they are observing. By using videodisc equipment
interfaced with our mist= of microcomputers and one of the available"window" programs, we could carry out these activities more
efficientlyand at the same time record and store the data students are
generating.

Summary. The future development of this project at Stanford will be
designed to crystallize a range of ongoing efforts in a range of derciplines at
the University. For it will provide a technological context into which a range
of individualsteachers and learnerscan supply their favorite "if I only had
the capability to..." scenario. Theater will become an alive and accessible fieldas will many others that are currently "alive only for the moment"

150-LEARNING TOMORROW

References
Bandura, A. (1977). Social Learning Theory. Englewood Cliffs, New
Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Bandura, A., Ross, D. and S.A. Ross. (1963). "Imitation of Film MediatedAggressive Models." Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, vol. 66.

151

Larry Friedlander
Larry Friedlander has been a professor of
Shakespeare in the Stanford University English
department since 1965, and has a background inboth literary criticism and practical theater. He has
worked as an actor and director in many companies
on the West Coast, including the Shakespeare
Festivals at San Diego (the Old Globe), California,
and at Ashland, Oregon. He has long beeninterested in the problem of integrating traditional
Shakespeare education with performance theory andpractice. As a graduate student at Harvard, hecreated an experimental course combining criticism
and performance of theater. He has since taught
similar courses not only at Stanford, but at the Free
University of Berlin, and to professional actors at
the London Academy of Music and the DramaticArts. Professor Friedlander has a longstanding
interest in student theater and theater education. He
founded one of Stanford's oldest and largest
undergraduate performing groups, The Company,
in 1966, and teaches acting and directing for the
Drama and English departments. He has also
written on the teaching of drama in the university.

14 7
I2

CiceroA Framework for Multimedia Projects for Classics

Bernard Frischer
UCLA

153

LEARNING TWAORROWBackground

Thanks largely to the efforts of Theodore Brunner of U.C. Irvine, Classics isnow one of the most computerized fields in the humanities. Since 1972,
Professor Brunner has overseen the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, a project todigitize all surviving Greek literature from Homer to 600 A.D. The work islargely complete, and a computerized corpus of some 2,900 authors and 50
million words has been released to the scholarly public.i
To date, use of this immense data base has been limited to string searches,
which may be either global or limited to a subset of texts and authors. Two
different systems have been developed to perform these searches on
minicomputers. The first, called IBYCUS, was developed by David Packard
in the 1970s to run on Hewlett-Packard equipment. The second, created from1982 to 1984 by Gregory Crane at Harvard, can be used on any computer thatruns UNIX.

In typical configurations of the Harvard systemsuch as the one David Blank
and I designed for use at UCLA and the Getty Center for the History of Art
and the HumanitiesMacintosh computers are used as smart terminals linked
to a VAX 750 or 780 by modems and asynchronous line drivers. In the last
few months, both the Packard and Crane systems have been experimentallyported to ricrocomputers with optical disk drives in order to exploit thereformatting of the data base onto CD-ROM. Meanwhile, a project creating adata base for Latin has been started this year at Yale University under the
direction of George Goold.

1See L Berkowitz and K.A. Squitier, Thesaurus Linguae Graecae. Canon of Greek Authors and Works, second
edition (Oxford 1986) xixi'.

1,5

LEARNING TOMORROW

149

Multimedia Projects and Fifth-Generation
Computer Systems

Strengths and Weaknesses of Existing Classics Software
The capabilities of the Packard and Crane systems are truly astonishing.
Within a few seconds, one can search the entire works of an author or even allof Greek literature to find every instance of a certain string; and one cantelephone from home and read any text in the entire library of Greek literature.
This ability has helped researchers to do things never before possible. For
example, the concordance (an alphabetical listing of every word in a text with
one line of context) is now a virtually defunct genre of Greek scholarship.
On the other hand, as a scholar and educator, I must confess that, for a varietyof reasons, I am dissatisfied with existing computer applications for my field.
First, there are no instructional uses of the data base, for the simple reason
that current software presumes a fairly high level of fluency in ancient Greek.
Secon,', the available search programs leave much to be desired, both in theiruser friendliness and in their power to manage and manipulate the data base.
Boolean operators are not yet available, nor have the resources of theMacintosh been tapped to any degree. Finally, the preoccupation with string
searching, while understandable, has given many classicists the mistaken
impression that the primary use of the data base is as an electronic library or
concordance. There are many other potential uses for this wonderful data
base.

UCLA's Plans for New Classics Computer Applications
At UCLA, we have been encouraged by the central administration during thepast academic year to develop a three-year plan for use of the computer in
research and instruction. In our department, we began by envisioning an ideal
multimedia expert system for Greek, Latin, and Classical Civilization. We
proceeded on the assumption that our vision could be realized in the next ten
to fifteen years, when fifth-generation computer systems2 and massive textual
and visual data bases will have been created and made commercially available.
Our three-year plan was thus understood to be a step in the direction of adefmable goal.

2See T. Moto-Olt, (ed.), R111 Generation Computer Systems. Proceedings of the International Conference on FilthGeneration COMptiler Symms, Tokyo, Japan, October 19-22, 1981 (Amstetti en, New York, Oxford 1982).
156

LEARNING TOMORROWThe Basis of Planning: A Vision of the Year 2000
Before describing our short-term plan (the focus of this paper), let me sketch
my vision of where we will be in 10 or 15 years. By that tune, we shouldhave created a Classics Expert System that will serve everyone from the
beginning student to the most advanced scholar. At the heart of this system
will be vast visual and textual data bases of the primary materials of thecriptss, inscriptions, archaeological sites, art, architecture, andother artifactsas well as the major reference works and about 25 percent of
the secondary literature that is used 80 to 90 percent of the time%
Communication with the system will be almost entirely by voice.
Voice recognition and sr, ithesis and the natural-language processing of Greek
and Latin will have progressed far enough to permit computer-managed
instruction in the ancient languages, starting from the elementary level.
Machine translations will permit students of Classical Civilizationthat is,
those who study antiquity through English translationsto access the sametextual data base used by students and scholars of Greek and Latin.
Instruction and research will emphasize interdisciplinary approaches, sincesuch c: the expertise of the ancillary specialties of the field will have been
incorporated into he expert .;ystem.

3The Thesaurus Linr,,ne Graecae project gives us ancient Greek literature through modem scholarly eJltions; theideal Classics Expert System will include a data base of the actual manuscripts and papyri on which the modem
editions are based, along with a collation program for automatically representing the ancient, medieval, and modem

evidenr for the text.
4Using a library data base program such as UCLA's ORION, it should be easy to determine the most frequently
consulted books and journals within a certain range of call numbers. It is my undoatmented suspicion that a verysmall percentage of books accotmu for a very high percentage of what readers actually use in a field.

5See H. Tanaka, at al, Intelligent Man-Machine Interface," in T. Moto-Oka, op.cit, 147-155.
157

LEARNING TOMORROW

X51

For instruction, this means that learning will take place in environments inwhich a linguistic signifier is encountered with immediate visualization

ofand, when possible, dramatized interaction withthe correspondingreferent. For scholarship, this means that quantification and statistical analysis
will become increasingly important, as will the methodologies of economics,
psychology, and sociology, which facilitate the analysis of cultural artifacts ofdifferent periods, provemences, and types. In this ideal world, students willlearn faster and letter, and for the first time in centuries', will even be able tospeak Greek and Latin. Scholars will be freed from much, if not all, of thepresently involved in data collection, and will have more time todevelop and discipline their informed historical imaginations. The advent of
the Classics Exmti System will thus make this central field of the humanities

less mechanicamore accessible and vital.

6This feature of CALI (Computer-Auistea Aguage Instruction) in Latin and Greek cannot be-overemphasized,
since it will enable classicists to benefit from "modem language" techniques of interactive oral instruction. Thus,
while CAI lilt been found to have only modest effectiveness in general (see J.A. Kulik, C.-LC. Kulik, P.A.
Cohen, "Effectiveness of Computer-based College Teaching: A Meta-analysis of Findings," Review of Educational
Research 50 (1980) 525-544; K. Ahmad, at et, op.cit., I 9-122), it is reasonable to exnect that CAI will have anigh level of effectiveness in Greek and Latin instruction. Significantly increased effr
mess via videodisc-based
insuuction is repotted by A.M. Abdulla, L.O. Watkins, and J.S. Henke, "The Use of i All Language Entry andLaser Videodisk Tedmology in CAI," Journal of Medical Education 59 (1984) 739-745. The advantages of thevideodisc for foreign language instniction are disoused by S.E.K. Otto, "Videodisk Image Retrieval for Language
Teaching," System 11 (1981) 47-52.

!i8

LEARNING TOMORROWUMultimedia Projects for the Next Three Years andthe Educational Needs They Address

Our goal in the next three years is to take some small but important steps
ioward tne Classics Expert System, by showing that a multimedia computer
system can be built wthy that will help solve pressing problems confronting
us in teaching Greek, Latin, and Ancient Civilization to our students.

Immediate Problems to be Addressed:
Booming Enrollment, Stable Faculty Size
What are these problems? First, there are the welcome problems stemmingfrom soaring enrollment in Classics. The following table shows the steady
growth in the number of undergraduate and graduate enrollments in Classics
at UCLA from 1977-78 to 1985-86:

Table: Total UCLA Classics Enrollment, 1977-1986

Year

Enrollment

1977-78
1979-80
1981-82
1983-84
1984-85
1985-86

1,117
1,278
1,489
1,547
2,181

',995

Some of the factors responsible for this trend are local: for example, thenumber of undergraduates at UCLA grew by nearly 10 percent during thisperiod; and in the fall of 1983, the Classics department initiated a new major
in Classical Civilization, in which the study of Greek and Latin isrecommended but not required. Local factors cannot, however, explain theentire rise, since many colleagues around the country report similar trends attheir institutions.

Perhaps the most pressing problem caused by the near trebling of enrollment
at UCLA during the past 10 years results from the simple fact that our faculty
size has remained constant. Thus, our student/faculty ratio has worsened, andwe need to find some remedy other than increasing the size of the faculty toensure that we can maintain the quality of our instruction.
This problem is especially noticeable in the large lecture courses on Greek andRoman civilization that satisfy "general education" requirements at UCLA. In

these coursesoften the students only exposure to the humanities incollegethe average enrollmen :Its grown from about 100 to more than 400
in the past ten years. As a result, education has become quite impersonal forboth instructor and student, and the humanities have had to be presented in a
nonhumanistic way. Opportunities for class discussion have diminished, as
have the odds that a student will ever visit the professor during office hours tc
pursue discussion If some topic that aroused the student's curiosity. Multiplechoice examinations have become more frequent and have, indeed, all but
replaced essays and research papers as the basis of grading.

159

LEARNING TOMORROW

Curricular Problems
The second set of problems we need to address is curricular. I snppose that
one reason Classics is booming across the country is that it is a field that wasable to attract many bright new assistant professors during the past 20 years,
even during the depressed academic job mark:t of the 1970s. These new
faculty recruits brought vitality and energy to the field. Now entering theirmost productive years as teachers and scholars, many professors in thisgeneration have been great believers in interdisciplinary approaches toClassics. As such, they have faced great fiustrations in operating within acurriculum that is unidisciplinary at most universities, and they have beenthwarted in their attempts to infuse even traditional courses withinterdisciplinary perspectives by the absence of suitable textbooks.
For example, I teach a course called Roman Civilization to about 400 students
each year. Although there are acceptable texts for political and military history,
customs, and the arts, there is no single text that adequately synthesizes thesemajor facets of the civilization, relating developments in one area of the culture
to what is happening .irt other areas. In the courses in which Greek and Latin
literature is read in the original, the situation is still worse: the older
commentaries are going out of print faster than new ones are being published

to replace them, and only rarely do these commentariesold or newtreat
nonlinguistic or nonliterary matters.

Traditional humanistic education is quite labor-intensive. Ideally, students
study individually or in very small groups with senior tutors. If this approachwere ever appropriate and feasible m a large American research university, it
isn't any longer. Although our enrollment has trebled, I would be pleasantly
surprised if our faculty is allowed to grow by more than 15 percent (theequivalent of two new fa.'ulty positions) in the next few years. Some othersolution to the problem of our worsening faculty /student ratio is needed.

We think that a major component of any solution has to involve greater use of
the computer in instruction. We also think that the computer, used creatively,
can help solve many of the curricular problems we face. Since both kinds ofproblems are most acute in our civilization courses, it is therespecifically in
Roman Civilizationthat we propose to begin implementing our multimedia
computer project. We will also be trying to apply the same approach to ourintermediate Latin courses, in which enrollments have also been considerably
nigher in recent years.

Multimedia Solutions: Data Bases, Utilities, Applications
The great challenge during the next three years is to create a flexible
framework for software design that will last through years of innovation intechnology and educational theory. The framework that we have developed
for our project has three parts: a core of multimedia data bases; around thecore, an inr.er ring of scholarly utilities for using and modifying the databases; ard an outer ring of pedagogical applications, which use the scholarly
utilities and the data bases.

160

LEARNING TOMORROW

1r:

The nature of the core and inner ring is fairly clew. and requires more funding
than imagination to create. The core includes data bases for Greek and Latin
text;, morphologies, dictionaries, and syntax; images of archaeologicalartifacts of all buds, from coins and lamps to statues and buildings; and anencyclopedia and bibliography? The inner ring includes search programs with
Boolean operators for data collection from the data bases; and parsers formorphology, syntax, rhetoric, and meter. 1 he character of the outer ringthe
interface with the student on all levelshas taken over a year to sketch out
through the collaboration of subject experts and specialists in instructionalmedia development. I will si:mmarize our plans for the student interface in a
moment, after a word about our pedagogical assumptions.

0 Data Bue
0 Scholarly Utilities

MaPholog
Syntax0 Student Interface

Dictionary

QuestloWAnswer System

7Many of these data bares are already being mated; for example, the American Philological Association isdigitizing the standard Qassics bibliographical annual; the :.Paul Getty Museum is creating a videodisc for Greek
iconography; and our depuunent is digitizing the Greek-English lexicon.
161

LEARNING TOMORROW
I.

I

.,..

100

Pedagogical Theory: Curiosity Arousal
Whereas the structure of the core and inner ring reflect that of the field ofClassics itself, that of the outer ring must be dependent both on this field andon a theory of knowledge acquisition. The theory I have devised is a hybrid
based on the key notions of student involvement in learning' and the arousalof the student's curiosity.' The theory of interaction holds that students learn
best when they become actively involved in their own education; the theory of
curiosity (or "effectance") arousal explains how we become motivated to learn
in proportion to the confusion and challenge we experience in a newenvironment. Russ, Gold, and Stone have recently shown that when students
are exposed to extremely foreign mater; l and asked to learn it, they tend toturn for help to "dissimilar others," that is, "experts" perceived to be moreoriented to the new knowledge than were the students themselves. Russ andhis colleagues have also shown that this kind of experience significantly
increases student curiosity°

It seems to me that these two theories of learning are complementaryone
stresses the need for the student to be curious, the other tells us how to makepeople curious.

8The importance of active student involvement in learning has been emphasized in two recent reports on American
ecLeation; see M.J. Adler, The Paideia Program (New York 1984), especially pp.161-179; and Involvemnt inLearning (National Institute of Education, October 1984), especially pp.17-19. On stamen for increasing student
involvement, see V. Roadranglca and R.H. Yeany, "A Study of the Relationship among Type and Quality of
Implementation of Science Teaching Strategy, Student Formal Reasoning Ability, and Student Engagement,"
Journal of Research in Science Teaching 22 (1985) 743-60.
9eee R.W. White., "Motivation Reconsidered: The Concept of Competence," Psychological Review 66 (1959)
297-333; R.C. Russ, J.A. Goid, and W.F. Stale. "Attraction to a Dissimilar Stranger as a Function of Level of
Effectance Arousal," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 15 (' °91481 -91.

I°Ibid., 489
162

LEARNING TOMORROW

1'

11.)

How can the computer help us implement these two theories? One of thepotential strengths of CAI is its highly interactive naturehowever rareinteractivity way be in existing courseware.ii A-, for curiosity arousal, thecomputer with multimedia programming is an
tool for creating an
imaginary world that is at the same time challenging and intriguing to thestudent, and for providing the student with a friendly guide (a "dissimilar
other") or successfully navigating through that world. This guide I will call
"Cicer_, ' after the Italian word (cicerone) for a tom. guide t2

Cicero: The Student Irnerface
With this background, I can now describe zur proposed structure for the outershell, the student interface for Roman Civilization and Intermediate Latin.

In the Museo della Ovilita' Roman in Rome, there is a model of the city at its
height of development in 315 A.D., when the population had reached about 1
million and the urban fa' tic covered some 30 square kilometers. The model isextremely accurate because our archaeological knowledge of the city is quite
precise, and we even have an enormous ancient map of the t. and plan of
every building in the year 211 A.D. at a scale of 1:250. Ad. to thus visualmaterial are hundreds of pages of literary and epigraphical sources, making
Rome the best-documented city from antiquity. The model in the museum isitself quite impressiveit is over 60 feet in diameter and reflects the state of
the scholarship in Roman topography.

1 ISee K. Ahmed, et al., Computers, Language Learning afki Language Teaching (Camlxidge1985) passim, especiallyp.4: "the computer can offer interactive learning. This means that it can conduct a two-way learning session with thestudent. It is much more than a mere programmed textbook, whose powers of interaction are virtually limited to an
ability to reveal the correct answer the computer
the student's response. It can also display messages,
take the student through subsequent auempu at a question, and even take the student to a different section of the
package, depending on the nature of the response. The computer can do all this very quiddyits response ispractically instantaneous. If the computer is impersonal and literal-Trinidad, it is also unfailingly accurate and precise.
It does not tire, and its attention does not falter. It can repeat an activity with none of the errors which easily arise
from repetitice by humans, and it is as impartial and unbiased as the linguistic material which is typed into it. It
can handle a very large volume of interaction and can deliver to the student feedbadc of some subtlety, at more
frequent barrels than would be possible for a human teacher in all but individual tuition sessions. And it is fie cible
in a number of significant ways...." On the importance of eliciting student interaction in language learning, set J.H.
Schumann, "Second Language Acquisition: The Pidginization Hypothesis," Language Learning 26,2 (1976)
391-408, at p.403.

I1"Cicero" is also the name of a CAI authoring system used at the Open University in Great Britain; see A. Jonesand T. O'Shea, "Barriers to the Use of Computer Assisted Learning," British Journal of Educational Technology 13(1982) 207-217, at p.207.
163

LEARNING TCMORROW

15T

4Alitatralli
21.0L4

Figure 1:
Detail of the city center in themodel of ancient Rome.

1.

43.
6.111141e

Classics is the study of every aspect of ancient civilization, including
literature, religion, art, science, and even clothing and footwear. What betterway to study Classics than by returning to a cultural center like Rome,learning about tne city and s civilization, and discovering how to survive
with the help of a friendly guide? We intend to use techniques ofmacrophotography developed for contemporary city nlanning by Donald
Appleyard of U.C. Berkeley to photograph the model of Rome at street level.
We will transfer thousands of photos of the model to a videodisc or CDROM, thereby enabling us to simulate visits to the city at the high point of its
developmeno There, students of Classical Civilization and of Latin will takeguided tours emphasizing different aspects of the culture, such as religion,
economics, or politics. On each tour, the student will be able to print thescreen, thereby collecting evidence, visual ("snapshots") or literary("quotations"), to be used as documentation for an essay.

Cicero: A Sample Session
For example, in the lesson on entertainment, students will be asked to plan
their weekly tours through the city to investigate the varieties of public
entertainment and recreation available to the average citizen. The student will
also be asked to study one type of entertainment or recreation (for example,
parks, baths, or theater) in some detail.
13For a comparable (if much more modest) project, d. the "Montevidisoo" CALL package for students of Spanish.
as described by B.W. Schneider end IL. Herndon, "Veni, vidi, vici via videodisc: A Simulator for Insuuctional
Conversations." System 11(1983) 41-46.
164

LEARNING TOMORROW

1 5V

In a sample session, a student would log in, select the tour of the week, andfind displayed on the screen the twenty or so places in the city related in some
way to entertainment. The student would be asked to explore at least five of
the places and then to link them by some original observation or idea in an
essay. As the student moves into the model at street 'level to approach the firstplace, he or she will find various resources that will be helpful on the tour: agroup of guides (personified along the borders of the screen by actual
polychrome portraits from the Roman period and given names by which they
may be invoked), a glossary of technical terms, a bibliography with leads forfurther research in the University Research Library, and a small reference
library, including key ancient and modern texts about the sites.
The student might begin with very little idea of how to approach theassignment. He or she might therefore consult a guide, asking for advice on
how to proceed. The guide will teach socratically whenever possible,
answering a question with a question, in order to force students to think
through their problems themselves.
A student chowing to study the theater might notice and comment on theconcentration of the three main theaters (Pompey's, Marcellus's, andBalbus's) in a "theater district" in the western Campus Martius; or the
dedication of the theaters to famous politicians; or the freestanding design ofthe structures, differentiating them from their Greek prototypes, which weregenerally built into hillsides; or the presence of large public peristyles behindthe stage.
Wondering why one theater (Pompey's) has a temple atop the seating section,
the student woad search for an explanation. He or she might, for example,
consult the technical glossary on "theaters" under "building types," and there
would note that temples are not, in fact, common enough appendages to belisted and illustrated in the axonometric drawing of the typical Greek andRoman theater. The student might then look for a particular historicalexplanation, perhaps by requesting biographical information about Pompey
from the reference library. There he or she would find the famous story about
how Pompey could build Rome's first pcnnuent theater only by pretending
to be erecting a temple with a large "staircase" in front.
The student might then look in the bibliography for an entry such as "theatertemples" and there would fmd a reference to LA Hansen's monograph on thesubject,i4 which he or she might then consult in the University Research
Library. (We consider use of the library crucial, by the way, if the system is
to be an aid to the students' in tellectual development and not a crutch, since
students still need to be prepared to function in a world in which the printed
book will continue, for quite some time, to be the dominant medium.) The
point of the weekly essay might well be to note features in common to all thetheaters in the city of Rome (location, peristyle, dedication to a political figure)and to explain why Pompey's theater differs in one important respect (byhaving a temple to Venus grafted onto it).
14Rontan Theater-temples, Princeton Monographs in Art and Archaeology 33 (Princeton 1959).
165

LEARNING TOMORROWCicero: Other Uses and Future Enhancements
Equally exciting is the prospect of adapting Cicero to our Interineate Latin(and perhaps Greek) sequence. The main purpose of the sequence is to review
basic grammar and vocabulary while teaching students how to real such
authors as Virgil, Plautus, Cicero, and Caesar. Since the literature in thereference library is, of course, written in Greek and Latin, we will have ourlanguage students read in the original these sources for the topography andhistory of the city. By supplying such utilities as a morphological andsyntactic parser, a dictionary, and a rudimentary commentary, we should be
able to let Cicero totally replace the traditional schoolboy commentaries used at
this level. And right from the first moment they can read Latin or Greek,
students will be involved in the kind of exciting research projects that havecustomarily been reserved for graduate students. The tedium of in-class
recitation and translation will be replaced by students' reports on whit they
have learned while wandering through Rome investigating the weekly topic.

I G :)
166

LEARNING TOMORROWConclusion

The advantages of using the city itself as the framework for the student
interface in these civilization and language courses should be clear: like thefield of Classics, the city contains all of ancient life. and so all aspects of thestudy of Classics naturally arise during a visit to Rome. Secondly, thecityand the model of the cityis vast and impressive, fascinating andforeign enough to arouse the students' curiosity, filled with helpful guides
who are ready to help students experience the challenges of everyday life in aforeign environment. Thus, through the Limulation afforded by the videodisc,computer-assisted language instruction can move beyond the structuralist
approach used all too often in the past and can be based on the concept ofcommunicative interaction.0 Moreover, the setting of individualized
instruction at a computerized multimedia workstation allows for thedevelopment of the students' intrinsic motivation and minimizes extrinsic (and
often counterproductive) motivators such as grading.i6 The vv.t,:kly writing
assignment will replace objective testing or translation, and will add an
important dimension to the students' educational experience in the course.
Finally, this project should help us solve our department's major problems.
Cicero provides a powerful tool for increasing faculty productivity and for"e'ig the student with the kind of experience hitherto possible only to thehandfai of students who could afford a tutor and an extended stay in Rome.
Cicero creates a multimedia and interdisciplinary environment for learning.
And, Cicero enhances students' involvement in learning by placing them in a
fascinating simulated world in which their curiosity and creativity can blossom
and flourish. The city is as infinitely rich as life itself. As such, it offers us acomprehensive framework for integrating new scholarly discoveries andmethodologies, as well as innovations in hardware and software. Moreover, if
our pilot projects are successful, the city can continue to set the scene formany of our other language and civilization courses by a simple expansion of
the various multimedia data bases.

15See D. Sanders and R. Kenner, "Whither CAI? The Need fur Communicative Coursewarz," System 11 (1983)
33-39, especially pp. 34-36, stressing the need for graphics and rrnea. On the communicative, u opposed tostructural, approach to language learning, see T.D. Terrell, "A Natut..1 Approach to Second Language Acquisition
and Learning," The Modern Language Ammo! 41 (1977).

160n intrinsic motivation, see S.L. Deci, Intrinsic Motivation (New Yolk 1975) on the theory that challenging
tasks are preferred to simple ones, see S. Harter, "Effectance Motivation Reconsidered," Human Development 21(1978) 34-64.
167

LEARNING TOMORROW

161.

Bernard Frischer
Bernard Frischer received his B.A. in Classics from
Wesleyan University in 1971. He entered the
Ph.D. program in Classics at the University of
Heidelberg, wrote his dissertation on a new theoryof literary hermeneutics applied to Virgil' s pastoral
poetry, and received his doctorate in 1975. As a
Rome Prize Fellow in Classics at the American
Academy in Rome, he expanded his horizons toinclude Roman art, archaeology, and topography.
Since 1976, he has been teaching classics at UCLA;
for the past two years, he has been chairman of theClassics Department. Dr. Frischer' s last book, The
Sculpted Word, is about how the Epicurean school
recruited new students by using sculpted portraits of
their leaders as publicity. Currently, he is writing abook about how Horace' s Art of Poetry parodies
neoclassicism in the arts during the Augustan Age.
In 1982, Dr. Frischer bought his first personal
computer. He sees the commercialization of thepersonal computer in the 1980s and thedevelopment of multimedia technologies as a great
boon for those who believe in studying mankind
from integrated, interdisciplinary perspectives.

168

LEARNING TOMORROW

Grapevine
An Excursion into Steinbeck Country

Robert Campbell, Lowell High Schca
Patricia Hanlon, Lowell High School
San Francisco

169

LEARNING TOMORROW

What Is It?

A high schoul teacher, and a librarian are collecting and analyzing material in
every medium for teaching John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, including
the political and social history of the 1930saltogether some 33 topic
headings touched upon in the novel and in about 54 related works: books,
films, television documentaries, still photographs, record albums and soundtapes, filmstrips, magazine and newspaper articles, and more. These are being
linked and indexed by topic to provide an extensive and interesting educational
resource; and an interactive teaching tool. In this project, we arewiththe perspectives of a classroom teacher teaching the novelon), a highschool librarian (Campbell), and an education/technology theorist (Kristina
Hooper from Apple Computer, Inc.). Our sense is that the fruitfulcollaboration will produce great juice if not wine.

171

LEARNING TOMORROW

1e4

What Need Is Being Met?

An English teacher working with The Grapes of Wrath may be aware of themany ramifications of the novel in terms of American institutions and history
but lack the specialized knowledge and the time required to locate the related
films, books, and other materials that would help most to make theconnections between literature and the world his or her students live in. The
teacher of social studies, on the other hand, may hesitate to encroach on theworld of literature, or be unaware of how relevant a novel like this one can beto social and political matters.
Even the most conscientious and informed teacher is hard-pressed to assemble
large collections of teaching materials in many mediums and to make themaccessible to students. School librarians typically gather a modest number ofsuch materials at a teacher's special request or compile a subject bibliography,
but the materials are soon returned to their arbitrary decimal-numbered slots,
and even annotated bibliographies suggest little about the fascinating andcomplex relationships between the works.
The Grapes of Wrath is about the Dust Bowl, "Olcies," the exodus to thepromised land of California, and the desperate plig. 't of migrant workers suchas the Joad family. But it is also a!--nit the American family and about our
economic system, about the love of land and its t,are, about government
programs, folk beliefs and folk music, about the thirties, the New Deal,
prejudice, brotherhood, violence, and the idea of a utopia out west. To extract
all the juice from these grapes, and to help students see connections to theirown lives and experiences, a teacher deals with a novel not as an isolated
piece of literature, but as one reflecting the times, the issues, and the author
and other writers, artists, thinkers. and survivors.
When it is completed, Grapevine will provide the teacher with the following:

An extensive selected body of teaching material in the foam of ter, still
and moving pictui !s, and sound.
Easy access to that material in a large data base linked by topic.
A method by which the teacher can modify, add, edit, and rearrange text,
still and moving pictures, had sound.

A system for skimming through the material, browsing, searching or
studying it thoroughly.
Extensive annotations, suggested activities, and questions on commandat critical points.
Information on sources for air quotations, citations, and graphics oncommand.
In its ultimate stage of development, a pow,' ful system that will allow
the user to :manipulate and integrate text, still and moving images, andsound in order to create rn iltimedia documents.
172

LEARNING TOMORROWIR

Colloquy Among Some Realand Hypothetical Teacheis[The following conversation never took place, because five of the participants
are fictitious. Yet we imagine that they represent some of the viewpoints andquestions of real teachers. The relatively real peopleCampbell and Hanlon

speak with one voice, that of "reply."]

Mrs. Blue: What are all these topics you mention? What was it?
33 works and 54 topics? Or...
Mr. Gold: I believe it was the taher way around, Mrs. Blue.
They said 33 topics and 54...
Reply: ...works. That's it. 54 works, with others being added from time to...

,vIs. Green: What works are those? Where did you find them?
Reply: We use the term "work" to mean each of our sources, not only books,
such as Factories in the Field, but also TV documentaries, films, magazine
articles, and recorded interviews. By "topics" we mean ideas or subjects fromThe Grapes of Wrath, for example California, migrant workers, andeconomics, which are touched upon in other works, such as Hard Times or
the Farm Security Administration photographs. Some were in the school

library from the beginningbut not connected &Italy with The Grapes of
Wrath. Others we had to search for, or we came across, or they justhappened.

Mr. Gray: You say 33 topics? What are the others?
Reply: Glad you asked. Here's the list of all 33 topics:

Alien Labor
Arts
California

Camrs
Criticism
Depression
Dust Bowl
Economics
Ethics & Morals
FamilyFarmers
Folklore

Government
Programs
Growers
History
Influence (ofSteinbeck's
Work)
Land OwnershipLand Use
Love of Land
Migrant Workers
Music

New Deal
1930s0',iesPnotosPrejudice
Reaction
Philosphy & Religion
Social History
Steinbeck
Unions
UtopiaViolence

We needed them, because teachers want not merely stacks of books, articles,
videotapes, and the rest, l it a wealth of material like that connected logically,
linked to form paths that lead the student to intriguing byways ana
illuminating vista points. Teachers want conceptuai organization in order topresent materials to students in effective and meaningful ways.

173

LEARNING TOMORROW

1' cMs. Green: How do these topics co.'nect Lo all those works?
Every work doesn't deal with every subject, does it?
Reply: No, you're rightsome topics are touched on in only a few works.
And some works are related to only one topic, or a few topics only.
Here's part of a matrix, or "web," we drew to show the relationships:

STEINBECK PROJECT WEB (SECTION)TOPICS 0"
WORKS

+

CAMPS

LABOR

DUST
BOWL

FAMILYGROWERS

Grapes of Wrath CT

Dust Bowl Diary C
Factories in Reid
Hard Tunes-book0

Hard Times-tapeMovie-Grapes...

nhotos./Lifetime(MORE I_WORKS) VO
III MAJOR EMPHASIS

0

(MORE
TOPICS)MINOR EMPHASIS(Note: There ax at least 33 topics and 54 works. Possible links= 1,836)
You see that this is only a sample showing how seven works connect to six
topics, for 42 possible combinations. The full 54 works times 33 topics...

Mr. Gold: Your arithmetic is correct-1,836 possible links.
Have you explored all those?
Reply: No, that's part of the total program, but we haven't developed all of it
yet.

Mr. Gold: I'm n, .n English teacher. Math and science q e myfields. But seeing you go to all this trouble with a novel, I nave
to ask, what is it you English teachers think you need?

174

LEARNING TOMORROW

167

Reply: The text of a novel is only where we begin in literature. I want to beable to look at a question, to do a data search of the text of The Grapes of
Wrath, to search related books. What is the role of the grower, as elaborated
on in Factories in the Field, compared the way Steinbeck views the grower?
Are there any other works abdin ;rowels in California in the 1930s? How dothese materials compare with Steinbeck's work? I want to look at the styles ofthe other writersthe conclusions they drew. Did others see the same world
Steinbeck saw? The asking, the searching, and the answering will provide
pleasure to the student and the teacher. It will make the student a more criticalthinker and involve him or her in ides. The teacher and the student canbecome collaborators and partners, asking and answering important questions
about literature and ideas.

Mrs. Blue: What started you two on this project?
Reply: Well, Pat was teaching a unit on The Grapes of Wrath. Bob wasrummaging around in his card catalog and his memory for related material, but
the conventional library tools and techniquesthough they led to someobviously useful things, such as a filmstrip 'The Grapes of Wrath and theThirties"were not adequate to the task, as is often the case. For example,
there was no subject heading for "Dust Bowl." The closest was"DroughtsU.S." Some of the best *ncormation was buried here and there as
chanters in books, such as one on "Lie Okies Forty Years Later" in a booktided Unknown California.

Mrs. Blue: Then it wasn't simply a shortage of ma. 'gal that wasyour problem?
Reply: No, but many of the links were supplied by us, groping in ourmemories for names like Studs Terkel, Woody Guthrie, and Dorothea Lunge.
Without these links, students couldn't find, or overlooked, materials thatproved fascinating and useful. After a worthwhile set of materials is foundand used, it must then be disassembled, returned, and scattered. The next
teacher must repeat the whole procedure.

Mr. Gray: Isn't even redoing all that a pretty healthy research
process?
Reply: In some ways. But well-motivated and able students can learn thewhole array of research skills with no difficulty. When they don't succeed,
it's generally out of frustration, because the system of cataloging doesn't go
deep enough to help them find all the scattered appropriate materials. Using
three-by-five cards is a pretty crude technique in the age of eiec ink dataprocessing.

Mr. Gold: Aha! So now the computer enters the sectIP Is that it?

175

LEARNING TOMORPOW

Reply: Yes, but not as the hero coming to our rescue, exactly. More as apossible tool. We three represent a teacher with a need for materials, alibrarian with a limited supply of the materials and a not wholly satisfactory
system for delivering them, and a computer technology theorist with someideas for bridging the gap.

Ms. Green: So you decided to computerize Steinbeck?
Reply: No, we didn't start by thinking of a computer and then asking, "Whatcan the machine el for us?" We started with The Grapes of Wrath and began aprocess of assemblage: searching, annotating, labeling, looking for links toworks of any kind that might shed light on the novel, the issues it raised, theauthor, and the times, Only after we were under way making links did theneed for a computer data base with some special features become very

apparent

Mrs. Blue: All this about how you proceeded in the work is very
well, but it isn't telling me what the program does for me or mystudents. What happens when we follow one of your links?
Reply: Well, let's visualize the program when it's operational in one possible
form, including moving images and sounds that can be edited.

We'll assume that you want to see a presentation first, so we'll see what a
Presentation screen might look like.

File

e mm

Edit

Highlight
egu arop corks

Presentation

FullShow map

Now, in the role of researcher, or reporter, or time-traveling tourist, your first
choice is to decide on a brief Highlight Tour, a longer Regular Tour, or the
Full Tour. In this example, we have chosen Highlight Tour.
176

LEARNING TOMORROW

13

As to the mediumwhether Images, Sound, or Textwe will choose allof then;,, and Regular speed.

ki_t

File

Edit Tours

MediumTopicsWorks/Images
Sound

on

eat
Slow
.

Fast
Steps

Since the tours are by topic or work, you give the computer that information
by clicking on one of the topics or works the menus.

I d File

Edit Tours

TopicsWorks
Alien labor
Present Arts
California

MediumCamps

Criticism
Depression
Dust Bowl

History
Violence

171

LEARNING TOMORROW

1 FileEdit Tours

Top csMediumArticlesPresentation EKE

Books
EssaysMoviesPhotosSound

cassettes
Video

/Ail

Your menu supplies a list of all 33 topicsthough in this abridged example
only a few topics are listedand History is highlighted. You also have a
choice among works, and here all types of works would be brought up
because of the check in front of All.
Your Highlight Tour of the topic History begins. First, you might decide toclick on Show Map; if so, you would be shown something like this:Derrands of WWI I(ECONOMICS

DEPT "1,71ION

1930s

Post-war surplus]
Falling prices I

Type of farming I(LAND OWNERSHIPLAND USE

Size of farms''Increased production I

SAMPLE HISTORY PATH
178

LEARNING TOMORROW

17

You notice that History is highlighted, and you may take time to study someof the paths, links, and loops. A very brief Highlight Tour might consist of
displays of text, sound, moving and still pictures, including material like thefollowing examples.

BLACK AND WHITE PRINT (Dust" by Mervin Jules, fromGraphic Works of the American Thirties, plate 61)

Text (from The Grapes of Wrath, p. 313)

"And the little farmers who owned no canneries lost their farms,
and they were taken by the great owners, the banks, and thecompanies who also owned the canneries. As time went on,
there were fewer farms. The little farmers moved into town for awhile and exhausted their credit, exhausted their friends, theirrelatives. And then they too went on the highways. And theroads were crowded with men ravenous for work, murderous forwork."

172
179

LEARNING TOMORROWDOCUMENTARY FILM CLIP
(from "Tha Plow That Broke the Plains")
PICTURES
Newspaper headline: "WAR
NEWS TUMBLESSECURITIF.S...WHEAT
PRICES SOAR"
Tractors moving throughfields of wheat, cultivator
blades muting into theearth.

Scenes of World War I
bombardment in Europe.

.actors and tanks,
Military parades.

Huge combines moving
abreast through fields ofwheat.
Poster: "SERVICE MEN! FREE
LAND! GOVERNMENTHOMESTEADS IN THE
PLAINS!"
Stock ticker tape running
faster and faster, wheat

pouring ever fasterthen

NARRATION"Wheat will win the war! Fast
wheat. Wheat for the boys overthere... Wheat for the Allies...
Wheat at any price!""Then we reaped the golden
harvest. Then we really plowed theplains! we turned unchr millionsof new acres for war wheat. We
had the manpower. We invented
new machinery. The world was
our marble.""Once again the rains held off andthe sun baked the earth... This
time millions of acres of plowed
land lay open to thethe stock ticker falls andsmashes.
Scenes of arid farms,
abandoned machinery.
Sand blowing. Dead cattle.
Wind rising to storm level.
Dust storms. Farmers
loading up to leave.

180

LEARNING TOMORROW"Blown out, baked out, andbroke."TEXT (from Herbert Hoover. "The Challenge to Liberty" in Problems in
American Civilization, p. 65)"The farmer is the most tragic figure in our present situation. From thecollapse of war inflation, from boom, from "displaceme-t of %work animals bymechanization," from the breakdown of foreign markets, from the financial
debacle of Europe, and from drought, he has suffered almost beyond humanendurance."

AUDIOTAPE (interview with Oscar Heine, Iowa fanner, from Hard Times
audiotape)"Grain was being burned. It was cheaper than coal. Corn was being burned.
A county just east of here, they burned corn in their courthouse all winter,'32, '33. You couldn't hardly buy groceries for corn. It couldn't pay thetransportation. In South Dakota the county elevator listed corn as minus three
cents. Minus three cents a bushel. If you wanted to sell 'em a bushel of corn,
you had to bring in three cents...

"We had a lot of trouble on the highway. People were determined to withholdproduce from the marketlivestock, cream, butter, eggs, whatnot. If theywould dump the produce, they would force the market to a higher level. The
farmers would man the highways, and cream cans were emptied in ditchesand eggs dumped out...
"The rank-and-file people of this statewho were brought up as
conservatives, which most of us werewould never act like this. Except indesperation."
TEXT (from The Grapes of Wrath, p. 383)
"The men who work in the fields, the own 2rs of the little orchards, watch andcalculate.
"And the first cherries ripen. Cent and a half a pound. Hell, we can't pick 'em
for that... And on the ground the seeds drop and dry with black threads
hanging from them.

"The purple prunes soften and sweeta. My God, we can't pick them and dry
and sulphur them. We can't pay wages no matter what wages.... The meatturns Irk and the crop shrivels on the ground."

17,
181

LEARNING TOMORROWCOLOR ILLUSTRATIONS (from Ameican Heritage, April,
1977, pp .88-93)

California fruit box labels: brightly colored and highly
romanticized views of western animals, mountains, produce,
senoritas, cowboys, Indians, and other fantasies.
i p m e m p a l m 1 W AILS MIA Sid.."ftutwwwwwww

IR

ILO IF.

a11.
.7..16215:146.

74.iet*s WSW;
. .

fd

182

II

LEARNING TOMORROWPHOTOGRAPH, BLACK AND WHITE (from This Fabulous
Century, v. 4, pp. 14-15)

Photograph of the front of a restaurant and a barber shop in New
York's Bowery in 1935.

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TEXT (Ibid., p. 24)"Annual Earnings: 1932 to 1934," a table of average annual
income of workers in 37 occupations. Examples: dentist,$2,391; hired farmhand, $216; steelworker, $422.87.

Mr. Gray: That music and those pictures really had a wallop.
And when we came to that image of the stock ticker falling over,I wanted to get some prices right then on some actualcommodities.
Reply: You could do just that, Mr. Gray. At that point you could give a
Pause command. Then you could click Show Tour Map. You would get a
map not just of the Highlight Tour, but of branches, including one to yourFalling Farm Prices side road. If you clicked on that branch you could
detour and return to the main Highlight Tour lateror not, as you wished.

Mr. Gray: Excuse me, but I have to find out how muchflexibility is allowed in a program like Grapevine. I mean, if I
want to play down the sentiment when I teach Steinbeck andconcentrate on technique or philosophy or economics, can I do
that?
1 '7
183

LEARNING TOMORROWReply: Certainly. The very wealth of material that the technology is going to
make available ensures that any kind of emphasis will be possible. No one
will be able to cover it allor want to. If you or your students want to pursue
the legislation, the history of land ownership in California, the climatologya
lot of factual material of that kind will be included and still more pointed to.

Ms. Green: Speaking of that, you showed quite a lot of text inyour example. Are you including just quotations from books andarticles, or whole chapters or more? And is reading so much ona screen a good idea?
Reply: We've thought a lot about that, ant'. we have some guidelines forourselves that we think make sense. First, if you can have a book or an article
on paper for anyone who needs it, that is obviously bestso having acomputer program is not a substitute for a book or a set of books if you can
get them. On the other hand, there are never enough books. It appears thattechnology is going to give us enormous storage capability, so why notinclude as much relevant text as possible? Text on the screen can be used forbrowsing and selecting. When needed, you can print out longer text
selections. Some materials are absolutely essential yet not easily available, like
Benson's "To Tom Who Lived It" article. In addition, a great deal of textneeds to be in the program as junction points for linking to everything else.
We can't emphasize too strongly that Grapevine is not just a 'ot of stuffit's
a lot of intricately connected stuff.

Mrs. Blue: And the reason that Mr. Gold and I were invited to
sit in on this panel is that someday there will be sin Oar linked
programs for us to use in social studies and in mathtinatics andscience? Is that right?
Reply: Yes, we hope so. Since the computer can store so much text andsound, and so many pictures, connect them, and allow users to follow orchange those cGAinections and manipulate the stored material in any subject,
the applications have no limits. In the case of social studies, though, it will bepossible to create from Grapevine itself a unit on the Depression and the1930s from the social studies' point of view as readily as from the literary.

Mr. Gray: Your Grapevine seems to be an impressive package.
But will it really be different from any other collection ofarticles, books, pictures, sound, and so forth?
Reply: Yes, not only because of the interconnections and links that areincluded (a, d which you can expand), but also because you will be able totailor it to your classes.

Mr. Gray: Explain to me what "tailoring" the program to myclasses means.
Reply: We envision at least three levels of interactivity and "modifiability."184

LEARNING TOMORROW

1 /7

The first level of interactivity is a scratchpad, perhaps on the datadiska place
where the teacher or another user can make comments and additi3ns. Next
would be the capability of writing, pasting, or deleting directly within the
program. The ultimate stage, available to both teacher and student, is a built-in
media processor analogous to a word processor but capabi. of editing andmanipulating moving and still pictures and sound as well as text.

Mrs. Blue: Do you mean pasting in film scenes?

Ms. Green: Oh, I'd want to do more than just paste them in. I'dwant to be able to director edit, at leastand have zooms anddissolves and all that.
Reply: Again, just pasting in a film scene or recording a "voiceover" or"music over" track would be simplestand useful. But we have no doubt thatcomplete authoring/editing power over all media will be possible eventually.
That's why we listed some pretty sophisticated techniques on this
Production application menu.
Mediumfile(Log)

Alulio______v- (cropping tool)(zoom)

S-7 (enlarger)

ID (fade out)
(fade in)4.17.)- (brightness)(volume)

Cut
Copy
Paste

ITA Production(begin)Paste over
Clear
Rewindto _Playback
Delete(erase)Sound track I
Sound track 2
RecordSearchStoryboard(tone)(4 (contrast)

0 (mon.age)
00 (windows
G (clock)

185

LEARNING TOMORROW

font

MOM

Undo

173

Mr. Gold: Do you really need to give an elaborate authoring
system like that to students?
Reply: W. believe there is no reason to provide a povpi to the teacher that is
not also available to the learner. Currently, learners and teachers, too, areprimarily consumers of media, subject to media's power to persuade andconvince. Students and teachers need the skills to use all of these tools fortheir own p
and in their own styles. The world speaks to our young
people not ouZsveith words but with color, motion, music, all shaped with
dazzling virtuosity. We think that all students should learn to communicate
with the world usmg this new language.

Mrs. Blue: You're not forgetting, are you, that teachers andstudents do make videotapes, and auchotapes, and slide shows?
Reply: True, but you have probably experienced, as we have, the fact that a
lealher can put together a multimedia presentation with about the same degreeof ease as a medieval m'. k producing an illuminated manuscript. Computersought to be able to hell:.

Mr. Gold: Let's get back to the eseutial question of hOW ateacher could use a girogram like Grapevine. For instance, doyou see it used only as a supplemer ( for individual students? Or
ceald it be used with theas a whole? If so, how?
Reply: Obviously, more computers are going to be available to more anti more
students. Still, we can't assume that overnight every student is going to have apersonal workstation. And even were that the case then- -you'd always be aneed for class discussion, teacher instruction, and other activities. We havedeveloped the Hanlon-Campbell law of program design, which states. :liven
more than one attractive alternative, choose them all. WP see Grapevine today
as eminency applicable to individual, :Loan group, or lr. ;e group learning,whichever is appropriate at the timethe only limitatit- liemg that of logistwa
and hardware: how big the class, how large the available screen.

',Ir. Gray Do yoa know what you're asking? These things don't
just happen, and when they do, they won't come c:leap.
Reply: All the more reason to 1 Ike clear to computer engineers now what ourneeds are. And should we make the erroneous assumption that the technology
we need will always be beyond our means?

Mr. Gold: I have a question about the role of the individualuser. Is he or she a ganizster, ourist, a reporter, a researcher,or what?
Reply: Perhaps any or all of those roles might be appropriate at variote times.
We believe the teacher, not the program, will have the greatest influence indetermining the user's role.
186

LEARNING TO,ORROW

i7

Mrs. Blue: I hope so. If a student of mine t. led to be a passive
tourist in a program, she wouldn't get by in my class. The
student would have to assume a role like a reporter andinvestigate and solve problems.
Mr. Gold: I have a question about being z%le to modify the
program. Do you have in mind that a class may add or subtract
questions, think of new follow-up activities, make new links, oreven new paths?
Reply: Yes.

Mrs. Blue* Then how will you r-nrve the integrity If the
program? And how could I decitie what was worth passing along
and what to discard?
Reply: Of course you could always maintain a master copy of the prognm.
Then you would be free to make your own judgments concerning changes andact on those, or...

Ms. Green: ...or ...It might want to set are a stildent review
board in your class, or have the whole class review the changes
as a cummating activity in the unit.

Mr. Gold: One of you is a librarianI don't remember which
onebut do you see this kind of linking up of books and othermedia as something that relates to a library?
Reply: Definitely, in school libraries, at least. If a library is to be something
more than a room where books are standing up instead of lying down as they
are in the textbook room, then it is a place where connectionspaths leadingfrom one thing to ancthercan be discovered and pursued. The catalog andindexes let learners follow these leads now, in a rudimentary way, but thecomputer will expand that power beyond our ability to imagine it. Until now,
libraries have hung together like a wired-together skeleton of a brontosaurus.
They are about to start acquiring a nervous system.
Ah...pardon me, Mr. Silver, bvt I can't help noticing that you haven't had asingle word to say in this whole session. May I ask why?

Mr. Silver: That should be obvious. I'm merely a hypotheticalteacher, not a real ore. Look, tfp!re's straw sticking out of myshirt'. How do you expect a hypothetical character to as thereally tourh questions?
Reply: You have a point. But haven't you heard of fictienal characters who
took on a will and a life of their own? Like Pygmalion with...with...

Mr. Silver: ..with Galatea?
.37

LEARNING TOMORROW

180

Reply: Right. Why don't you give it a try? Go ahead, ask the toughest
que.stion you can think of.

Mr. Silver: (after a pause) All right, here it is. Schools today arepreoccupied with the problem of accountability. More and more
the effectiveness of teachers LI based on student performance on
standardized tests. In a climate like this, why create a programwith such broad goals as Grapevine seems to have, one that will
be very difficult to evaluate?

Mr. Gray: Whew! Was that a question or a ecture?
Reply: It's a fair question, all right, and a tough one indeed. A short answer isthis. Accountability we teachers cannot shirk, nor do we want to. We must beable to defend and prove the effectiveness of what we do. Where there arevalid measures of skills and knowledge, and when student performance falls
short, we should be held responsible and be required to obtain better results.
Still, this doesn't mean that we may therefore shirk the obligation nor miss theopportunity to teach as richly and complexly as we can. The instruments
available to tell us whether we are teaching well still remain crude incomparison to the complexity of human interaction and insensitive to thewhole range of insights that literature, history, science, and other disciplines
entail. While we refine these instruments, should we be content to teach only

what can easily be r cured and quantified? Of course not.
While computer. can be used in the service of any educt.ional philosophy,
some think that they lend themselves most readily to what is most rigorous,
austere, and authontarian. We believe that this is not necessarily so. Without
computers we would teach The Grapes of Wrath or the history, the culture,
the economics of the 1930s in as organic a style and as intellectuallynourishing a context as we could manage. We look forwara to teaching withthe help of the computer in that style with that philosophy simply because thecomputer will allow us to do that better.

ALL: We wholeheartedly agree with you
Reply: How remarkable...and how gratifying. Thank you all.

When the Grapevine project is completed, it will clearly be thework of a fairly large corps of experts in curriculum, literature,
educational technology, and computer programmingall of themhaving spent dozens or hundreds of hours at the task. In
contrast, what exists of the project today reflects the after-hours
efforts of a teacher, a IPiranan, Earl an education technologist.

ID

LEARNING TOMORROV.

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it

-L.

For his project to go forward, we three need the following:some refinements in technology that we believe are on the way;
more time; financial and technical support; and help in resolving
issues of copyright and ownership.
The technology to make any large, linked repository ofmultimedia materials easily available to teachers is not yet inplace, but most of the pieces are there, and there is no doubt thatthey will soon be combined and engineered into a tool of
unprecedented power for teaching. But for teaching what? Thatis a question for which we think Grapevine provides an answer.

As for technology needs, we don't yet have a data base programthat allows us to make the many links we want from one piece of
information --one picture, sount1 track, film clip, paragraphto
another. We need a data base that creates an index we can use to
search, browse, manipulate format, and print our data, and that
accommodates unlimited text.
We need an interface with CD-ROM to include all the textnecessary so that we can browse and search and print out withease.

We need an authoring system, if not identical with the one wehave described, then at least one that would give the user thecapability to add, change, and link materials and to set up his or
her own path.
When we receive funding which Cll buy us time, what will we
do with it? We need to construct a prototype of Grapevine, avideodisc with still and motion pictures connected to the text inour data base and a clear, easy-to-follow program with which to
make these links. In this way, we would set up a path, a tour
through the materials for the user. And such a tour would
provide a template for the teacher's lesson plans.
Projects like Grapevine will be a necessary test of the doctrineof "fair use" of information in all it's forms. Flexible and faircompromises will have to be worked out. For us, an importantameliorating factor is that projects like Grapevine will not
olpplant the books, films, videocassettes and the like fromwhich sample materials are used, but rather give them greaterattention, and in the long run, stimulate :._:les and so increase
royalties.

i

LEARNING TOMORROW

1S2

Only when we have secured additional support, bought moretime, tapped many more resources and engaged more technicalhelp will we be able to proceed with fade task: processing all thematerial; that is, additional research and writing, analyzing andlinking the material, finding, selecting, storing, and indexing
still frames and moving footage as well as audio interviews andmusic....

We know that teachers would like to get their hands on the kindof teaching instrument Grapevine will be. Grapevine is not yet acompleted product, but an idea for a product, and a beginning.
What we need now is the support of foundations, publishers, orothers who also will see the possibilities of this project as aprototype for a whole new series of exciting applications oftechnology w education.

MI

LEARNING TOMORROW

Robert Campbell
Robert Campbell, a librarian at Lowell HighSchool, San Francisco, has also worked at writing
educational proposa's and as a high school English
teacher. He actually remembers the Depression, or
so he claims.

Patricia Hanlon
Patricia Hanlon, an English teacher at Lowell HighSchool, San Francisco, has also taught in juniorhigh and is a fellow and member of the advisory
council of the Bay Area Writing Project.

191

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A prominent example of a media tool that has a pervasive influence in our
culture is television. Early visions of this tool in the field of education were notdissimilar to those currently discussed in the context of -omputers and optical
media. The educational opportunity provided by television is to bring "realplaces" and "real people" into the classrooms, bringing life to materials thatmight be consid :red dry or boring by making them relevant to personal
experience. The opportunities provided with computer control are interactivity
and explicit personalization, as well as reuse of existing materials in a numberof contexts.

Sam Gibbon brings his perspective as a children's television producer to thetask of multimedia development. In The Voyage of the Mimi program he haschosen to use linear video as a major structural element in an educational
experience, because he knows how to use this medium to tell sensitive andengaging stories to chileren. It is through the use of other materialscomputer
modules, print exercises, and videodisc displaysthat students can directly
and personally manipulate concepts introduced to them and made relevant in
the linear television materials. So Gibbon succeeds in doing what most artists
attempt: using each medium available for what it is best suited. In this context,
computer-driven multimedia experiences complement, rather than replace,existing media.
In his work at WNET, Tom Anderson has a slightly different perspe...:iveon the use of television in a computer multimedia context. His goal is to makeuse of :xisting television i . a different way in order to effectively provide
learning environments for adults. Specifically, he wants to use optical media
and computers to enhance the effectiveness of explanations that are alreadyquite effective in linear television. Optical media can make excellent programs
available for individual viewing at the individual's convenience rather than ir,
the broadcaster's time frame (in much the same way as videotape). Compute!'
control of these optical media can assist the viewer in understanding what ispresentedby simple methods such as interrupting and elaborating, and in
more complex ways such as resequencing and relating to other materials. As
Friedlander's tools are designed to help students manipulate and understandvisual displays of Shakespeare, Anderson's proposed tools of reexamination
and use can help learners to understand explanations of principles of physics attheir wn rate. Anderson's idea is that direct involvement and control ofpresentatiors enhance conceptualUtion, a notion well supported by modemday cognitive psychological theories.

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LEARNING TOMORROW' 7

The Voyageof the Mimi
Sam Gibbon with Kristina Hooper

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LEARNING TOMORROW.1 c 3Sam's presentation at the Conference was direct and clear. I havesummarized the basic issues Sam raised, and I have then commented on theimplications of each of these. As a member of the Voyage of the Mimi
advisory committee, I have tried to make explicit some of the reasoning
behind different design approaches so that they are made obvious. Not soclearly, my comments reflect my own opinions, but the hope is that
juxtaposed with the basic description of this project they will provide thereader with a sensible approach to Sam's perspective, much of whichcurrently is reflected in the Voyage of the Mimi project at Bank Street College.
(kh)General Description of the Project
The Voyage of the Mimi is a major educational project housed at Bank Street
College, in New York City It is directed toward the development of extensive
television, computer software, videodisc, and print materials for use inscience and mathematics education for students in grades 5-7.
Bank Street College provides an excellent setting for this kind of innovative
program. It is one of the few academic institutions with the technological andvideo sophistication required for an effort on thi , scale, and it alsr has an 1ahouse elementary school, an in-house teacher training facility, and the talent to
do extensive testing of new materials.

This project is funded by the Department of Education; materials are
distributed throug' Holt, Rinehart, and Winston Publishers.

This project arose as a response to a Request for Proposal (RFP) from the
Department of Education in 1982 to combine a range of media--particularly
TV, videodisc, and computer softwarein the teaching of science andmathematics. This RFP was crucial historically in focusing national attention
on the potential of this multimedia approach, as well as indkatfng acommitment at a national level to fund such a large scale project.
The first series of the Voyage of the MHZ has been completed and has been
available to schools for the last year. The materials include a 13-part dramatic
TV series, which portrays a scientific investigation of whaling on the East
Coast on a ship called the Mimi; in this series, research scientists and a very
young crew note patterns of whale migration, using a number of scientificapproaches, and they encounter a number of exciting adventures. In addition,
there are 13 1 V documentary-style visits to different "real" scientificestablishments, which complement this dramatic series (using some of thedramatic series actors as hosts).

1P
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LEARNING TOMORROWThese TV materials are accompanied by a teacher g 1.1 as well as a book that
describes the TV series. There are also four computer programs thatcomplement the TV series, providing students with hands-on experience withthe topics investigated by the MI II scientists.

The integration of these materials happens in the classroom and in thestudents' minds. It is not a technological integration, then, but the
combination of a range of single purpose media, each of which enhances theothers. Central to this project is the TV dramatic series; it focuses kids'
attention on the excitement of "doing science" and on the people involved inthis endeavor. Sam's excellent talents in storytelling on TV for children arethen put to very good use; the stories lay out the basic principles and provide
motivation for students to pursue different topics in the other materials.
The TV documentaries extend the notion of "hands-on science," showing
how people work in the world on a range of related topics. Making good useof the characters established in the dramatic seriesparticularly a young boy
named CT, who is about the same age as the steent audiencethese
documentaries help students see how science might be relevant to their lives,and possibly a focus for their own development.
The computer software for this project is designed to work like that used in
the scientific community. One module focuses on ecosystem development andpopulation growth patterns. it is based on similar simulations used byscientists. A navigation game provides students with experiences not unlike
those of a ship's captain, engaging computational and mathematics reasoning
A set of computer-based tools let the young student try out a range ofmeasurement experiments tried in the dramatic series, as well as extend
experiments beyond this context.

A second seriesVoyage 3f the Mimi IIis currently in proiuction. It
extends the route of the Mimi to the Yucatan to investigate Mayan ruins. This
series also focuses on mathematics and science, though the scientific context
is anthropology rather than marine biology.

Lessons Learned: The Story
The project team and students learned a number of things from the productionof the fi- Voyage of the Mimi series.
For one, the project team learned that the dramatic story had an immense value
to students. It served as an excellent motivator for introducing students tomathematics and science, areas that are 'ypically of little interest to most
students. In adciition, a number of the characters served as excellent rolemodels for the students, malting it clear to many of them that these topics
were well within their own reach.

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LEARNINM TOMORROW

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Students also indicated an appreciation of science and human values after
experience with the program materials, seeing how the "dull and dry- pursuitof science is actually quite lively and human oriented.
It seemed, then, that these materials served a viable role in letting scientificand mathematical information be housed in a credible context that could be
brought into the classroom.

Most of these outcomes were not simply "happy coincidences," butrepresented the successful implementation of design strategies brought to theproject. For example, the characters in the drama were carefully chosen andconsciously developed as approachable to the students as well as compellingin the drama. The choice of a woman scientist to head the expedition and a
Chicano to be her main assistant helped set the tone of this scientificinvestigation; stodgy stereotypes and white lab jackets were left on shore. The
inclusion in the young crew of a Black boy from New York City as well as anaffluent female suburbanite also extended students' ability to relate to thepresentation and to move beyond expected stereotypes. The deaf crew
member made the day-to-day aspect of this handicap as well as topics related
to sound transmission easily approachable and understandable. And, thechoice of an endearing boy about the age of the students, who was the
grandson of the MIMI's captain, brought notions of family conflicts directly
into the show.
The choice of whales as the topic of investigation wso enhanced student
engagement in the series, of both girls and boys. Similarly, the adventurestoriesincluding a classic shipwreck and test of survivaladded to student
involvement with the story.

Lessons Learned: Teacher Response
Teachers have had a range of responses to the materials, finding them both
exciting and innovative as well as somewhat difficult to fit into their traditionalclassroom contexts. Some of the teachers have had difficulty dealing with theemotions raised by the stories nortrayed in the dramatic episode; they aresimply unaccustomed to addressing human issues in their investigations ofmathematics and science. They also seem unaccustomed to saying "I don'tknow" to a question raised by students who have seen the MIMI
presentations. It is difficult for many teachers to move from the role of the "allknowing" director of teaching activities to the role of collaborator with thestudents.
For many teachers, these materials offer a welcome relief to most materials
available to them; many have chosen to base an entire curriculum year aroundthe series, relating the materials to topics that were not initially anticipated.

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LEARNING TOMORROWAs with anything new, it is important to consider what will be required for
adoption in schools. The hank Street team has now initiated a number ofteacher training programs to encourage teachers to integrate the Mimi materials
into their classrooms. It will be interesting over time to see just how these richmaterials are used, and whether they will provide a template for howclassrooms might work differently. Instead of being a great program that
doesn't quite fit into standard classrooms (though adapted by many
exceptional classrooms), it just might be the first of a class of programs thatset nett directives for the nature of thinking and learning.

Lessons Learned: Resources
The production of these materials was extremely expensive, relative to mosteducational materials. This resulted often in large uncertainties in terms ofavailable funding extensions, a..; well as !..1 the omission of intended
developments.

This effort clearly require federai support, as it was too big and too risky for
publishers to undertake. Also, issues of pricing and costs of bringing
materials to market make the delivery of these materials over the long runquite uncertain; it is still a question, for example, if the second series on theMayas will come to market.
Having watched this project develop over the last five years or so, I am
!repressed with Bank Street's perseverance in dealing directly with thefinancial implications and problems of this product. Very few organizations
would commit the resources for fundraising that have been required for thisventure, nor would they dare deal with the commercial worlds that are central
to the eventual release and ,listribution of this product. And the fights are longfrom finished.
At some level, this is quite discouraging, for one would hope that high-quality
materials would "sell themselves" and that there would be funding available
for grand experiments such as this one. Yet the Voyage of the Mimi materials
have 1.,t.en quite successful in spite of all these difficulties; perhaps they will
lay the framework for other similar activities in the future.

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LEARNING TOMORROW

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A.

Final Comments
There are a number of aspects of this project that, in my opinion, arenoteworthy. As mentioned earlier, the development of materials relevant to
students is extremely impressive. Whales and yaung scientists who are very
human are very good entries into the field of science.
The portrayal of science as an activity, not as a set of facts, is also a criticalcontribution of this project. Complex scientific ideas have been taken fromdull textbook accounts to direct human experiences and questions about theworld. The integration of computers into this scientific enterprise is natural forthis approach, thereby making clear to students how the very same devices
they have in classrooms work as well for scientists in their endeavors.
The integration of the media is handled well in this project, with each class of
media working well in its own right and playing a critical role in amplifying
the effectiveness of other media. The use of the computers on board the shipin the drama make their use viable in the classroom, for example. Similarly,
the shipwreck adventure makes accessible issues related to population biology
shown in one of the computer modules. The use of the same actors in thedramatic and documentary series also enhances the unification of thematerials, and the integration of the concepts by the students.
The print materials developed are central to the effective use of these materials
in the classroom, as are the reacher training programs that have been initiated.
The Bank Street team has acknowledged the importance of "standard
materials" and "normal teachers" for integrating programs such as these into awide range of American classrooms.
Finally, the impact of the dramatic episodes cannot be underestimated. Thesenoninteractive, linear presentations demonstrate the power of television at its
bestto motivate, to explore general topics, to "bring the world into theclassroom." They make clear just how "standard media" have been used toserve particular purposes very well, and suggest that we keep all theadvantages of each of these as we attempt to extend our media capabilities anddevelop our expertise as communicators.

....4 4

1$3
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LEARNING TOMORROW

Figure 1.
This software package
involves students as"scientists" very naturally inmeasurement and data
analysis activities; thecomputer serves as ananalysis and presentation
tool, while the various probes
attached to the computer (fordetecting light, sound,temperature, etc.) provide
measurements of "real world
phenomena".

. I.

+' '2'

Figure 2.
This printout from the Bank
Street Laboratory provides
students with an analysis of asound from theirenvironment. "Seeing" thesound in this form whilehearing it provides students
with an understanding of thenature of sound typicallyunavailable to children of this

Start

Disk

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age.

400-

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101
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LE,CR;LNG TOMORROW

800

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Figure 3.
Set in the context of asurvival game, this softwarelets students work with anecosystem model like theones used by scientists; it lets
them "see" how changes madein one population affect otherpopulations in often
unexpected ways.

I

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sureties y(keve (11(),,efi. r.RLss 1-;J4it1J t41H

203

tikliNING TOMORROW

lasFigure 4.
(a pair) Animations provide
students with a feeling of"being there" on an island;
map-views provide them withthe tools for analyzing theimpacts of their activities on
the island ecc system.

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The centerpiece of the Voyageof the Mail materials is adramatic episode; it depicts ascientific whaling voyage andthe adventures of it's captainand youthful crew.

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1414NING TOMORROW

107

I

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ValL:, ii,
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LEARNING TOMORROWus

Samuel Y. Gibbon, Jr.
Samuel Y. Gibbon, Jr., is the executive director
and executive producer of multimedia projects at
the Bank Street College of Education in New
York. Mr. Gibbon has extensive experience intelevision production for children, having beencreative advisor at the Children's Television
Workshop, and executive producer of projects at
CTW, including "3-2-1-Contact" and "The ElectricCompany." In addition to teaching at the Harvard
University Graduate School of Education, Mr.
Gibbon has consulted for the Office of Technology
Assessment of the U.S. Congress, SRI
International, the National Science Foundation, andthe Smithsonian Institution, among others. Mr.
Gibbon earned his B.A. at Princeton University andwas a Fulbright Fellow at London University.

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4 NING TOMORROW
1

"Beyond Einstein"
A Case Study in Interactive TelevisionThomas Anderson
WNET and Commonwealth Strategies
Boston200
209

LEARNING TOMORROWThe Idea of a Learning Laboratory

The best educational television programs are hopelessly overengineeru, In asense, they can never earn an adequate cognitive return on the assets they
employ. An example of this is the recent PBS show, "Creation of the
Umverse," written by Tim Ferris and produced and directed by Geoffrey
Haines-Stiles. This program made extensive use of computer graphics costing$4,000 per second to produce. The graphics embodied, m the most intelligent
and conscientious way, a virtual textbook on modern particle physics: every
detail, down to the smallest and almost imperceptible, signified something real
about the particles, the quantum forces, and the structure and behavior of theatom or of the virtual particles that well up out of the vacuum and disappear
before the laws of conservation of energy can catch up with them.
While the script valiantly struggles to get the points across, the graphics
march across the screen even faster, and are gone.
I would bet that not a hundredth of what is built into this extraordinarymaterial is really perceptible, much less learnable, within the medium, though
it serves to tantalize and provoke the viewer. It simply cries out for viewer
control of the pace, and for interactivity. And those wonderful computer
graphics are there, equally available for use in another medium.
WNET Channel 13 in New York, the premier producer of prime-time
programming for PBS, has been aware of this lost opportunity, not just with
"The Creation of the Universe" but with a large percentage of its
broadcasting. Because of this some years ago the station began thinking
about setting up a "learning labratory" where we could conduct research anddevelopment on how to design and produce interactive media products related
to broadcast series.
Before we could justify such an undertaking, we had to be sure we hadthought about our educational and business goals as carefully as we could.
We knew that, after we had done our homework, we would have to produce a
demonstration of what we had in mind. This paper is about what we learned
and how it shaped our demonstration of interactive media, "Beyond Einstein,"based on "The Creation of the Universe."

201
211

LEARNING TOMORROWThe central questions were these:

In what sense did we want our products to be educational? How was thatdifferent from the sense in which our television productions are
educational?
What made us think interactivity was educational?
Even if we understood what we meant by education and interactivity, howwould we translate these ideas into products?

Why would people want products like these? Why would they be better
than other software?
Even if it made educational sense to develop interactive programs from orin parallel with television series, would it make production and economic
sense?

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LEARNING TOMORROW

Where Did We Stand on Education and Learning?

One of the first decisions we made concerned audience. We thought about
what WNET is expert at producing information-packed entertainment for aprime-time audience of adultsand what we knew less aboutteaching
children either formally or informallyand concluded that we should startwith the audience we knew best.

Even though WNET has been the presenting station for "Sesame Street" andother history-making children's programming, the real producer of "Sesame
Street" was the Children's Television Worksnop, which has shown plenty ofinterest in extending its ideas into interactive formats. Similarly, Bank Street
College of Education, Harvard's Educational Technology Center, and several
other highly qualified groups were working on educational computing forchildren.
However, we knew ,.)f no group engaged in the development of principledlearning materials for adults from about the age of high school juniors on up.
Since these are the people for whom we produce most of our television
programming, they seemed the right people for whom to develop interactive
programs.

There is a startling implication to the idea of producing "principled learningmaterials for adults" within the context of a PBS producing station. It is that
education for us means self-educationlearning, not teaching. And if
learning materials are to be principled, they have to be based on a model oflearning, not one of tutoring or teaching. As it turns out, this means they
have to be based on what is now being called cognitive science, rather than on
more traditional educational psychology.
It also turns out that interactivity demands much more explicitness about why
we design programs one way and not another than producing television does.
Television production demands great creativity and subject-matter knowledge,
but every interactive program also entails a theory of education. The final
structure and feel of the program depend on the choice of theory.

The learning theories being codified in modern cognitive science makeinteractivity seem almost indispensable to effective learning products.
However, the kind of interactivity they suggest is often different from what
designers of educational programs have accustomed us to, as I'll try to showin due course. Hence, the choice of cognitive science rather than competing
educational or behavioral theories leads to innovation. "Beyond Einstein"took us beyond convention and into unexplored zones.

203
213

LEARNING TOMORROWA Digression on Cognitive Science

It is a cliché for which there is plenty of evidence that television, movies, andmany other media require very little effort or engagement from theirconsumers. We all understand intuitively that this means that these media

don't provide much intellectual growth"no pain, no gain."
Our intuition has, of course, a solid underpinning in modem cognitive
psychology. This is not the place to go into a detailed examination of all
cognitive science has to say on the subject, but some of the arguments forinteractivity are most powerfully stated in cognitive terms. Therefore, at therisk of insulting the psychologically sophisticated, I will recap a few of thehigh points that helped us to shape "Beyond Einstein," and that we think are
generalizable to the design and production of any interactive media.
Cognitive psychology is about how we acquire knowledge and how weremember and use it. It is concerned with what is called "knowledge
representation," and how this differs among novices and experts in a given
field. Knowledge representation is, in brief, our way of mentally "looking at"what we know. Together with knowledge acquisition, it raises a number ofissues that are relevant to the informational value of interactivity.
Cognitive psychology has mainly focused on two big topics. The first is how
we organize and interrelate information in our minds, and how what wealready know helps us learn new information that in turn modifies andrestructures our previous knowledge. This topic is basically aboutknowledgecognition--itself.
The second topic is not as obvious, but it is critical to self-education. It iscalled "metacognition," and it has to do with the conscious processes bywhich we come to understand, remember, and use what we learn.
Metacognition deals with a person's awareness of how he or she learns or
knows, as well as with the strategies that make learning and remembering
more efficient and secure. Obviously, a learner who can assess his or her
own understanding effectively and take just the right steps to fill the gaps andremember information will learn more than someone with less self-awarenessand fewer "metacognitive" skills.
Knowledge is not facts. Cognitive science suggests that our minds makehuge collections of interconnections and categorizations among the facts welearn. We cannot be said to "know" anything until the mind breaks it down
and labels it, on the one hand, and cross-relates it to the maximum number ofother things we know, on the other. In fact, the difference between an expert
on a subject and the rest of us is in part that the expert breaks down new
information into more relevant chunks than we do and has more knowledge toconnect it to.

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'a cognie ie jargon, the breaking-down process is "schematization,"something we might get tztter at with conscious practice. A somewhat trivial
example of a "schema" might be our idea of "car." How could we break that
down? Here are some of the ways we all use:
Make
Model
Year
Engine (4, 6, or 9 cylinders, horsepower, displacement)
Number of doors (2 or 4)
Number or seats
Full size, intermediate, compact, or sulrompact
Power or manual steering
The list can go on for a long time, because we are all experts on cars in thissense. We know the right questions to ask, and we can judge when theanswers nvike sense. Not many of us have as good a schema for particle
physics! Still, if we were skillful learners, we would know that we should beworking toward one, and that it would be a set of labels to help us direct andmonitor our learning.
The other point, about the advantage of connecting new information in webs
or maps of relations with every other relevant piece of knowledge in our
minds, is even more critical to learning.

More is more. The more we know, the more we understand about new
information. The more connections we make among the data in our minds,
and the mole patterns we form from them, the more secure the information
becomes and the easier it is for us to rememoer in a variety of contexts. The
more we know, the better we understand what questions to ask ourselves inseeking or absorbing new information, thus ensuring that we "represent" it toourselves more fully and expertly.
However, just knowing information is not enough when we are approachinga complex and unfamiliar subject; we also need to know where to begin to
make attachments with what we already know. A successful learning
program will du: fore suggest ways to hook the new knowledge to existing
information ir -is in our minds.
Implied by all this is that it takes time for anyone to build up a large body ofwell - rounded information. "More is more" has implications for the design ofthe information bases for interactive learning products, and also for the kindsof interactivity we build into them. What cognitive science has to say about
metacognition has implications for ho v we design browsers and interfaces tooperate on the information bases in our products.

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k :J.:.

205

Three more findings of cognitive science particularly bear on interactivity andsuggest how it may be connected to the kind of user-controlled programs thata place like WNET, with its television broadcasting background, should
develop.

1. Visual learning. People find it easier to learn when they are able torepresent knowledge to themselves in mental images that the mind can "scan"and that serve to pull ideas together. (Hardly a startling idea; the wisdom of
the ages states that "one picture is worth a thousand words.") This isespecially true when, as they learn, they construct in their minds models or
networks of interrrelated knowledge, in accordance with the cognitive
principles already discussed.

2. Visual memory. Memory for information represented visually isgreater than for verbal information. (There are hints from the exceptional sizeof our visual cortexes relative to those of other mammals that the ability toorganize concepts by spatial relationships, rather than, say, by smell, may be"hard wired" in the human brain. Of course, speech is unique to humanbeings; maybe information taken in and internally represented in words is lessaccessible because speech takes place over time, and we cannot keep many
words in mind simultaneously as we can the parts of a visual image.) Thisencourages us to use visual representation of abstract (hence difficult to learn)concepts and their interrelationships, even when the visual analogies we use
are inexact and have to be "debugged" at a later date.
3. Active engagement Deep, long-term understanding requires active,
prolonged engagement and construction of meaning. Passive engagement
may allow for short-term memory; long-term memory is most effectively
developed by a learner's actively reaching out for and manipulating
information.
These cognitive propositions seem almcx.: to have been formulated to justify
the kind of interactivity that can be achieved on advanced graphics-oriented
computers (combined with videodisc technology, in our case), perhaps
especially by producers of inherently visual programming, such as those whohave had experience with television. In the next section, I will des. ibe someof the ways in which we have tried to bring theory to life and practicality inour demonstration project, "Beyond Einstein."%.-ZIWLEARNING TOMORROW

2C6

Beyond Theory: "Beyond Einstein"

The core team to work on "Beyond Einstein" was very small. It consisted ofmyself as director and Hugh Osborn as associate director and media
integrator, Lauren Resnick and Alan Lesgold (both from the Learning
Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh) as
cognitive scientists and participants in the design process, Neil Patterson as
science editor, Gary Zamchick as art director, and Christopher Pino as
programmer. Geoffrey Haines-Stiles served as advisor and provided a
television series treatment based on a content outline drawn up for us by Paul
Davies, the eminent English physicist and writer. Finally, Steven Weinberg(Nobel laureate in physics) and Abraham Pais gave us counsel on the science.
Before going further, I must say that in the end it was Hugh and I who
determined the contents and shape of the program. The others named above
can only be held responsible for what is nght with it, not for its errors ineither science or psychology.
In planning for the WNET Learning Lab, we established several

criteriaeven before the "Beyond Einstein" team came on boardfor what
would be appropriate subject matter for the first few research anddevelopment projects. It would have to be important socially, intellectually,and educationally, and it would have to be diffictut to understand and learn.

Why set the barriers so high? This was to be a research activity. We
wouldn't be able to learn much if we set the barriers so low that we could
clear them on blind luck. If our approach was right, it would do a better job
in giving motivated adults access to really challenging intellectual content thanpast methods had.
How did we decide on quantum mechanics as the subject? It had everything:
To put it simply, quantum mechanics says that all physical reality consists ofsubatomic particles of various kinds that operate on one another throughforces conveyed by yet more particles; that individually all these particles
behave in random and unpredictable ways; and that there are strict limits to theamount of information we mold have about them at any given time, even if
we had perfect measuring kastruments, because when we observe them, wechange them.
Quantum mechanics is central to the rest of the twentieth-century hardsciences: our most characteristic late-century technologies depend on it; itraises really shocking philosophical questions; and it has the romance of being
the rock on which one of its principal architects, Einstein, ran aground.

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vU

207

"The Creation of the Universe" is not primarily about quantum mechanics, but
about a related topic: the "Big Bang" at the beginning of time. However, theshow was wide-ranging, and it contained enough material on the history andconcepts of quantum mechanics that, for a demonstration at least, we could
reedit large portions of it and supplement them with new material and an
information architecture (more on this in a moment) that would allow us toshow and test our idea of interactive media.
How to get this material across to nonscientists? The challenge is twofold:technical and psychological. Very often in the past, the technical problems
and solutions have driven design, so that learners had to make do with wellengineered but basically opaque programs. We wanted to try it the other way
aroundto think out what an intelligent, motivated, uninformed adult mightwant to know and how he or she might be able to come to terms with thesubject matter, and then to "reverse engineer" a program to meet these needs.
Following the cognitive principles outlined above, "Beyond Einstein" would
have to intrigue learners enough to give them the motivation to start and to goon; somehow it would have to suggest what the contents were without
overwhelming absolute novices. tutd.to show how they could find hooks into
what they already knew. It would have to provide a means of orienting themto the most important ways of looking at the subject. At all times, would haveto give hints about good questions the learner could work on next and how tofind the information to answer them. It would have to be entertaining rather
than didactic, and it would have to help users make appropriate "schemas"
and "maps," just as experts do, to support their understanding and memory.
Since the program was going to be interactive, it had to stay fascinating and:nany reuses, which meant that it would have to be adaptablehelpful t'olo
rent viers 'we of knowledge about the subject. It also needed to taketo t
t the to that the individual users would learn from it, and hence,
intc
increasia.ie. Jphisticated information from it as they went along. Holy
To,' ;delpeople might have quit right there. Instead, the design teammembers bashed their heads against the issues for quite a long time. We madesoftware thata lot of false starts that led us back to conventional
seemed all right for school settings where students have to use it, but all
wrong for adults who can choose how to invest their leisure and hobby time.
"What happened to the weirdness of this stuff? Why would people want tointeract wit; a simulation like this?" Gradually, we made progress.
Everyone eventually agreed that there are certain ways of looking at any factin science that the whole world would find familiar and helpful:

The science itselffacts about the physical world, the names and actionsof the various particles, models of how they work (such as theconventional model of the atom), and so forth.
The scientists, and the labs and apparatus they used for experiments.
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2C8

The issues the science raises, such as "Does God play dice?" and "If theatom is too small to see, how can we learn if there's anything inside it?"
The applications and uses of science, such as the television tube or thecomputer, or the nuclear weapon and nuclear power.
In addition, there is another organizing principle everyone uses andunderstands: time. Time enables us to order things, it helps us ask about
whether earlier things caused later ones, and it helps us to ask what else,
either in our own histories or in the world at large, happened at the same time,earlier or later.

These five ways of looking at science can all be made to work at once, so
that, if we know one fact, we can immediately fill in the rest of theinformation by ab'reg the right questions and looking efficiently for theanswers. In other words, we had devised a schema that even a layperson
could use for learning quantum mechanics.
An example: Suppose you learn that the electron was the first subatomic
particle discovered. Using this schema, you would be in a position to begin
looking for answers to other questions in the schematic framework.

When was it discovered? By whom? Where? What kind of apparatus did the
Liscoverer use? How did he or she arrive at that method? Did this discovery
raise any important issues about previous scientific knowledge and models?
Did it raise philosophicalor even religiousquestions? What applications
did it lead to? How did those change the way we live? Did the discovery of
the electron come before or after the discovery of the quantum? How are thetwo things connected? (And so on.)Laying things out this way also supports another basic cognitive principle:
that learners need to take an active and questing role in building knowledge,
rather than having it packaged for them, however logically.

In practice, our schema told us how to lay out the data base of "Beyond
Einstein." This means that, since we were going to encourage learners topose and answer questions as we've discussed, we had to put the information
into the program in the same way.
I should stress here that "information" in this context does not mean only text.
It mostly means short pieces of video, audio, and computer data, backed or
supported by text only secondarily. The video and audio were to be onvideodisc, along with some of the still graphics and facsimile text materials;
the rest was to be in a computer software program that would also control thevideodisc.

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209

The best way to visualize how we organized the information is to think of a
spreadsheet. Along the top, imagine a timeline from 1895 to the present.
Down the left-hand side, imagine four headings:
Physics
PeopleIssuesUses(In practice, we used subheads under each of these in the data base, but that's
a detail.) To make the task easier for ourselves and to make sure that all themembers of the team were operating from the same model, we festooned myoffice with butcher paper all around the walls and set up the spreadsheet
framework there.
Then we began making 3- by 5-inch file cards; on each one, we wrote a single
fact from the history of subatomic physics. Free association helps here.
Examples: Nucleus; Rutherford; Cavendish Laboratory; Niels Bohr; Quantum
jump; Max Planck; Einstein; Photon.

Take the first card and place it on the spreadsheet. The nucleus is a piece ofphysics, so it goes in the Physics row. Its discovery was announced in 1911,
so it goes under that year in the timeline column. Now Rutherford. He is
associated with a number of important advances in atomic physics, but he iscredited with the discovery of the atomic nucleus, so he goes in People,
directly below Nucleus, at year 1911. Cavendish Laboratory, the lab at
Cambridge University where so much of the early work on the structure of
the atom was done, was under the direction of Joseph John Thomson when
he discovered the electron in 1897, so we can put it with Thomson in the
People row (Places is a subhead) below 1897 in the timeline column. Thatreminds us to put Electron in the Physics line.
And so on. Now imagine that the entire matrix of spreadsheet is filled out, tosome arbitrary level of detail. Each item of data (remember, it might be avideo clip, a still photo, a piece of voice-over, a page of text) can now begiven a unique address in the data base, and we can begin writing a computer
program to get at it as appropriate.
There are some interesting technical challenges here, but the most fascinating
ones concern what learners would want to be able to do. These boil down to
two things: to get some initial orientation to themes in quantum physics
through what amount to television shows, and to then move about freely
through the information.

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210

The structure of the data base allowed us to create both of these capabilities.
If we think of the information spreadsheet as a map, then we can package"tours" simply by specifying which places (data cells) are to be visited m whatorder. For each such tour, we can create an advance organizer that previews
what the tour is about and where it goes. Then we can create a voice-over thatties the individual pieces of media together into a coherent whole. This iswhat we did for the orientation tours.

We made sure the tours available subtly reinforced the five ways of looking at
the science information that we've discussed, since these could be used aslearning aids when users began to browse freely through the information map
later.

I've already mentioned advance organizers. We decided (it became a joke infact, because of the rigor with which it was enforced) that "Beyond Einstein"would not have any menus in the usual sense. We felt that menus are a priceusers have to pay for getting where they really want to be. However, users
have to have some way of finding out what is available and how to get to it,
no matter whether it's called a menu or something else. The "choice screens"would have to be entertaining and educational in themselves. Why not makethem information maps, with voice-overs to let viewers know what they werelooking at and how to use it?

In addition, we could make the maps browsablethat is, merely resting the
cursor on a choice for a moment would bring up a voice-over preview of that
topic that also, almost subliminally, told how it was related to the other topics
on the map. So menus, too, could become real cognitive devices andentertainment in themselves, rather than mere gatekeepers. When the user
made a final choice, a simple click of the mouse would take him or her
directly to it.
We've looked at the basic information architecture and the way a user gets
started in "Beyond Einstein." What happens then? How does one navigate?
How does one interact with the system? These two questions turn out to havethe same answers in this program. The answers were determined by a
combination of the cognitive science that we made a design principle and of amore general concern for what users would want from an informal education
product from a source like WNET.
In the end, we defined five kinds of interactivity and navigation in "Beyond
Einstein." Most of them are served by more than one feature in the program.
I'll list them:

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LEARNING TOMORROW21.1j1. Touring. Already mentioned. It serves to orient, suggest ways oflooking at the subject matter, motivate, and se: people up for later browsing.

cti

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LEARNING TOMORROW

2. Browsing. Also mentioned. When users understand the architecture of
the information (the fivefold structute discussed above), they are in aposition, especially with the help of the Choice and Topic screens with theiradvance organizer feature, to begin simply exploring the subject on their own.

,I. S.

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3. Connecting. We wanted, everywhere in "Beyond Einstein," to help
learners create the kinds of cognitive maps or networks that seem to be so
critical for memory and comprehension. The voice-over previews are one
example of how we tried to support mapmaking. Mother is the feature wecalled semantic nets. (The term derives from work by Quillian and Collins
and others on memory.)
Cognitive scientists distinguish between two levels of memory: short-term, or
working, memory, and long-term or semantic, memory. Short-term memoryis like a small "buffer" in the mind; we can keep a small number of things inmind for as long as we are working with them. For the longer term, they
have to be anchored "semantically" if we are to retain them and be able torecover them at will.
The semantic nets in "Beyond Einstein" occur at the ends of major topic
sections. They are patterns of words arrayed around the topic word, color
coded as to whether the terms refer to science itself, people or places, issues,
or uses of sciencein other words, to reinforce and make use of our fivefold
schema. They are interconnected by lines that represent precedence, cause, or
authorship. They serve as a method of pulling together what was in that
section of the program and other material elsewhere in the program, and as areview mechanism. They are also active: clicking on any term in the semantic
net takes the user there directly. Thus "connecting" in our sense also means
something like "orderly free - associating." Almost every part of the program
can be directly addressed from a Choice screen, a Tour screen, or a semantic
net.

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LEARNING TOMORROW

L

225

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LEARNING TOMORROW

215

A

4. "Question asking." I started this paper by saying that "The Creationof the Universe" cried out for user control of the pace, and for interactivity.
The most obvious kind of interactivity for a program like this is the ability toquestion it. Being able to stop the show and ask "What was that word again?
What did it mean? What did I just see?" would alone transform television into
something much more rewarding.
Therefore, we built into "Beyond Einstein" four features to support active
questing and adaptivity to individual users. We called them script, glossary,magnifying glass, and motion pause.
Because the narrative portions of the program inevitably bring up unfamiliar
terms that most listeners couldn't even spell, we built in the capability to stop
the action and display in text the script of the narrative. In the script, technicalterms are highlighted in color. Pointing to one and clicking brii.gs up an entry
from the glossary, defining it in multiple media (for example, print andvideo).

._91ossary

216
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LEA RNING TOMORROWThe magnifying glass is displayed as an icon at the bottom of the screen
whenever (which is often) there are additional levels of information available
on the material being treated. Clicking on it first brings up a somewhat
expanded version of information, perhaps with a formula Irritten out rather
than in mathematical notation, a labeled diagram of experimental apparatus, ora longer selection of text. Going down further woild take the user to a level
perhaps roughly appropriate for an undergraduate aking a course on thesubject. This level might bring up a simulation or the full mathematicalrepresentation of the topic.
Finally, the motion pause stops the action and draws boxes around the objects
on the screen for which labeling and other information is available. Pointing
to a box and clicking brings up a full screen of information, while retaining
the box of video in the same position it occupied before the click.

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5. "Condition changing." Sometimes the only way to understand what
is being said is to set up a model and tinker with it. This we call "conditionchanging"; it is better known as simulating. "Beyond Einstein" treats
simulations as ceus of information that can be brought up as appropriate froma variety of different parts of the program. To take one example: thesimulation of Niels Bohr's 1913 model of the atom can be reached by taking atour (on the history of our concepts of the atom), directly from a Choicescreen (by clicking "Bohr atom") or from a semantic net; the Bohr atom
would appear on several nets. On arrival at the segment on Bohr's concept of
the atom and definition of the quantum jump, the simulation would be lying in
wait below a magnifying glass. The voice-over would suggest going down tolook at it.

If "Beyond Einstein" sounds like a complex design, that's not
surprisingit's very complicated. What is surprising is that the program is
not at all complicated to use. The actual command structure, from the user's
point of view, is among the simplest we have ever seenand deliberately so.
At all timos, the screen looks like a television screen, not a computer screen.
This is because, in our opinion, most people who are interested in interactingwith a program like "Beyond Einstein" have no interest in becoming computer
operators. We think they want television to do a better job of helping themlearn and remember some of the big subjects. If our program were regarded
simply as a more successful form of television or publication, we would bevery flattered.

,

4EARNING TOMORROW

Maximizing Return on Program Investment

CMS

One of the unhappiest facts about public broadcasting is that the enormous
expense involved in producing high-quality programming brings such a small
audience reach for its producers and underwriters. We are not thinking here
primarily of financial return hough heaven knows that it's important, too),
but of the fact that most programs are seen two or three times, then disappear,
takir , their investments with them.

By planning interactive products in advance with the producers of elated
television series, we could not only anticipate reuse of important andexpensive video and audio segments, but also plan additional shootir -, on
location, where crews are already needed for the television production. Withadvance planning, we need add very little to the cost of broadcast
pr gramming. We would become producers of interactive material that reuses
television programming effectively, because the television was planned withthis in mind, and the extra material was produced at low cost, since it involves
virtually no new expense in travel and setup.

The skills we develop for making interactive multimedia productsin
animation, graphics, and audio, to name a fewhave potential future benefit
for the broadcast organization as well, especially with stereo and multichannel
broadcasting just over thelibrizon.
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219

Whatever Became of "Beyond Einstein"?

frGood question. "Beyond Einstein" is first and foremost a demonstration
project. It is finished only on the demo tape. In reality, while there is moreon the videodisc than we were able to show on tape, there is less computer
programming than is needed for a viable product.
As I said at the beginning, the program is put together from bits of material
gathered from several sources. Our plan for an interactive modern physics
curriculum for older students and adults, and for a corresponding telecourse,
has always been to build from the ground up. The function of the tape is toshow what our concept might look like if funded and implemented.

The present demonstration was made on a shoestring. We had a small grantfrom the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the development andanother from the Hyde-Watson Foundation for equipment. If the core teammembers had not invested a great deal of "sweat equity" in the project, it
could not have been accomplished for the budget. The kind of product that isneeded will cost something like $2 million to develop, test, and refine, evenwith the amount of design already done. WNET is a nonprofit educational
television station and production center. Clearly, the funds would have to beraised elsewhere. The question is whether the possibilities demonstrated in"Beyond Einstein" seem worth the investment.
But, as often happens, that is part of the question we need money to answer.
Our claim that this program embodies sophisticated ideas of learning, basedon the latest cognitive theories, and that it will be more attractive to andeffective with older learners than earlier materials, needs a thorough test. The
kinds of cognitive outcomes we are suggesting could come from a program
like this are very hard to measure. One of the reasons the ongoing researchand development of "Beyond Einstein" is worth investing in, in our view, isthat it will force an advance in the state of the art of cognitive testing.

In the meantime, "Beyond Einstein" is a set of design principles based onreasoning that can be captured and replicated. This paper does some of that
capturing. The replicating is up to all of us.
The need to understand interactive media and develop principled learning
products cannot be put off much longer. The time seems to be rapidly
approaching when a viable interactive multimedia technology will penetrateconsumer and education markets. It may well be based on the compact discand knit together home audio and video systems. It may, in fact, prove to be
the recently announced Compact Disc-Interactive (CD -I). Initially, CD-I will
be unable to handle much motion video, and its access times may be slow, hut
it will be a powerful medium computer based on a very successful audio
technology.

230

LEARNING TOMORROWThe extent to which interactive compact-disc players are overtly computerswill be a matter of marketing experimentation on the part of hardware
companies, and there may be enough different models to encompass several
alternative product concepts: the CD-I player as home entertainment center,
CD-I as computer peripheral; CD-I as media computer. We can probably
expect CD-I to be around long enough to find its niche in the marketplace.
It is not my purpose to push a technological breakthrough. W Tether CD-I
succeeds or not, we are so close to the widespread market ay liability of amachine on which "Beyond Einstein" and its successors
play that it
hardly matters exactly what its name will be. What is much more important is
why it should be, and how we should put it to use in the service of an
appropriate goal. The right goal, from the perspective of WNET, is
information made transparent and attractive to users. Surely that's something
we can all sign up for.
Einstein" is a start on our exploration of"information transparent and attractive."

231

LEARNING TOMORROWBackground Reading

For anyone interested in reading further on cognitive science as it might apply
to the design of learning materials, I might recommend the following as a onevolume introduction:
Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications, by John R. Anderson, publishedby W.H. Freeman and Company, New York.

Anderson's book was published in 1980, and quite a lot of work has been
done since. Nonetheless, it's a fine starting place.
Those feeling the need for strong medicine should begin by reading...
Mental Models: To ,vards a Cognitive Science of Language, Ir/erence, andConsciousness, by P.H. Johnson-Laird, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Mass.,1983.
For almost the whole world of cognitive science, go on to the catalogs of theHarvard Cognitive Science Series (of which Johnson-Laird's book is one)and the publications of Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, N.J. Erlbaum makes a
speciality of publishing current work by the best-known cognitive scientists.
Then follow the citations in the bibliographies of these books.

232

LiM,RNING TOMORROW 2:

Thomas G. Anderson
Thomas G. Anderson is a Principal with the
Boston consulting firm of CommonwealthStrategies, Inc. He has specialized in the fields ofpublishing and broadcasting, particularly as they
deal with education. He has worked since early
1984 with WNET in New York on strategies forinteractive media and in developing the prototype"Beyond Einstein."

Earlier, Anderson was the Vice President for
Business Planning and Development at Ginn andCompany, then part of the Xerox PublishingGroup. He was also General Manager of Ginn
Press, and of Ginn Electronic Products. In
addition, he managed the Technical Seeding
Program, which transferred technology fromXerox Palo Alto Research Center to Ginn. He
worked with John Seely Brown and others todevelop advanced interactive learning materials
and to investigate the possibility of transforming
the publishing process through the application of
new computing capabilities and expert systems.
Before joining Xerox, Tom Anderson was
Editorial Director and head of language arts
curriculum at Open Court Publishing Company.
He was educated at Canadian schools and collegesin the days before cognitive science was born, and"ad to settle for Classics and English.
233

LEARNING TOMORROW

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225

At the heart of the computer and multimedia revolution is a set of economic
and business factors. At the moment, there is no scheme for the development,
use, and distribution of multimedia computer-based materials. Manyorganizations are expressing interest in interactive experiences, including
computer companies and optical media companies. In addition, a number ofdifferent organizations have decided to consider themselves informationcompanies rather than media-specific distributors. Tom Anderson of WNET
states eloquently, for exapinle, that PBS stations are in the education business,
not the television business, and that it is, dicefore, most appropriate that theyextend their offerings beyond television broadcast to books and "longdistance" courses that complement their broadcasts (which WNET has alreadydone), as well as to interactive materials that extend their video materials (asTom is now proposing).

Peter Cook has provided Groliers with a similar message over the years, as
he has aseisted them in moving into electronic media in a systematic way. Thismeans that in addition to producing leather-bound books called encyclopedias,
Groliers is in the business of encyclopedic information. It is in the business ofeffectively rtraying information, using whatever media are available, in
addition to k production and organization. The skills involved in preparing
encyclopedic information for printing seem to transfer to new mediathough
clearly, it is a slow and tedious transfer. Issues of how to index materials inelectronic form are somewhat different from those for print delivery, forexample. Yet Cook's perspective is to attempt the transfer and makeappropriate changes. Groher's intention is to lead in the electronic information
tusiness by setting up infrastructures for advertising, distributing, and pricing
first versions of electronic media, thereby preparing for later, moresophisticated presentations.
The National Geographic Society also has made a serious commitment toavoid becoming "media bound," as described by George Peterson. This is
not new to the National Geographic Society, for they have an almost onehundred-year history in media innovation, beginning with the fundamental
decision to include pictures in their magazine, and more recently evidenced bytheir decisions to produce filmstrips, topical books, and television materials
that extend their offerings well beyond the pages of their magazine. This
experience in non-media specific development is now assisting the National
Geographic Society in its work in computer software and optical media, areasthat finally seem ready to engage the kinds of image presentations and qualityof display for which this organization is known. This enables the society tocontinue to fulfill its nonprofit charter of delivering geographic information to
American citizens; these new media complement its existing materials andexpertise while providing new experiences for its audience.

n4-.6
236 141nRNING TOMORROWMultimedia
Technology
An Encylopedia Publisher's Perspective
Peter Cook
Grolier

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LEARNING TOMORROW

227

Among the dozen or so companies, individuals, and educational organizations
represented at Apple's "Multimedia in Education" seminar, Grolier occupied a

unique position andwe believeoffered a unique perspective. Grolier is
not a computer manufacturer, software develr, university research lab, or
not-for-profit organization; it is a publicly
international publisher that isvery "aeavily involved in one particular information-delivery technology, atechnology that has remained remarkably stable throughout its long history:
the publishing of printed books. It is a technology that we know intimately interms of the creative/editorial process, the production and manufacturing, andthe marketing and distribution of the end productsproducts that meet a realneed in a particular market or market segment.
Because print technology is so stable, and the market forces that create thedemand for print products (particularly within the education market) are welldefined, prim publishers have little incentive to pursue ill-defined alternative
delivery technologies, with all their associated risks and uncertainties. In fact,

publishers who are used to working in product life cycles of 5,10, andin
the case of encyclopedias-20 years or more, are often confused by the rapid
and apparently helter-skelter development and introduction of new hardware
devices and new software delivery media.
Given all of the above, perhaps this question should be asked: Why should anencyclopedia publisher such as Groliera representative of the mosttraditional, unchanging segment of print publishingbe interested in
multimedia technology in the first place?

A simple answer would be that any information-delivery technology that isviaole for Grolier's products and markets is viewed as a potential business
opportunity, and as a possible threat to the company's current business. I
could go on at great length outlining the nature of both the opportunities andthe threats that face traditional print publishers, but I want to step back fromthat discussion and instead look at the impact of information technologies onsociety as a whole, so that Grolier's longer-term strategy, and its view ofmultimedia technology in particular, can be seen in a broader context.

Grolier has elected to ride the wave of technology becausefrom our
publishing perspectivethere is no other sensible alternative. We are in theinformation business, and the mode for disseminating information of all
formsdata, text, audio, visualis undergoing rapid change, in terms ofboth the media of dissemination and the relative importance of the various
kinds of media.

2239

LEARNING TOMORROWPrint nublishers today must compete with other media for valuable time andresources, as we move from a predominantly paper-based to a screen-basedsociety. In some areas of life, that transition is already accomplished:
television is the medium of greatest influence on much of modem
societychildren in the U.S. are already exposed to a staggering 6-7 hours
of TV viewing per day. Television is a seductive medium: the illusion ofreality created by its images; the passive, relaxing nature of the viewing
experience; the strengthening of family bonds through sharing theexperienceno matter how slight; each of these factors is a powerfulreinforcer of the dominance of television in our lives.
Computer technology (at least as viewed by the end user who has little
understanding or interest in the underlying technology) is also screen based,
but because it cannot function without interaction, it is the antithesis of
television, which is passive by nature. The value of the computer lies in its
ability to manipulate many kinds of information under the control of the user,
information that already exists as published software (from adventure games
to physics simulations) and information that is entered directly by the user intoa software tool (such as a word processor or a data-base manager). In an
educational setting, it is the user's interaction with the content of a computer
program, in particular the degree of personal control of the informationexchange, that sets the computer apart. Interaction requires involvement,
which in turn can enhance the learning experience.

Television, or more mealy, the video medium, is already all-pervasive inour society. Computers, particularly personal computers, have alreadychanged many aspects of our working lives and will ultimately become asprevalent in schools and homes. The domains of television and computer
technology are beginning to converge, and early examples of thisconvergence, such as interactive videodisc, demonstrate some of the potentialof multimedia products. Such products allow the user to interact with video
and audio information, selecting individual pathways through the programand controlling the pace of the information displayed.
Computer-controlled videodisc players are already being used to great effectin meeting the training requirements of large corporations, and a few
educational programs have recently been introduced into schools (forexample, the Core Concepts in Science and Math series, produced by
Systems Impact, Inc). But the videodisc/computer systems of the present are
frequently hardware hybrids that do not effectively integrate the audiovisualmaterials with those generated by the computer. Future systems will combine
all functions in a single hardware device, providing true multimedia
capabilities.

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LEARNING TOMORROWBut what are the potential advantages of such systems? We believe thatmultimedia products will break down the barriers that currently exist between
the worlds of print publishing, film and television production, and computer
technology, providing a hardware system and a delivery medium that canblend materials from all sources. If this potential is fully realized, multimediadelivery systems could provide us with exciting new tools for working,learning, and entertainment.

230
241

LEARNING TOMORROWGrolier's Strategy for Building a Multimedia
Encyclopedia

Having outlined a somewhat seductive vision of the future potential for
multimedia productswith the underlying promise of the business
opportunities created by such productsI will now return to the present, andeven refer to the past, as I outline Grolier's goals and the strategy for
implementing those goals.
One of the company's longer-term objectives is the creation of a multimedia
encyclopedia, an information tool for the '.'490s and beyond. However, it is a
product concept that cannot be delivered via current technology; nor, we
believe, would the market be ready for it even if a truly viable delivery
technology were Lvailable today. Our strategy, therefore, is to build towardthat long-term goai nuough a series of product-development stages that are
acceptable in strict business terms and that are picividing the building blocks
for our longer-term goal.
Because current technology cannot provide us with a viable delivery system
for multimedia products, our development plan has two tracksone for thedevelopment of an encyclopedic text data base and the other for thedevelopment of of an audiovisual data base but it is our firm belief that bothtracks will converge and eventually merge into one. It is not prudent for any
company to base its business decisions on future events that it ha.: Tittle
control over, but we believe that cm step-by-step development plan minimizes
the current business risk while still building toward the long-term goal.

Developing an Encyclopedic Text Data Base
The decision to develop and market an electronic edition of an encyclopedia
was greatly facilitated by Grolier's acquisition of the Academic American
Encyclopedia (AAE), a 20-volume, 9-million-word genial reference set thatwas first published in 1980. Although the AAE had been developed as a print
product, all of the text had been typeset using computer technology. The
entire text existed as a machine-readable data base that was subsequently
edited to eliminate nondisplayable characters as well as all references to theillustrations that are used in the print edition.
The data base was made commercially available in 1982 via Dow Jones
News/Retrieval, and is now accessible to over 700,000 subscribers via some
12 additional on-line services, including CompuServe, The Source, Dialog,
and BRS.

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.0(

r LEARNING TOMORROWThe on-line business is a viable one for Grolier. It's a business that will growas the networking of computers continues to expand within the business andeducational markets. It has also provided the company with a tremendous
learning experienceparticularly in terms of how different audiences, fromyoung children to business users, access and use an electronic encyclopedia.
We found, for example, that information searches were frequendy frustrated
by the unforgiving nature of the retrieval software programs the interface
between the user and the data basethat are used by the various on-line
services. For example, the software of relatively easy -to-use systems such as
CompuServe cannot handle slight misspellings or word transpositions insearch terms entered by users, and the more powerful, professional services
require a considerable understanding of the complex command language usedby their software. Through this experience we realized the underlying
importance of retrieval software, and how it can be adapted to better suit theneeds of the encyclopedia user and to more fully realize the power ofelectronic mediaissues that will be addressed later in this paper.
Our experience with on-line distribution of the data base has been helpful inother projects using various forms of optical storage as the delivery media. In
1984, Grolier worked with Laserdata Inc. to develop a prototype laser
videodisc that stored the text of the AAE as digital data That work was
followed a year later by the commercial introduction of the Knowledgedisc,an analog videodisc edition of the AAE, and in 1986 by the introduction of
The Electronic Encyclopedia , a CD-ROM edition of the same data basebothof these products were developed with KnowledgeSet Inc. (formerly known
as Activenture).

The Encyclopedia Text Data Base:Development Steps
DELIVERY TECHNOLOGYTEXTDATA BASE

1982
ONLINE/

1984
DIGITAL

VIDEOTEXVIDEODISC

1985
ANALOGVIDEODISC

Ln>
1986
CD-ROMAll of these development have been viable in purely business terms, and eachhas been of significant value to the ongoing development and refinement of
the data base. The text data base has in fact diverged considerably from its
print parent: more articles have been added because, unlike the print edition,
the electronic data base has no physical limitations. The electronic edition is
also more current, with the on-line version being updated on a quarterly basis
compared to the annual update of the printed set
243

LEARNING TOMORROW

232

With the CD-ROM edition, we have also considerably enhanced the retrieval
software, addressing many of the limitations of on-line services mentioned
earlier. The success of a new distribution medium such as CD-ROM lies in
its ability to be much mere than a direct physical substitution for otherdelivery technologies. We have acknowledged that fact in developing thevarious editions of the data base, adding value to the information in ways thatare not possible with the printed work.
Later in this paper, I will be reviewing how text information can be enhanced,
but these enhancements are best explained by first examining how print
encyclopedias are used, and then showing, through examples, how aneectronic eacycl xdia can better serve these same information needs.

The Role of a Print Encyclopedia
The primary role of a general encyclopedia is that of a reference source afact-finder--that is designed to meet many kinds of basic information needs
across all fields of inquiry. In attempting to encompass all areas ofknowledge (the circle of learning embodied in the word "encyclopedia"), theinformation contained within a general reference set must be carefully
selected, and then distilled down to its essence. There are clear variables that
iffect this process: the physical capacity of the encyclopedia, in terms ofwords, pages, and illustrations; the targled audience; the biases and skills of
the many individuals who contribute to such a work; and the publisher'scommitmer zo maintain:4 the currenarcss and effectiveness of theencyclopedia over time.
The ongoing value of encyclopedias continues to be that they are a microcosm
of all knowledgeworks that encompass all fields of human endeavor andexperience in a convenient resource (though convenient is a relative term if
you are working with a 30-volume set). In an age cf increasing specializationin both the educational sysm and the work envumment, encyclopedias
endure as oae cf the few rckaaining sources of general information.
,en seeking information in an encyclopedia, the user usually has a certain
set of expectations about the work, in terms of how it is organized, theapproximate ranfe of the articles it contains, and the limited nature of its
content (limited is also a relative term: a 10,000-word article o,: the American
Revolution may be perfectly adequate for a 5th grader but inadequate for acollege graduate). These expec tations are ultimately either satisfied or not by
the succss
c of the encyclopedia in meetirg the user's information needs, bothin the primary role as a source of basic reference information, and as nfor stimulating the user's curiosity to explore additional information within or
beyond Li- encycicpedia.

LEARNING TOMORROW

244
.

e

4-

Because their primary role is that of a reference tool, printed encyclopedias
have been designed to facilitate information seeking. The alphabet is a
powerful organizer (as we all know from our use of indexes, dictionaries,
telephone books, and so on) and it is the method of organization used mostuenty by general encyclopediasyou look in the N volume for articles
on ew York, and the C volume for information on California. (Thisconvent nt yet arbitrary arrangement of information can create somefascinating juxtapositions: Alvar Aalto, the aardvark, rnd Hank Aaron havealmost nothing in common other than the double a in their spelling that's
responsible for their proximity to each ocher in an encyclopedia. Yet thismethod of organization has a value, if only for the serendipitous discoveries it
encourages.)
There is also an underlying organization that binds the alphabetically arranged
articles to other topically related information. This is achieved withinencyclopedia articles by the use of cross-references and see-also listings,
which direct the user to related information elsewhere in the set, and throughthe use of the index, which usually contains listings under convenient topic
headings. However, these devices for directing the user to topically related
information do not eliminate the awkwardness of alphabetical organization of
the information. For example, a child who wanted to see all of the al dcles on
dinosaurs in the AAE would have to access 13 different volumes.

Limitations of Print Media
Clearly, a printed encyclopedia is limited because of the physical constraintsof the print medium. The information on its pages remains fixed and cannot
be dynamically rearranged to suit the needs and convenience of the end user.

And of course the infor, 'ltion cannot be updated or changedshort ofwriting directly onto the ...argins of the printed page. But printed
encyclopedias have yet another limitation that is particularly relevant witen one
considers the encyclopedia's primary role as a reference source, and that is theinaccessibility of much of the information. For example, to find information
on Mark Twain in the AAE, a user could either access the T volume directly,
and turn to the article "Twain, Mark," or use the index volume. The AAE
index lists six references to articles on Twainthe one principal article andfive additional articles that have been selected by the indexer. In fact, a searchof the electronic edition of the AAE reveals references to some 25 articles thatare of relevance to Twain. The printed index is limited by size and thest lection criteria of the indexer, and cannot direct the user to all the relevantin formation.

245

LEARNING TOMORROW

k.

234

However, the printed encyclopedia has one advantage over he current
electronic editions: it contains several thousand illustrationsphotographs,
maps, paintings, diagrams, etc.--none of which can be stored and distributed
economically using the electronic distribution media described so far. But aspreviously stated, we plan to develop a complementary audicr'isualencyclopedic data base. using the full raw: of audiovisual media to deliver an
information experience that goes far beyond the fixed images of the printed
book. I will describe this in a later section.
The next several pages of this paper show how a text-only electronic editionof the AAE can overcome many of the limitations of the printed encyclopedia,
while also providing other enhancements that clearly demonstrate the ability to
add value to preexisting information through electronic manipulation.

Limitations of Electronic Media
Before reviewing the advantages of an electronic edition of an encyclopedia, it
would be useful to examine some of its inherent disadvantages whencompared to a book. First, the computer screen can provide only the most
myopic view of a large textual information resource, because a standard
computer monitor displays approximately 300 words on the screen at a time,
while a print encyclopedia can present 3,000 words across two facing pages.
Because of its physical nature, the printed work can also provide a sense ofscale and a sense of place: at the most basic level, everyone knows how tonavigate in a book. An electronic encyclopedia cannot duplicate the physicaldimensions and characteristics of the book; it requires a different set ofnavigational aids, and a completely different mode of interaction, as thefollowing series of examples will demonstrate.

LEARNING TOMORROWEnhancing Encyclopedia Information
in Electronic MediaThe illustrations and examples used in this section show how one particular
information quest can be aided by computer technology. It is assumed in thedescription that the reader is reasonably familiar with the user-interface
conventions of Apple's Macintosh computer, in particular with the use of pulldown menus and the selection of options with a mouse.
In this simulated example, information in the encyclopedia data u, se can belocated by direct searching or by browsing, using the various program
options. In the first screen (Fig. 1), the user selects the encyclopedia database from a "library" of reference tools, and chooses the mode of searching.
Search options include the ability to search the encyclopedia by individual
word, by article title, or by topic area. This particular example begins withthe user typing in the article title "Mark Twain" and then clicking on "Search"(Fig. 2). Havmg found an article that exactly matches the iser's request, thecomputer employs a split-screen technique to display an outline of the article's
contents alongside the first "page" of zxt (Fig. 3). The user can then selectany section of the article from the contents listing and view that directly, or
remove the contents list (by clicking on the close box) so that the full screenof text can be displayed (Fig. 4).
Figure 1* FileEdit

SearchOptions
Encyclopedia
Word

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Article Index
WINONI
Dictionary
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ENCYCLOPEDIATHESAURUS

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247

LEARNING TOMORROW

236

Figure 2

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Twain MarkPAGE 1 OF 10* Mark Twain was the pseudonym of*Samuel Langhorne Clemens, b . Florida,

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Mo ., nov. 30,1835, d .Apr .21, 1910, who;VIIachieved worldwide fame during his
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with such writers as Ernest
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HUCKLEBERRY Finn - a major influence lip
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Twain MarkPAGE 1 OF 6

Mark Twain was the pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clem-0ens, b . Florida, Mo ., Flov. 30,1835, d . Apr . 21,1010, who achieved

worldwide fame during his lifetime as an author, lecturer,
satirist, and humorist. Since his death his literary stature
has further increased, with such writers as Ernest
Hemingway, and William Faulkner declaring his work., -particularly HUCKLEBERRY FM11 - a major influence on 20th-

century American fiction.
Twain was raised in Hannibal, Mo ., on the Mississippi
River . His writing career began shortly after the death of his
father in 1847. Apprenticed first to a printer, he soon joined

his brother Orion'. HanAibal Joarnal, supplying copy

and becoming familiar with much of the frontier humor of
the time, such as George V . Harris's Sut Lovingood yarns andother works of the so-called Southwestern Humorists.
From 1853'.o 1857, Twain visited and periodicallg worked asgmi
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The vertical scroll bar can be used to view additional lines or pages of thearticle (the "page" convention is based on the portion of the article that iscurrently in view, hence the different number of pages listed for the same
article in Figures 3 and 4). The horizontal scroll bar can be used to browse to
articles that are adjacent tc 'wain in the alphabet, and it is possible to browse
through different letters (vow/nes) of the alphabet by clicking on the current
letter (Fig. 5), which changes the scroll bar into an alphabet from which otherletters can be selected.

249

LEARNING TOMOR kOW

238

Figure* File Edit

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PAGE 1 OF 6
Twain, MarkMark Twain was the pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clem-0ens, b . Florida, Mo ., llov. 30,1833, d . Apr . 21,1910, who achieved

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worldwide fame during his lifetime as an author, lecturer,
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401
his brother Orion's Arannibal Joarnal, supplying copy
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01 ft EICDEFGHILIKIMNOPOOSITIOUNV2I0T4When viewing the text, there are a number of options available to the user, as
the Options menu shown in Figure 6 indicates. These include the ability tomark and recall a specific page, to show the table of contents of an article, andto use a feature called "Search Trail," which automaticey creates a list of all
the articles viewed by the user during a single session with the computer.
Other options will be explained through examples. The "Cross-Reference"
option that is highlighted in Figure 6 enables the user to select a relevant crossreference within the text (identified through the familiar book convention ofcapitalized letters) and then view the relevant article directly using a horizontal
split screen (Fig. 7).

2S0

LEARNING TOMORROW.2as

Figure 6

a File Edit Search

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Mark Page
Recoil Plge

Twain MarkPAGE 1 OF 6

Show Contents
Mark Twain was the pee
ghorne Clemens, b . Florida, Mo nov. Show info List
, who achieved
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works particularly HUCK' EDER
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Twain, MarkPAGE 1 OF 12
Mark Twain was the pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, b . Florida, Mo ., nov. 30,1835, d . Apr . 21,1910, who achieved

worldwide fame during his lifetime as an author, lecturer,
satirist, and humorist . Since his death his literary stature
has further increased, with such writers as Ernest
Hemingway and Villiarn Faulknerdeclaring
declang his works -

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particularly i f i T r Lrf FF- F.7 FIIII1 - a major influence on 20th-

century American fiction.
Huckleberry Finn
PAGE 1 OF 2
Sometimes nulled the first modern American novel, theAdmen error of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark VATAM
may be read on several levels. On the surface it is a0

PICARESQUE HOVEL in which young Huck Finn relates his

adventures us he travels down the Mississippi River on a raft pp
with a runaway slave named Jim . On another level it is a11satire of society and the constraints of civilization, which
both Huck and Jim are attempting to escape . Symbolically
4
251

LEARNING TOMORROW

24n

Selecting "See Also" from the Options menu creates a listing of all the titles ofother articles in the encyclopedia that the author or editor has identified as
being of particular relevance to Mark Twain (Fig. 8). Each of the articles
listed can be displayed by highlighting the article title.

a File Edit
Emmen

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Encyclopedia 1=011=11=
Twain, MarkPAGE 1 OF 10

AmericanjLiterature 6 Mark Twain was the pseudonym ofCelebrated Jumping
Frog of Calaveras
County, The

Children's Literature

ElmiraHannibal (city)
Huckleberry Finn
Humor and Wit
Mississi ppi River
Steamboat
Tom Sawyer

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, b .Florida,
Mo ., Rov . 30, 1835, d . A pr . 21, 14210, whoaachieved worldwide fame during his
lifetime as an avtnarileatareriaatirist,and humorist. . Since his death his:kg

literary stature has further increased,lewith such writers as Ernest
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L Highlight titta of article for display

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CancelAnother method for accessing information on Mark 'I wain would be to use
the computer to search for every single occurrence of his name. Having
established the particular search parameters (listed in the "dialog box" on theright side of the screen in Figure 9), the search reveals that the words "Mark
Twain" appear 42 times in the data base, in 25 articles. A list of the articles
can be displayed (Fig. 10) and any article selected (Fig. 11). The list of titles
can be removed or redisplayed in the same way as the Contents and See Also
listings described earlier.

25 2

LEARNING TOMORROW

Figure 9* File Edit Search

1_----

Options---- Encyclopedia
Words in same:

Search For Words:
Mark Twain

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Text
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Word Occurrences/Article Titles/ Number of Pages
1/ American art and architecture/ 32
5i American literature/ 29
1/ Atlantic Monthly/ 1
1 /Book, Edward ',Miami 1
1 /Brooks, Van Vgok/ 2
2/ Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras
County, the/ 1

3/ children. literature/13

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I / Clemens, Samuel Langhorne: see
Twain, Mark /1
2/ 'Connectioutt/ 35
1/ Ellison, Ralph/ 3

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riearchLEARYING TOMORROW

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242Figure 11

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Clemens, SamuelLanghorne: see

Twain, Mark/1
Connecticutt/35
Ellison, Ralph/3

Gilded Agei A satirical novel. TA* Gilded Age

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0.8731,bg mark Train and Charles

Dudley Varner gave the period its
name. The era, one of rapid industrialization, was characterized by theruthless pursuit of profit, government
corruption, conspicuous consumption,

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Harpers/3(

PAGE 1 OF 1

* The Gilded Age is a term used to describe
h the post-Civil Var period in US . history .

El mire/1

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Information can also be searched for and displayed topically, using several
different options. The "Show Topic Map" option listed on the menu (Fig. 12)
allows the user to view a diagrammatic representation of a topic area (Figs. 13
and 14), which reveals the underlying hierarchical structure of the topic andthe relative position of articles within that hierarchy. In this example, theTwain article is related to a series of topical groupings under the broad
category of American Literature, which in turn is subordinated to a still wider
grouping that encompasses all of the arts.

254

LEARNING TOMORROW a

Figure 12

ea File Edit Search Options
Er

Twain, MarkMark Page
Recall Page
Show Contents

Mark Twain was the pee%ens, b . Florida, moShow Title List

worldwide fame duringsatirist, and humorist .

Show Topic Map=NEM=
PAGE 1 OF 6

Clem',who achieved,lecturer,
rg stature

has further increased,t
Hemingway, and Vilna= Show Topic List is works partioularlg HIIC1CLEBERF
ffiphabelicol :once on 20thcentury American fiction
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Time Lines
father in 1847. Apprentic,
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255

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LEARNING TOMORROW

244

Cancel41

Fkgare 14

66 File Edit Search Options

As the Options men'i in Figure 12 indicates, topical information can also beviewed in a list form, in which the computer displays a predefined list ce
topically related articlzs. in the example shown (Fig. 15), Twain is listed in
the context of other American novelists, but the article could also be viewed in
the context of other categories of American writers, such as humorists or
essayists. (In this example the pyramid icon in the top left corner represents
the layers of hierarchy, with the levels that are currently being displayed
shown in a highlighted form. Other levels can be selected by clicking directlyon the icon.)

2:30r,.1.13ARNING TOMORR02143

Figure 15

File Edit

SearchTopic Brea
ART

AMER

All Biographies

Criticsleamati 3t3
Essayists

Humorists

Journalists
Poets

ATURE

Options

Encyclopedia
Novelists
138 articles
Stowe, Harriet Beecher >Stuart, Jesse
Styron, William

Susann, Jaqueline
Tarkington, Booth'?5 Terhune, Albert Payson
Twain, Mark >Tyler, Anne
Updike, John
Uris, Leon
Van Slyke, Helen
Van Vechten, Carl

Topic Map

CancelThe alphabetical topic list in Figure 15 can also be displayed in a chronologicalsequence by selecting that option from the menu. The resulting display (Fig.
16) lists Twain and other American novelists in a chronological sequence,ordered by birth daterevealing at a glance Twain's contemporaries. Any
article title listed can be selected and the text viewed, subordinating the listing
to the window on the left side of the screen.
One final example continues the chronological theme but places Twain in a
broader context. When the "Time Lines" option is selected from the menu
shown in Figure 12, a diagrammatic representation is displayed, showing aperiod of time that coincides with the part of Twain's life (Fig. 17). In thisexample, the time line selected reveals key U.S. political events during a
30-year period of th 19th century. Other years, periods, or centuries can beselected using the horizontal scroll bar, and several different time-line optioi.s
are available so that Twain (or any other individual or event) can be viewed indifferent contexts: from the point of view of political evezus, technologicalachievements, key events in the arts, and so forth. All of the events andindividuals listed in the time line relate to articles in the encyclopedia. For
example, the article "Mexican War" could be displayed by clicking directly on
those words.

257

LEARNINt(3,i0MORROW

246

Figure 16* File Edit

SearchEncyclopedia
Nouelists

K3
Area

To

ART

Alm.
giq

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Critics
Dramatists
Essayists

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^

Poets

Novelists_.

138 articles
Ni1

Stowe, Harriet Beecher (1811-90> "I
Melville, Herman (1819-91) >Jackson, Helen Hunt (18,50-1885)
Twain, Mark (1835-1910) >[Topic Map )

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to
oN

( Cancel

Options

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10

Cable, George (1844-1922)
Jewett, Sarah D. (1849-1909)
Page, Thomas Nelson (1853-1922)
Ford, Paul Leicester (1865-1902)

Ms deg )* File------

Iii
Harte, Bret (1836-1902)
qW
Howells, William Dean (1837-1920) 41
James, Henry (1843-1916) >Ni

All Biographies

Figure 17

Options

Encyclopedia 1/NSIMMIIIIIIM
Time Line:Time Zone:

Mark Twain, 1835-1910
1835

World Politics
1850r

1845

1640

Irish Famine stimulates
US Immigrationrican Anti utoundedUS Politics

Texas annexed by US

1855

1860

.1:865

Civil WarKansas-Nebraska
Act
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Harper's Ferry Lincoln Assas

Oregon Treaty
Mexican War
Ickson;!arrison
Van Buren

Tyler
nm

Polk

imsimim

Fillmore

TaylorJohns

Buchanan

PierceLincoln

19

258

LEARNING TOMORROWThe purpose of showing and describing this series of examples (and I shouldemphasize that these screens represent a concept and not a commerciallyavailable product) is to reveal some of the many ways that a basic body of
information could be linked, organized, and displayed. As I hope the Twain
example reveals, it is possible to build a cognitive network and a navigational
method that allows the user to approach an information inquiry from manydifferent viewpoints, and provides a vehicle for truly dynamic exploration of
the tiv data ease's contents and its underlying structure.
Other research work that Grolier is conducting is examining how best to linkdifferent data bases (such as the dictionary and thesaurus shown in the first
figure of this sequence) and how to provide the user with easy and effective
m,.. -cods of mampulating and extracting information so that it can be used in aconvenient form. All of these efforts have one single thrustto enhance thevalue of our encyclopedic information, thereby providing a more usefri, morevaluable information toola dynamic encyclopedia that has been shaped totake full advantage of the technologies described earlier.

259

LEARNING TOMORROW
I
.

i. *A

243

Text Today, Multimedia Tomorrow:
Planning an Audiovisual Data Base

All of the work described so far has dealt with the development andenhancement IA a text data base, but as I mentioned earlier, Grolier is alsoplanning to develop a complementary audiovisual data base that will
eventually merge with the text, forming a multimedia product We had a headstart with the text data base because the AAE already existed in machinereadable format and the development cost for the encyclopedia was primarily
offset against the print edition. This is not the case with an audiovisual database, because we have to start from scratch.
Two years ago, Grolier funded a pilot project to test the feasibility of using
laser videodisc technology as the delivery medium for an audiovisual database. The resulting videodisc prototype was a vehicle for examining thequestions regarding contents and prWuction dimensions that are involved
with creating a viable videodisc series. Though the research was worthwhile,
it revealed the enormous complexity and cost involved in creating anencyclopedic audiovisual data base. Nevertheless, our planning and research
activities have continued, and have in fact intensified considerably in the lightof renewed interest in the videodisc as well as the recent announcement of
CDI (compact disc interactive), a new audiovisual medium.

There are several distinct areas of audiovisual enhancement that we believe arevalid for encyclopedia applications, including the use of audio, dynamic
graphics, picture data bases, and full-motion film and video materials. The
following paragraphs describe some of the potential audiovisual enhancementsthat we are investigating.

Audio Enhancement
Audio has many uses: music can best convey the essence of the works ofcomposers and musicians, and what better way to describe a musicalinstrument than through the sound it makes? The use of recorded speeches isanother interesting area; biographies of figures such as John F. Kennedy,
Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill, and even Adolf Hitler can be brought
alive through the vital quality of their speeches.

Dynamic Graphics
There are many kinds of gra, .tics that can convey information in a much moremeaningful way when they are dynamically controlled by the user. For
example, historical maps can actually show the ebb and flow of history for
subjects such as the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the U.S. Civil War,
Colonial Africa, and so forth. The rate at wnich events occur could becontrolled by tIL,e user, as could the layers of detail that appear on the maps.
Events and places listed on the maps could in turn be linked to text articles,
and so on.

.......
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LEARNING TOMOR 8i0iii0Other kinds of dynamic graphics include diagrams that illustrate different
principles and concepts, such as how an internal-combustion engine works,
the structure of the human eye, and how an aircraft flies. Again, each of these
diagrams could allow for some degree of user interaction so that theunderlying principles are better understooci.

Picture Data Bases
Our encyclopedia application will contain many different image data bases insuch areas as art, plants and animals, and peoples and countries. Each image
in the data base can have certain attributes assigned so that the images can bereorganized to suit the needs of the user. For example, a data base ofpaintings might be viewed alphabetically by artist, or by date, region, media,
style, periri, or category (such as landscape or portraiture).

Motion Sequences
Motion can be used in many different ways: for example, movie and TV
newsreels can show momentous historical events, such as the first moon
walk; nature films can reveal the beauty of a humpback whale breaching, thespe-d of the cheetah, the elaborate mating displays of birds; and so on.
Motion can also convey the complexities of sports activities that are
impossible to describe through words or static images.
These examples show some of the ways in which we plan to use audiovisualmaterials. It is also otir ultimate goal to build dynamic links between images,
and between images and textin much the same way as was shown in the
Twain examplesthat will allow the user to search for illustrations, andreorganize and manipulate them, in as many ways as possible. From ourperspective, that is part of the ultimate appeal of multimedia
technologycreating a truly flexible, dynamic medium that combines thestimulation and power of audiovisual information, the depth of layered text
information, and the dynamic capabilities 4 the computer to manipulate bothkinds of information.
In concluding, I want to reaffirm Grolier's commitment to keep pace with anduse viable new idonnation-delivery technologies. At the present time,
multimedia technology is a promise, not a reality. That it will happen, we
have no doubt; that it will be important to the educational community and otherbroader markets we have no doubt. It is the when, and the how, that wecannot predict with the same degree of cutainty.

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Peter CookPeter Cook is the Vice Presicknt for Creative
Services for Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc.
After 10 years of international publishingexperience in London, he came to the U.S.
specifically to help develop the original print
edition of the Academic American Encyclopedia.
Sbce the printed edition was published in 1980,
he has served a key role in the development of
the various electronics editions of theencyclopedia (using on-line data base distribution,
videodisc, and CD-ROM technology) and has
recently returned to London to work on thedevelopment of a CDI (compact disk interactive)
version of the encyclopedia. As a trained graphic
designer, he is particularly interested an thegraphic representation of the knowledge structureof large data bases, and in the integration of text
and graphics media.

r.--1

A..J.I.
262

LEARNING TOMORROWGeography,
Images, andTechnology
Innovations in Educaion and Publishing at the National Geographic Society
George Peterson

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The National Geographic Society

In spite of its history of innovation, the Society has always respected the
traditional and the familiar. But it is also characteristic of the Society that its
leaders ha never shied from the challenge of seeking the unfamiliar, whether
it be found in the stratosphere or the depths of the ocean. And geographic andscientific exploration have alway been closely paralleled by journalistic andtechnological innovation in publishing.

On J ..uary 13, 1888, a group of 33 geographers and scientists founded the
National Gwvaphic Society in Washington, D.C., and then launched
National Geographic magazine, the aim being to increase and diffuse
geographic knowledge. The first issue, pit together by a volunteer staff in asmall rented room, was short and technical. And it contained the names of all
members, who even ten years later numbered only 1,400.
In 1897, Alexander Graham Bell became president of the Society. The
organization was then :2,000 in debt. Bell hired the Society's first paid
employees, among them his future son-in-law, Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor,
whose $1,200 annual salary Bell paid out of his own pocket for nearly six
years.

Under young Grosvenor's leadership, circulation expanded to more than
10,000 by 1905the year the Society published its first photographic series,
11 pages of black-and-white pictures of the Forbidden City (Lhasa, Tibet).
The first color series, hand-tinted scenes from Korea and China, waspublished in 1910. The magazine's earliest autochrome was published in
1914, followed in 1916 by the first natural-color series, depicting dancers Ted
Shawn and Ruth St Denis in an article titled "The Land of the Best"

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By 1920, circulation was more than 700,000. Its increase during the war
years, when the magazine concentrated on the geography of the battle-torncountries, was phenomenal. The magazine's maps, particularly one depicting
the Western Front, were in demand all over the world.
Grosvenor's leadership continued to produce editorial and technical firsts. In
1926, a photographic team maez, the first natural-color photographs of life
beneath the sea, immortalizing a hogfish and a host of other flora and faunawith the aid of blinding explosions of flash powder fired above the surface of
the water. The first photographs from the stratosphere were taken in 1935
from aboard the gondola of Explorer II, which, on an expedition sponsoredby the Society and the U.S. Army Air Corps, rose nearly 14 miles above thesurface of the earth.
Grosvenor's editorial and business stewardship continued until his retirementin 1954. He was succeeded as editor and president by John Oliver LaGorce,
his associate of more than 50 years. Then in 1957, Grosvenor's son, MelvilleBell crosvenor, became editor and president, the beginning of an era ofdramatic change and growth for the Society.
When MM.:, as he was known, decided to leave the Society's printer of morethan 60 years, he announced to his staff: "This will be the first magazine toprint color on every page." It is reported that a less-imaginative officer
moaned that this would be the demise of the Geographic: "He'll break theSociety." Instead, Grosvenor more than doubled Society membershipto
about 5 millionbegan a dynamic book program, published our first atlas andglobe, and launched one of television's longest-running documentary series.

266.. -LEARNING TOMORROW. ,6 ...) d

By 1960, the Society had moved into the era of electronic publishing, greatly
expanding the means at its diswsal to diffuse geographic knowledge, and at
the same time dramatically ethuemg both its audience and thet of its
message. When MBG retired as editor in 1967, he was followedy
Fredenck G. Vosburgh, who kept the momentum bohig and broke new
ground as the Society continued to evolve and respond to members' concerns.
Gilbert M. Grosvenor, now the Society's president, describes some of thechanges he witnessed in the decade (from 1970 to 1980) of his editorship: Our
writers, photographers, and filmmakers were finding change everywhere they
traveled, as timeless lands of nomads in the Middle F..0t became batile zones
and once-romantic jungle trails became highways to war in Southeast Asia andAfrica. The need for geographic knowledge and understanding to help
interpret these events grew with each year, as did our ability to meet thechallenge.
"Our fledgling book program blossomed into one of the largest publishing
operations of its kind in the world, reaching new levels of quality each year.
Our policy of diversification and lateral growth led us into an area in which I
have taken a special person ?l interest. As members of the 'baby boom' of the
1940s and 1950s passed through school and into mraurity. children seemedsomehow to grow out of fashion as a s is of personal discussion. The
Society had for half a century pubis - the weekly School Bulletin, but I felt
we could reach more children better with a different sort of publication. In
1975, we published the first issue of National Geogi ...9hic World, a monthly
magazine for children eight years old and up. Since its first issue, World has
attained the largest circulation of any magazine of its kind""Through our hundreds of educational filmstrips, films, videotapes, andmultimedia kits, the Society has made available to schools high-quality
materials in a broad variety of subjects at very reasonable costs. In 1984, wefinally acted on the long-expressed desires of our membership for travel
information that is at once educational and entertaining. We began publicationof the Society's first new magazine for adults since 1888National
Geographic Traveler."

267

LEARNING,TOMORROWThe Society and Geography"Consider a si.9wflake," wrote National Geographic editor Wilbur E. Garrett
in his introduction to the magazine's most recent index, "as it touches yourhandintricate, delicate, beautiful. For one small moment it is present; then it
melts into the past. Yet if you had caught the snowflake on a chilled glass
slide and photographed it, that image would always live in the present,
permitting you to study and enjoy it at your leisureenhancing yourpredation of all future snowflakes. That is the essence of what the-.graphic has been dying to do since 1888capture and preserve
significant present moments with as little distortion as possible."
The National Geographic Society's mission to increase and diffuse geographic
knowledge is fulfilled through exploration and research and is commumcatedthrough the creative use of maps, photographs, and wordswhich together
capture an image of the exotic, beautiful, and often unforgiving world beyond
our doorsteps and out of reach of our classrooms. Like snowflakes, thecontemporary world of geography is characterized by diversity and, as withsnowflakes, there are patterns m this complex universe that can be exposed to
study.
Geography is often described as an integrative discipline. Novelist James
Michener noted, "The more I work in the social studies field, the moreconvinced I become that geography is the foundation of all."Geographers, as they attempt to comprehend the complex physical and social
patterns of today's world, synthesize work from related disciplines in thephysical sciences (geology, meteorology) and the social (economics,sociology).
Geography is, perhaps more than any other, a visual discipline. Maps are oneof the primary tools of the geographer. Randy Smith, associate professor of
geography at Ohio State University, describes the geographic perspective as
one that "stresses, at the outset, where phenomena are located, through theuse of maps. No other academic subject begins that way. In so doing, it gives
a visual impression of the complexity of the contemporary world. At present,
most students are not aware of such complexity. They cannot appreciate justhow different, in physical and human terms, various parts of their own
country are, or how their own country differs from other parts of the world."
Maps help people to identify and analyze physical and human phenomena andthe ways in which they are interrelated. The map is one symbol composed ofmany other symbolsa translation of perceived reality. Maps are made up of
many symbols in the same way that essays consist of words, sentences, andparagraphsa collection of symbols with accepted meanings, selected andorganized by analytic and creative minds to communicate a reality too complex
to reproduce in any other way. The photograph and the moving picture arealso symbols, reproducing images of reality, frozen in time. Just as a black

linea thin trail of ink on wood pulp ground to papercan become ahighway to adventure, a photograph can be a key to geographic knowledge
and understanding and a stimulus to further inquiry.

268 LEARNING TOMORROW

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Literally, geography means "writing about the earth." But it is perhaps betterinterpreted as a "way of thinking" about. the earth. The visual image is anextension of that thought process. Some might even say the image precedes
the thought. It is indisputable that the visual image is changing the way wethink, the way we see the world around us, the way we perceive ourrelationship to it.

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257

Technology, Communication, and the Role of theCreative Mind

"Are creative people dinosaurs about to be imprisoned in hardware, captured
in cable, shot with lasers and light beams') Will engineersso brilliant inelectronics but frequently so lacking in communications skillscontrol
content? I submit to you that today there is greater need and greater relevancefor creativity than ever. While today's capacity to transmit information islimitless, today's production of clear, valid, enriching information ispractically nonexistent."
Society President Gilbert M. Grosvenor, in his remarks this summer before
the World Congress on Education and Technology in Vancouver, British
Columbia, reflected on the changing nature of technology, communication,and the role of the creative mind:"The sheer appetite and magnitude of communications today will make it
impossible for the average family not to OD on electronic junk without theinspiration of the creative mind to correct, to modify, to elevate, and toenlighten a viewer. We must seek out the magic of creativity.""The kind of magic I have in mind comes in on a beam of light from some
unknown somewhere else. I think of J.R.R. Tolkien. The year is 1928. Hesits in his study at Oxford correcting a student's thesis. His life to that point?
His father's death in South Africa when Tolkien was a child, his mother's
religious conversion, subsequent separation from her family, and herpremature death; his years as an orphan, under a guardian who forbade him tosee the woman he loved; his friendships at school, blown away during thefirst day on the Somme, when the stir......dity of generals took 20,000 lives in asingle day. All of this is behind him as he sat reading the thesis. The student
had, for some reason, left a page blank. When Tolkien came to it, he pickedup his pen and wrote on the blank page: 'In a hole in the ground there lived ahobbit.' Thus launched one of the great literary careers of our century.""No machine, no electronic wizardry, can replace the single act of creation,
the inspired moment that arrives in its own tune, at its own speed, and fromits own unknown source. It is what drives all the rest of it; industries are built
upon it. Regardless of how technology increases the speed, the volume, andthe nature of communication, the value of the contentthe very essencewill
begin and end with the creative personality.""In a way, technology is no stranger in the classroom. The printed page is atechnological teachers' aid. But why haven't we advanced further? Why do
we still rely so heavily on traditional media and fail to take advantage ofcomputers? Why do we continue to rely on filmstrip projectors when the
television monitor is so much more powerful? Television is after all
universally acknowledged as the second teacheran electronic teacher whose
magical moving images capture chi'dren's attention with an ease unmatchedby even the most mesmerizing story teller. Computers with the right software
can work magic, too."

273 ,itARNING TOMORROW

258

"If we can harness them intellectually, I am convinced that the televisionmonitor, the computer, and the telephone are destined to transform the way
we learn and the way we teach, and I intend to put my money where myconvictions are. The technologies are available, and the costs are predictably
dropping."

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LEARNING TOMORROW
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..)..

259

The NGS and Education

The National Geographic Society's mission to increase and diffuse knowledge
in the geographic sciences can be fulfilled only if we do our best to support
improved education in the classroom. We bring to this task our skills andreputation as an educational publisher, our success and experience in thedevelopment and distribution of classroom materials in science andgeography, the highest standards for editorial content and production quality,
and a commitment to the application of innovative technologies to classroom
education.
We would like to see a videodisc player in every classroom, and we would
like to 3ee it hooked up to a computer. Imagine how much knowledge ateacher could impart using a videodisc of every photograph ever published in
National Geographic magazine. Imagine a geography field trip under thecontrol of the studenta tour of California, for example, that permits an
inquisitive mind to explore freely across space ?end time to experience,
instantaneously, relationships between places and interactions between
peoples and landscapes.
We are convinced that we're on the threshold of a dramatic breakthrough thatwill see a proliferation of creative, educationally sound software forcomputers and videodiscsand we're committed to playing an active role indeveloping that software. We've already produced one interactive videodisc,"Whales," which combines motion-picture footage, stills, and text
framesand there will be more discs in the near future.
For computers, we're now working on several software programs to bereleased in 1987, covering a range of subject areas and grade levels. These
programs will be fully integrated wia, richly illustrated reading materials. Our
goal is to produce simple, flexible p. ..gams appropriate for typical schools,
utilizing the worldwide resources of the National Geographic Society and thebest of traditional educational materials and methods.
We believe these efforts are a transitional phase to an era when more fullyinteractive educational programs will be as common as books on library
shelves. Toward that end, we're making major investments in developmental
projects involving telecommunications networks and highly interactive
computer and optica. technologies. One of our goals for the not-too-distantfuture is to publish an interactive atlas of the world.

But there is much to be done before that vision becomes a reality. It is clearthat excellence of materials, by itself, will not ensure adoption by our nation's
schools. We will .e..ed to forge alliances across a broad spectrum of interests if
we are collectively to have an impact on the improvement of teaching methods
and materials. We will need partners. We will need to join forces with
policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels. We will need to work withschool systems and with hardware manufacturers.

272;LEARNING TOMORROW
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2i3O

We are determined to commit the Society's resources to those projects thatpromise maximum impact and stand the best chance of attracting additional
outside funding and support. We cannot do it alone and, even if we believed
we could, it would nct be a wise course. We are convinced that only throughpaitnerships will we be able to generate the energy, the enthusiasm, and thefinancial resources necessary to put technology to effective use in theclassroom.

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Li,a

261

George A. Peterson
George A. Peterson is the Director of the
Educational Media Division of the National
Geographic Society. With a B.A. from Princeton
and an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia
University, Mr. Peterson worked as a freelancephotographer, writer, and magazine designer
before joining the National Geographic Society in1970. Currently, Mr. Peterson directs the Society's
creation and production of filmstrips, videodiscs,,:omputer software, and classroom resource
guides. Also under his direction is the Geography
Education Outreach Program, a public service
effort to improve geography education materials
and teaching methods.

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A growing community of individuals are focusing deliberately on interactive
multimedia experiences as a central area of discussion and development rather
than as an extension of experiences or of traditional expertise. Steve Gano isconsciously addressing the development of new, personalized image-based
media, for example. He notes that though the technological capabilities are
now available, or at least coming quickly, people are only slowly
understanding the potential impact of the visual communication enabled bythese technologies. When you can prepare an interactive display for yourmother as quickly as you can write a letter, will you? What tools will you needin order to mak; this attractive, and what skills will you need to make thisexercise fun and effective? Even if you have available the greatest images of
the world, will you be able to tell your story/ deliver your intent? And how
might you use text to best advantage? Or sounds? How can digitizing cameras
and sound recorders easily help_you "capture" the world around you toelaborate your stories ;,nd ideas? Will you end up generally making linear
presentations for your friends, relatives, and business associates? Or will you
create personalized experiences for them, more as a museum exhibit designer
than as a great author?
.stions. There are so many questions that arise when addressing these newissues straight on. Doug Crockford's persistent question is "Are we having
fun?"his interest in multimedia interactivity is in the entertainment area.
More specifically, he wants to create engaging experiences for people, as havegreat entertainment people in the past. Yet he wants to extend this concept toinclude education, work, and other typically nonentertaining areas. His
criterion for a great multimedia presentation is not whether it is interactive or
technical; rather, his focus is on the phenomenological experience of the
moment, and its success. Video games do indeed provide successful
experiences, in a very limited range of experiences for a limited audience, andhence provide a good background example. However, it is the expansion ofthis fanciful engagement in material that needs to be the focus of these video
games, not the specifics of a particular "look" or purpose.

Microsoft's multimedia encyclopedia described at the Conference by SuzanneRopiequet provides a concrete example of opportunities available ininteractive multimedia. It represents a direct collaboration of most of theperspectives just described, with an emphasis on software development,
encyclopedic presentations, and live-action video (television).

2,65
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LEARNING TOMORROWMultimedia
Technology Is for
Casual, Everyday
Use
Steve Gano
Hewlett-Packard Labs

2.6 6
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LEARNING TOMORROWThis paper proposes that multimedia technology can be used by ordinary
individuals casually and frequently for very commonplace purposes. The
implication is that multimedia technology will join the basic repertoire oftechniques for individual self-expression, along with speech, gesture, andwriting. This proposal is examined from three perspectives:

One: Multimedia technology for personal use is at hand. On the shelf, or on
the near horizon, are tools that make the materials and techniques of cinema
availa)le to any individual.
Two: We may be disinclined to imagine the personal uses of multimedia
technology because of the overwhelming presence of electronic media as
broadcast media in our culture.
Three: Personal multimedia technologies will provide individuals with entirely
new means of reflection, investigation, and self-expression.

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One: Multimedia technology for personal use is at hand. On the shelf, or on
the near horizon, are tools that make the materials and techniques of cinema
available to any individual.

Video recording
Thirty years ago, the first videotape recorders were available (from Ampex)
for broadcast use. They used two-inch tape (about a mile of it to record an
hour's worth of video), cost several hundred thousand dollars, and wereabout the size of a catering truck. Today, over 30 million homes in thiscountry have videocassette recorders (VCRs) that outperform those firstrecorders in every respect, and cost only a few hundred dollars.
Home VCRs are used primarily for watching rented movies and for "timeshifting"recording television shows for later viewing. The 30-millionowner mark is a significant one for video producers, because it represents abase market large enough to justify made-for-home video production.' And
it's a base large and varied enough that video publishers can consider projects
for smaller, specialized audiences, in the same way that book and magazine
publishers do.
Manufacturers are also providing consumers with more opportunities to use
video as well as watch it. Compact vidca cameras with built -in recording
decks have been available for several years. Now Sony has introduced an
8mm video system that includes a "Handycam," a camera and recorder about
the size of a cigar box. The Sony system also includes something new for thehome market: a video editor that allows people to electronically assemble theirhome movies. The system is advertised as a way to take "movirg snapshots,"suggesting simple operation and frequent, casual rse.

Optical viieodiscs
Optical videodiscs, introduced to the home market in the late 1970s, provide
two significant advantages over magnetic videotape. First, laser-read discs area mass-pioduceable, virtually indestructible archival medium for cinematic
materials. Second, the videodisc is a random access medium: the laser readhead can quickly jump to any spot in the program, while videotape must belaboriously wound and unwound to access a particular spot on the tape.
These two qualities make optical videodiscs particularly usefu; for publishingcinematic reference materials.

282

LEARNING TOMORROWVideodiscs also provide unique ways for people to access and use cinematic
materials. Random access, coupled with stable still frame and variable-speed
play, __JWS people to probe and peruse a videadisc as they might a book. As
Nicholas Negroponte observed in the first days of the technology, thedistinction between books and movies "will become thin as soon as weenvisage 'books' whose photographs are movies and whose diagrams are
animated, or as we embed more and more still-frame material into 'movies.'"Videodiscs were developed as a redistribution medium for theatrical movies,
but the VCR, because it can also record video, has overwhelmingly outsold
videodisc players in the home market. Still, some distributors offer
videmliscs that introduce viewers to the possibilities of the medium. For
example, "loyager Press of Los Angeles distributes a "coffee table" videodisc
depicting the city of Vancouver through historical photos, posters, maps, andtime -lapse journeys through the streets. Knowledge Set of Monterey,

California, produced a videodisc containingon printed video framesthe
entire text (and, ironically, none of the illustrations) of Grolier's Academic
American Encyclopedia.

Another . e vocative videodisc offer-Ig is the Video Encyclopedia of the 20th
Century , 1 $ CEL Communications of New York. It contains 75 hours ofindexed primary cinematic source material beginning with footage shot byThomas Edison at the 1893 Columbian Exposition and proceeding throughcoverage of disasters, wars, presidents, riots, moonwalks, and other eventson up to the present. To have this kind of material for personal use, available
as readily as a dictionary or almanac on the shelf, is a very new and exciting
possibility. It gives children the opportunity to explore and vividly experience
the events that shaped the world as it is today. What might be the outcome ofgiving a student such video source material, a VCR, and the assignment to put
together stories for Eyewitness News?

Compact discs
Over the past three years, consumers have embraced a new technology forrecorded music: the digital compact audio disc. Unlike the videodisc, which
represents its images and sound in a continuous, or analog form, the compact
disc (CD) stores its information in discrete, digital bits.

Both videodiscs and CDs can store images, sound, and text. The digitalformat of CDs is more economical for text, computer programs, and databases; the same Grolier encyclopedia that, as printed video frames, occupies
an entire videodisc side takes up only one-fifth of a digital compact disc. On
the other hand, a videodisc can store more images (54,000) in its analog
format than can a compact disc (500-4000); more significantly, the videodisc
can store and play moving images. Add to this the fact that videodiscs canalso store high-density digital information in several formats, including CD
format, and it's clear that the videodisc is the more potent technology.

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However, the public's reception of videodiscs has been lukewarm, largely
because the marketing focus for videodiscs as a movie redintribution medium
has been overshadowed by videotape. It appears that the compact disc is in abetter position to become the first interactive multimedia device to beestablished in the home, in part due to a better-organized industry push forsoftware standards. The compact disc-interactive (CD-0 format supported byPhilips, Sony, and others gives developers a standard format for images,
sound, and datasomething that interactive videodisc producers have neverreally had.
Although the compact disc cannot reproduce live motion to any useful degree,
it has some important elements of a cinema machine. Its vast capacity forstoring data can be used to offset the modest microcomputing capability of ahome machine. For instance, it can store all of the pre-rendered cells of ananimation that a more powerful but less capacious machine might have todraw anew each frame. Also, limited "camera movements," such as a slow
pan across a landscape, are possible through well-known digital imagebuffering techniques. And, of course, there is abundant high-quality audio toprovide a temporal dynamic with music, sound effects, and voice-overnarration.
This is not the stuff MTV is made of (yet). But consider a public- televisionstyle historical documentary or science program that is made up entirely of still
photos and paintings, animated diagrams, the voice-over narration of the field
experts and host, and perhaps an opening pan across a mood-setting
landscape with a bird or two flying overhead. A properly designed andoutfitted CD-based system could conceivably generate such a program.
Moreover, the program could be interactive, paced and structured by theviewer, with megabytes of supplementary information available instantly.

Digital video effects
Videotape and optical discs are multimedia technologies that have made thejourney from research laboratory to industry to the home in a generation'stime. If we can also apply that progres6ion to technologies bemg developed
today, then within the next decade we should expect to have digitil video
manipulation capabilities in the home. This would exponentially ennance thefeatures of current technologies, and serve as a catalyst for new technologies,
such s electronic photography.

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LEARNING TOMORROW

Digital video effectsimages that flip and tumble through space, or curl offscreen like the pages of a magazine--are now commonplace on television.
These video tricks are accomplished by turning analog video images into
digital data, applying geometric transforms on the digital images, and thenturning the digital data back into analog vid:te, at rates of 30 frames per
second, with one million bytes per frame. The image transformations requirethat a substantial amount of arithmetic be performed on each and every pointof every frame, and be performed extraordinarily quickly. The highperformance devices available today to work this magic (for example,
Ampex's ADO and Quantel's Mirage) cost from $100,000 to over $500,000.
But the core technologies of digital videohuge, fast digital memories andfast, special-purpose microprocessorscontinue to get bigger, faster, andless expensive.

Early results are available today. ITT, for example, manufactures a televisionthat can display video from two sources at once: a nu.,,nal full-sized picturefrom one source, and a quarter-sized picture from the other source, inset in thelarger picture. The underlying digital video capabilities are few but
significant: the ability to instantly crop, scale, and position live images
anywhere on the television screen, and to overlay them.
Even these simple capabilities change how people can use videotape andvideodiscs. With a digital video display, a viewer could simultaneously
examine material from the beginning, middle, and end of a video source.
This would allow, for example, having several "volumes" of the CEL video
encyclopedia open and spread out at once, just as one might with a print
encyclopedia. Digital image techniques will also enable people to "cut andpaste" video material from different parts of a source, and from different
sources, to create entirely new matenal. This would constitute a personal
creative medium that is more expressive and more flexible than anything
previously available to individaa.

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Two: We may be disinclined to imagine the personal uses of multimedia
technology because of the overwhelming presence of electronic media as
broadcast media in our culture.
Simple access to new technologies cannot by itself guarantee us a brighter
future. We have to know what they can do and how we might use them inorder to tap their liberating potential. We can either project a new context for
the new technologies, or misuse them in old contexts. That is the present
situation for electronic media, which have evolved in an industrial, massconsumer context, and have so exaggerated the attenuated role of theindividual that we may neglect to dream about how these technologies mightserve us as individuals.

The role of broadcast media in our culture is a novel one. There has neverbeen anything like it in the past, nothing as compellingly real and immediate,and certainly nothing as omnipresent (except perhaps the church in past ages).
For example, in the United States over 98 percent of all households have atleast one television set; the average "on" time is over seven hours per day.3
This is an unprecedented, almost unfathomable, sphere of influenceand one
that, aside from the token presence of noncommercial public television,' isentirely in the service of commerce.
In order to sell products, the broadcast image is made to appeal to the largest
number of people possible. Regional traits are homogenized out of
television's oratorical standard:local newscasters around the country, forexample, are essentially interchangeable. In its worst (and all too common)
moments, commercial television projects its own needs for a buying public on
its audience. Through its programs, and particularly through its
advertisements, television celebrates the role of the individual as consumer.
In the mythology of commercial broadcasting, an individual achieves successand satisfaction not through wit or hard work, but by buying the rightproducts.

This kind of use of television is not inherently unhealthy. In fact, it's
probably an inescapable aspect of a free society. What's culturally debilitating
is to concede exclusive use of this powerful communications medium tospecial interests. It would be tragic if we could not at least imagine a society
where everyone has a voice in this n w electronic marketplace of ideas, or if
we did not consider what we might become if ve were to live in such aculture.
Downscaling technology gives us the opportunity to rethink the use ofelectronic media, to turn them into something Ivan Mich calls convivial tools.
"Convivial tools are those which give each person who uses them the greatest
opportunity to enrich the environment with the fruits of his or her vision.
In usual tools deny this possibility to those who use them and they allow
their designers to determine the meaning and expectations of others." 5286

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4

From this perspective, broadcast media are industrial tools, for they offer
viewers no opportunity to interact with their information environment, nor toenrich it with their personal views. The meaning of the individual in theelectronic media environment today is as a demographic unit in the numbers
games played by networks and advertisers. On th n. other hand, in the
democratization of electronic media technology here's at least the potential for
individuals to define their own role in the society.
With tools for appropriating information in various rich forms (images,
sound, computer data) from various sources (on-demand data bases,
correspondence from friends, trusted fire-lance information hunters,
broadcasts), an individual can be an actin e participant in information
gathering. With tools for manipulating multimedia information, for arranging
it and reconstructing it like the pieces of a puzzle un 1 a clear picture emerges,
an individual can be a powerful analyst, and can concretely recreate the manydifferent points of view from which events and ideas might be understood.
With tools for recording and redistributing multimedia information, an
individual can achieve a voice in the electronic marketplace of iueas, and help
sustain the flow of information that keeps a convivial society alive andspiritually prosperous.

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,.,

273

k'hree: Personal multimedia technologies will provide individuals withentirely new means of reflection, investigation, and self-expression.
The impact of personal multimedia technologies on the individual is difficult topredict because there aren't any precedents for the casual "veryday use ofsuch powerful technologies. My intuition is that we are near the beginning of
an intellectual revolution as sweeping as the one that accompanied the adventof the printed book. For the first time, ordinary individuals will be able tocreate and arrange events is space and time, and design direct experiences forthemselves and for others. What has been the expressive medium for a very
few can now join speech, gesture, and writing in everyone's repertoire of
personal expressive forms.
Rather than speculate haphazardly on the nature of these changes, I will close
this paper with three scenarios that suggest some possible personal uses ofmultimedia technology. The settings for these scenarios are purposefully
mundane, to emphasize the casual, everyday use of the media. None of thesystems described exist today;hr'vever, they could be built, if not yet for thehome, as laboratory prototypes that anticipate home use.

Database search keys from life
Well, Hillary had certainly caught one this time. It was a large bug, o "er aninch long, with yellow and orange stripes around its body, and two pairs ofwings. Unfortunately for it, one of its wings was broken, which is how
Hillary had caught up with it on the windowsill.
"What is it, Mom?""I don't know, dear, out please don't wave it in my face. You should go lookit up in the encyclopedia.""OK," saie Hillary, and she ran to the family room and inserted theencyclopedia disc into the reader. Holding her prize tightly in one hand, she
zipped through the index until she came to the "I" section, and then slowly
homed in, first on "insects," and then on the "insect identification" section.
She had been there many times before to use the "build-an-insect"classification table.
Hillary selected parts from the table that matched her new prey, and as she didso, the encyclopedia asserrblftd, onscreen, a reasonable likeness of thecreature in her hand. "Tins is a member of the sawfly family," theencyclopedia narrator said, just as the assembled illustraticn of the creature"egan to crawl around on a green leafy backround. "A primitive relative of
the ant, bee, and wasp. Some species are considered pests because theirlarvae bore into the winks of weakened or dead deciduous trees."

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"Oh-oh, better tell Dad about that," Hillary thought, and paused long enoughto print out a picture of the sawfly and its caterpillar-like larva, and aparagrr.ph about its feeding habits. Her father had been wondering lately
about ti.d elm in the backyard.
The next page of the article showed a close-up animation of the female sawfly
cutting into a maple leaf and depositing her eggs. The printed text explainedthat the saw-like egg duct of the sawfly had developed into the stinger ofwasps and bees. Hillary decided that her next science report for school wasgoing to be about the strange things insect mothers have to do to find a place
to lay eggs, so she copied the animated page into her electronic notebook, andtyped a note on it to remind herself of some other spec: Is to look up later.

A little dialectical montage between friends
Brian was feeling a Eitie outclassed by his Japanese vidm pen ral, Ichiro,
who had sent him a fastidiously assembled videotape of his mother preparing
the evening mai. Brian was scanning through his owl, 'deo that he hadtaken this evening o send to Ichiro, and he felt a little embarrassed at L--Av
crude and ordinary everything seem...". Where Ichiro's mom had artfully
sculpted carrots into mr.ple !ewes to ',low in the soup, Brian's mom had used
the Cuisinart to shred things ror the slaw. WI-ere'ro's mom had laid out
everything in separate dishes, arranged in a quiet, formal way (which Ichirodisplayed pr,,ucily with an overhead pan, a "sky-cam" kind of shot), Brian's
mom had pretty much just piled the mast and potatoe.. on a big platter. (Brianscanned in a more picturesque version of the mal al a cookbook andspliced it into his tape; heover it in big yellow letters: "This ;1 wilat it
was SUPPOSED to look.")
All at once he had the insight that would let him trui his Japanese friend.
He would assemble the two tapes together to show t...,th the differences andthe similarities of the two cultures: their delicate vegetable carving versus his
Cuisinart; their steaming oshibori versus the paper towels he used for napkins;
their pic: led eggplant and burdock root versus (or almost just like!) the
pickles and olives on his table. Brian cruised through his videotape with thejoystick, hitting the "fir." b on to mark the beginning and end of each shot.
For every shot he marked, a sInall icon appearM on the computer screen.
Then he began stringing some of the icons together, like beads.. into asequence, alternating shots from his tape with shots from Ichho's. i.s hewatched the ediior assemble his video ,Jen-pal letter, Brian grew moreenthusiastic about his new tech -4-we. He was a 'dale disappointed that theresult wank quite as smooth a. ae waited, like the things he s4 w cr,
television. But still, it told his story, and he knew Ichiro would be '*pressed,
and would probably come back with stmething ne him3elf.

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LEARNING '...)MCRROWPost-vacation photography as reverie
The snapshots from tl,e trip to Barcelona were back from the photo lab, but toZeke, they seemed sadly empty of the experience he and Nancy had there.
The scale was wrong: the spires of Gaudi's Sagrada Familia cathedral had:.cemed so imposing, even as they stood at the entrance, unable to see theentire facade. Zeke loaded the PhotoQuick European Travel disc into themnemotography machine, and quickly scanned to Spain, and then t., theBarcelona section. There he found pictures of all of the buildings of Gaudi,
with their ornate, organic forms that they had visited in Barcelona. The
cathedral, like all the others, was present in two forms: in postcard-photo styleand in a series of photographic projections showing all races, irteriors, andlandscaping simultaneousk, like P. cut-out, ptr,-..-up doghouse ready to beassembled.
Zeke selected a view of the exterior of the nativ"' 4--eade, where they had
stood and smiled while the friendly old man toux Lna, blurred photo of them.
He grabbed the view into the digital picture easel. The catalog view wasbright and sharp, but it had been overcast when they were there, so heselected "overcast" from the ambienaght menu, and the picture took on amore subdued cast.

Ner . he brought in photo-mam equins of Nancy and himself from their own
home photo album. He couldn't remember what he nad been wearing, but heknew that Nancy had worn her khaki dress and "sensible" shoes for all thewalking they would do that day. And, she was carrying that oversized leather
handbag stuffed with maps and travel guides. Zeke would tease her about
having her nose buried in the travel guides instead of experiencing it all
firsthand and uninterpreted. So he collaged their photo-trumnequm: In thesteps of the cathedral, with Nancy siring on the steps, he.- face hidden behind
the Michelin guide, and with him excited: y pointing skyward to the colosssl
nativity scene. He had to scale down the facade so that the scene was visible
in the picture, which made him effectively 20 feet tall or so, but it was stillquite a plausible picture.
The scene in the picture never took place, yet it held more of the experiencethat he had there than any of his actual photcs. He saved Cie photo on a new
optical disc he labeled "Spain," and also printed it out on the color printer totack on the refrigerator so Nancy would see it when she came home. For afew minutes, he had been back to the steps of Saga& Familia with iier, andhe wanted to share the souvenir.

r
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LEARNING TOMORLOWFootnotes
1. Matthew White, "Is made-for-home video finally making it?",Videography, Volume 11, No. 5, May 1986.
2. Nicholas Negroponte, "The impact of optical videodiscs on filmmaking,"
MIT Architecture Machine Group, 1978.
3. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1986
(106th edition), Washington, D.C., 1985.

4. "About 95 percent of the audience's viewing time is spent watchingcommercial television. American television is essentially synonymouswith commercial television."
Naional Institute of Mental Health, Television and behavior: ten years ofscientific progress and implications for the eighties, Volume 1, p. 73,
1982.

5. Ivan Mich, Too:. for Conviviality, New York: Harper and Row, p. 21,
1973.

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i

Steve Gano
Steve Gano has been a designer and builder ofinteractive systems for 10 years. He received
undergraduate degrees in psychology andcomputer science, and apprenticed in systems
programming before joining MiT's Architecture
Machine C-9up for graduate work. At MIT, Stevedeveloped novel ways of interacting with images,
created artificial talking heads with videodiscs, andproduced electronic books with movies forillustrations. At the Atari Sunnyvale Research Lab,he developed prototypes of interactive systems forappropriating multimedia objects from large databases for personal use. Now at Hewlett-Packard
Lqboratories, Steve is applying advanced computer
graphics and video technologies to design new
qualities of human-computer and interpersonal
interactions.

,

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LEARNING TOMORROW

Stand By For Fun
Experience and Interaction
Douglas Crockford
Lucasfilm Ltd.

27
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LEARNING TOMORROWLamppost
Before I begin to get to the point of this article, which is about Experience inthe context of "home interactive theatre," I'd like to share a little story withyou. It is a well known story, so stop me if you've heard it before.

There's a drunk on his hands and knees under a lamppost. A guy walks up
and says "Wh..i. are you doing?" and the drunk says "I'm looking for mykeys. I dropped them over there." So the guy asks 'Then why are o..
looking over here?" and the drunk says "Because the light's better.
The point of that story should become clearer as we exr ose the issues ofinteractivity and experience to the illuminating lair -post of reason.
I am going to be talking specifically about entertainment products. Any
educational products that I produce will also be entertainment products, even
if they happen to be about Geography. I need to say that at the beginning inorder b make this all seem to be relevant.

Another Revolution
We are standing here at the dawning of another one of those technicalrevolutions. This one is the next major breakthrough in interactive
entertainment and education. There is activity all over the plac... in new media
which promise to deliver valuable experiences to the folks at home and thekids at school. The most visible examples are the Philips CD-I system and its
obvious enhancements and imitators. Expectations for these new systems
range from a gimmick for trying to Lick people into buying unnecessary homecomputers again, to the next-to-last significant step in the :Axial evolution ofman. The new nrdia 11 offer neat images and sounds in an interactive
format.
We are exploring the capacity of these new presentational media to entertain
people, not just as novelty (although we are not above that) but as a new kindof storyteller, telling a new kind of story, and telling the oldest story in a newway.

The biggest surprise is that it is much harder than it looks. You would like toexpect that you simply make the story interamive, and that's enough to get the
big payoff. You would also like to expect that everything gels neater as thedelivery technology gets neater. Unfortimatel, , neither is necessarily the
case.

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LEARNING TOMORROWThe technology must be delivering messages which are more interesting than"High-tech is a great gimmick." The delivery medium does you little good if
you are using it to deliver experiences that nobody wants. In the long run,audiences will not be judging you on the "highness" of your tech. This isequally true in education, unless it is your intention to teach Technology
Appreciation.

We need to beware of the technology traps, the seductive things thattechnology can do for you that don't really have anything to do withdelivering a compelling experience.
So, taking the moral of the lamppost story to heart, I have spent the past year
wandering around in the dark, looking for fun. I can do that because
Lucasfilm makes fun and not light bulbs. Lucasfilm is not a technology
company, it is an entertainment company, and so when confronting a newtechnology, I can ask "Is it fun enough?"

Technology and the Quality of Experience
Is it ever the case that an improvement in technology brings along an
improvement in the experience? The answer is often yes. Obvious examples
include color television, Cinemascope, and stereo. But there are also counterexamples, including 3-D, videodiscs, and colorizing of classic movies.
Obviously, a lot of this stuff is subjective. There have been attempts toquantify
such as how many stars a movie rates, but generally such
systems aren't very scientific. The best of the rating systems is the Crockford
Scale, which rates movies on an integer scale between 0 and 1. If I found thata movie was worth seeing, I give it a 1. I find it quite reliable, but then, that
could just be me.
In order to discover the midi about interactivity, you need to separate
technology from the exprience, which is difficult becat.se sometimes
technology is the experience. Does recorded music get better as you turn thevolume up? Often it does. Audiophiles know this, and by their tedious
manipulation of subtle reproduction parameters, are able to trade psych:, acoustics for some other kind of psycho experience.

The Videogarne Experience
Most of our experience in interactive entertainment is in videogames. There ismuch we can learn by reviewing the Videogame Age, which we do in thesame way you might relive an automobile accident. Sure, we're stuck in the
80s, but we've learned a few things, which I'll share with you right now.
Right off the bat, the desktop metaphor of interactivity is inappropriate to realtime entertainment. The game experience is usually more direct. It is more
like being in a spaceship than using a "user interface." But it goes deeper than

that
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281

Let's turn the Wayback machine back just a few years. Videogames are amajor force in American culture. They are everywhere, threatening the very
existence of the movie and music industries. Videogames are big business.
Videogame revenues are used to make military spending programs lookreasonable by comparison.
This pretentious new little art form held an incredible fascination over thiscountry, which was followed by a unanimous rejection in the winter of 1982.
Why were videogames such a big deal, and why did they then become such alittle deal?

The second part of the question is easy to answer. Videogames became a little
deal because they did not really do anything for people. Most videogames
involved some level of learning andbuilding, but the things you learned
and the skits you built didn't help you in living your life, or even in playing
other videogames.

The fist part of the question then becomes a real puzzle. If videogames didn't
do anything for people, then how did they become a big deal in the first place?
I think much of the original attraction was in its promise. Here was computer
technology, handy on. The science fiction fantasies were coming true. "Get ahead start on the brave new world for just a quarter." The same naïve Popular
Science enthusism that sold those millions of computers into closets also
glamorized videogames. That enthusism will not be rekindled until someone
can tell the folks at home what home computers are good for.
But there was more going on than that. Videogames were an exciting way toplay for the children of the Television Age. It was TV that respodded to you.
It was a new form of fun, a new kind of experience. But ultimately, it was
not satisfying, and people stopped playing.

The reise of the game makers was interesting. The game makers
respod to the public's complaint "Is that all diem is?" with "Here's morecolor! Here's better graphics!" But it didn't do anything to stop the erosion
in demand for the games. Videodiscs were expected to revive the withering
industry. We saw one novelty hit, Dragon's Lair, and the decline continued.
So here is your cleanst example of improvements in technology notnecessarily delivering the goods.
So what were the goods? Wiiat did the people think they saw when they first
tuned in? What was it that they discovered was lac sing when they asked "Isthat all there is?" and tuned out?
If we want to make a new mass market for interactive media, then we should
figure out what the video
fascination was about, what people thought
they were being pro, and find a way to deliver on the promise.

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282

Whatever it was, A is somehow different from what we thought it must be.
While the presentation capabilities of the technology are very important inconstraining the experience, they do not define the e-perience. Space
Invaders was experientially lacking and ultimately boring. The evolution of
the succeeding games added complexity and polish, but failed to enrich theexperience.

Interactivity
We know that the best new trick in computer technology is that it can beinteractive, and we believe that there must be some important fun potential incomputer technology. But we don't really know what interactivity is or what
it's good for.
Interactivity is not by itself experientially important. Being able to branch andso being able to select the left door and then die because you didn't pick theright one does not work as great entertainment.

My model is the "home interactive theatre." I am telling a story, and inviting
the interactor to become involved in it. I am not inviting them to change theoutcome, because it it is an important story, then structurally the story mustretain its integrity tJ the end. (And besides, it's my story.) The inter. actor
instead gets a little slack, a little room for self-expression in the context ofsorre interesting events. much as you might get when you hear a story told
weh while you sit around the campfire.
The experience should be safe. As much as possible, all technology anxiety
should be relieved Even Mom should be comfortable with it.
Everyone should win. The experience may be an ordeal, but we want only
survivors. Whatever it takes to help people along will be dispensed asneeded.
You should care. Even though it is fixed that you will win, there must be
room for doubt. You don't really affect the outcome, because the outcome isstr cess. The outcome is not what is important.

The presentation will be tailored to you based on your responses. Your
choices don't affect the outcome, they affect the presentation.
There are some contradictions in the goals of the experience versus deliberatechoice in the interactive environment. This paradox in the relation between
freedom and interaction is known as Cmckford's Paradox. It can be resolved
by redefining the meaning of interaction. Interaction should have more to dowith taking part than in making decisions. It is joining the dance around thetribal fire. It is not choosing to fire a gun into a crowd. It is finding therhythm in the structure of the experience and resonating with it. It is notplaying your horn in the middle of the violin solo.
r ...:
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Z83

Another model for interaction, which is n ot necessarily distinct from the one I
just outlined, involves kinesthetic participation in a psychologically safe cocreative fantasy with powerful metanoic consequences. [See "Fun with
Metanoia," an unwritten article by Steve Arnold]

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LEARNING TOMORROW')..".'1.1.

284

Reader Participation
This is the end of the article. I am making it interactive by letting you
determine the outcome. Please write your conclusions in the space that
follows:

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LEARNING TOMORROW

Douglas Crockford
Douglas Crockford is a product of our public school
system. A registered voter, he owns his own car.
He spent two years at Atari. Inc., and is now
1, working at Lucasfilm Ltd., where he is designinginteractive media and experiences for entertainment
and education.

246
301

LEARNING TOMORROWThe Microsoft
Multimedia
Encyclopedia
Suzanne Ropiequet
Microsoft Corporation

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LEARNING TOMORROW 287

Late in 1985, Microsoft Corporation began work on a demonstration of CD
ROM technology that fully integrated digital audio, graphics, and text on asingle optical disc. Microsoft chose a multimedia encyclopedia as the vehicle
to demonstrate the full capacity of CD ROM. The result of three month's
development, it was introduced at Microsoft's 1st Annual CD ROM
Conference in 1986. The demonstration consisted of 11 articles containing
text, graphics, sound, a motion sequence, and some animation, all storeddigitally on the CD ROM disc and played back through an IBM AT computer.
This multimedia encyclopedia (MME) demonstration represents one of themost elegant examples of a digital multimedia application. (In 1986 it
underwent some upgrades, incorporating a richer selection of audio
information and more elaborate structured graphics, animation, and visual
effects.) This paper describes the basic design features and functionality ofthe
demonstration disc. Even though the MME is a demonstration, it continues toserve as a tantalizing model of things to ,,ome.

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LEARNING TOMORROW

288

What is CD ROM?

CD ROM (Compact Disc Read-Only Memory) is a digital data-distribution
medium that uses laser optic technology to record and read any kind of digital
informationincluding text, images, and digital audio. Because of its large
capacity (550 megabytes) and low cost (mastering cost of $5,000 andincremental pressmg cost of $5 per disc), CD ROM currently provides themost cost-effective distribution method for digital data.

CD ROM is adapted from the compact audion disc, and therefore enjoys
enormous cost economics of scale. The CD ROM standard format is supported
by an existing infrastructure of mastering and pressing facilities worldwide.
Compared to other data stcrage media, CD ROM offers dramatic advantages indata density, pocket-sized convenience (a CD ROM disc measures 4.75 inches
in diameter), and duraJility characteristics that are likely to stand up to therigors of the home market.
As with any new technology, CD ROM has some performance limitations.
The most important of these limitations are its slow access-time (200-10,000
milliseconds per seek) and fixed data-transfer rate of 150 kilobytes per second.
However, these performance characteristics are more than acceptable bytoday's standards, especially if designers pay close attention to program
design and data indexing. By using special data-caching techniques, aselection from a large data base can be retrieved and displayed in two seconds
or lessa rate as good as or better than on-line or network performance.

With RCA's recent announcement of Digital Video Interactive (DVI), it is now
also possible to store one hour of full-motion digital video on CD ROMlong
thought unattainable because of CD ROM's limited transfer rate. (DVI is asemiconductor technology that skirts the data transfer rate limitations of CD
ROM, and any other digital media, through the use of two high-speed video
processor chips. For more information, contact RCA Labs, Princeton, NJ
08540)

306

LEARNING TOMORROWMME: A General Description

The MME demonstration consists of 12 five-page articles on the following
subjects:
Apollo Moon Landing
Ludwig van Beethoven
CAT Scan I ezhnology
DNA
Football1984 Olympics

Japanese Art
Jet Airplanes
John F. Kennedy
Battle of Gettysbu:gSpace Shuttle
Whales

The subjects were chosen because they lend themselves easily to audiovisualelements that are possible in a CD ROM environment. Each article contains
text, images, audio, and, in some cases, animation and full motion digital
images.

Operating Environment
The MME demonstration runs in concert with Microsoft Windows taking
advantage of certain selected features available in the Windows graphics
environment. It operates on an IF,M AT computer under MS-DOS 3.1, andrequires the following hardware to operate the CD ROM drive, play backdigital audio, and display high-quality, full-color images:
IBM AT with 640K RAM and a 20MB hard disk
AST Advantage memory-expansion board
CD ROM drive with audio output (and drive controller board)
Mouse (and mouse controller board)
EGA board and display
AT & T Targa 16 board for displaying full-color images
Intel Above Board AT (with 2MB RAM)
RGB analog monitor (for Targa 16 output)
EGAJRGB conversion board (to produce RGB analog output from EGA
display adapter)

Article Structure
Each MME article is constructed as a network of linked text, image, and soundfiles. With mouse or keyboard control, the user can browse through an article,
sf,Int audio descriptions or sound effects, images, cross-references to otherprticles, or supplementary text information and a mouse click activates the?layback and display routines.

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290

Accessing Methods
The MME provides three data-accessing methods, each designed toaccommodate different learning styles: an outline search method called
Path Key; a keyword search method called Word Key; and an alphabeticallyordered index called the Browser. The user selects an access method from thecontrol menu option on the Windows menu bar.

Path Key:The most popular accessing method, Pr!! iKey uses a hierarchically orderedsubject index. The highest index level contains an alphabetical listing of thegeneral subjects available in a hypothetical encyclopediaonly some of which
are active in the demonstration. The second index level -ontains analphabetical listing of the topics within a particular subject area. The thirdindex level contains subtopics related to the main topic. The accessmethodology is shown in Figures 1-7 which follow these brief descriptions.

WordKey:
Articles can also be accessed by searching for specific words within the text ofevery article. When the retrieval software finds a word match, it constructs alisting of every article that contains an occurrence of the requested words. The
user then selects an article from this list.
Only partially activated in this demonstration, the WordKey access option
simulates full-text Boolean search and retrieval in two entry modes: advanced
mode and command mode. The advanced mode presents an array of selection
menus that allow the novice user to enter the sought-after word or words
without having to understand Boolean search terminology. This search
procedure is shown in Figures 8-13. The command mode allows a user
familiar with Boolean search syntax to directly enter the search criteria byusing standard Boolean terminology. For example, to produce the same search
result shown in Figures 8-13, a command mode user would enter this searchstring:

FIND Japanese AND war OR art BUT NOT modern
This search string would find all articles containing the words Japanese, war,or art, but would not retrieve the articles that also contained the word modern.

Browser:A third accessing method available in the MME demonstration is analphabetically ordered hierarchical index that operates in much the same way
as the PathKey subject indexas a sequence of nested indexes. The Browser
was included as an access method to mimic the alphabetical structure andaccess methodology used by readers of printed encyclopedias. In an electronic
environment, however, when compared to either the PathKey or WordKey
accessing methods, the Browser method (shown in Figures 14-17) is not as
useful or efficient.

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291

Method of Linking Data Types:
Any data objectbe it an ASCII text file, a picture, or a narrationmay be
associated with a highlighted or colored area on the screen. These areas arecalled buttons, or hot keys, and are activated when selected with a mouse.
Activating a button causes the access program to branch to audio, images, oradditional text information. The supplementary text information may include
cross-references to other articles, notes about a particular subject (see Figure16), or a glossary definition.
Of all its features, the MME's hot key concept offers perhaps the most exciting
potential. By providing links to multiple levels of information using different
media such an information system is able w accommodate a much braider
audience than a static, two-dimensional information system (such as a printed
page, or a word - processing document can). Images, sound, and text can be
combined in such a way that they effect learning, providing users with theability to control the amount and type of information they desire.

Often called "hypertext" or "hypermedia," this method of presenting
information is ideally suited to an electronic environment. It allows an endlessvariety of links to be embeddedsupplementary data as well as informationthat is outside the current article or subject area. A child and an adult could
each conceivably browse the same material and extract information appropriate
for his or her level of understanding without being overwhelmed or
disappointed by its content.

292
309

LEARNING TOMORROW
1-e_.1 . 0"Conclusion
Because of the MME demonstration's wide appeal, and proven ability toeffectively demonstrate the potential of digital optical media for conveying
multimedia information, the MME has served well as a model for futureinteractive products and authoring tools currently under development at
Microsoft. Most viewers are easily excited by the combination of audio,
images, and text in an interactive environment. The challenge will be todetermine which accessing and , ithoring methods are most efficient andprovide the best possible environment for the user and developer.

..
310

LEARNING TOMORROW

Figure I.
In a Windows environment,

the menu bar at the top ofFile

the screen indicates thecommand options available tothe user. Only certain
command options areactivated in the MME
demonstration program.

Edit

Browser
PdthKet)Fl

WordKey

R F3[2

Options

TargetMicrosoft

Start Search
Search Results
Help
Logo
Credits

Proximitypresents theledia Encyclopedia© 1987 Microsoft Corporation

All Rights Reserved
For Demonstration Purposes Only
Public Performanoe, Display or Copying Prohibited.

Figure 2.

:H1_111_111(41,1 [11(.9C100Nild:;.:Path Key is an outling searchmethod. When you select thisaccessing method, the systempresents a hierarchicallyordered subject index of theencyclopedia contents.

Mjsrosoft
presents theMultiMedia Encyclopedia
1987 Mioroeoft Corporation
All Rights Reserved
For Demonstration Purposes Only
Public Performance, Dim) ay or Copying Prohibited.

311

LEARNING TOMORROW

294

H it1fledld Encyclopedia
t

I

I
I

I

I 111101 ife

1101 t 1 Ilr di,r E rfr yr 1 oporliI

117.711141

It
G

Figure 5.
The third and final level ofthe hierachical index contains
an alphabetical listing of thespecific subtopics within the

IlultlIledia kcyclopedia

Human Life

major topic category in thisexample, the mojor topic is
Heredity and the subtopic is
DNA.

NIP
Cells

nzy
IsomerPhotosynthesisr
4

Figure 6.
A mouse click on the entry
labeled DNA calls up an
article on the subject. The
boxed words or "hot key"indicates the presence of an
associated image or audio
track. When the user clicks
on a hot key, the additional
injurmation will apperar on
the screen. See Figure 7.

hir)p ropPdid

File

Control

Edit

Options

Proximity

DNA - THE STAFF OF LIFE

Targetspeotrum of genes that specify

the hereditary of millions ofDNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) is

the material which controls heredity in all living things.
James Watson and Francis Criok

First proposed the model For'DNA's molecular structure - aldouble helix. I Both shared theNobel Prize For their discovery.

The sides of this giant mole-cule are Formed of phosphateand sugar! the rungs by nitrogen bases. Just Four variationsin the sequence of the bases
yields the virtually infinite

313

LEARNING TOMORROW

different species.
"DNA makes RNA makes

protein"- this is the central
tenet of all molecular biology.
DNA does not synthesize protein
directly. It makes a complemen-tary oopy of its instruotions in
the Form of RNA.

The ordering
determineof RNA bases thenthe stringing of amino acids.
Once

bound

together, aminoacids Fold and twist into intricate proteins.

Figure 7.
(35mm slide image of DNA
molecule.) The DNA
molecule shown in thisfigure spins in full motion in
the live demonstration. Fullmotion is accomplished bystoring 32 separate singleframe images of the rotating
molecule, and displaying
them on the screen at the rateof 32 frames per second.

Encvclo iedn
FileControl

Edit

Options

Just four variations inthe sequence of thebases yie.ds the virtually
infinite spectrum ofgenes that sppcify thehereditary of millions ofdifferent species.
"DNA makes RNA makes

protein"-

this

the

is

central tenet of all molecular biology. DNA does
not synthesize protein

It makes adirectly.
complementary copy of
its instructions in theform of RNA. The orderFigure 8.
The WordKey accessing
method simulates full text
Boolean search and retrieval.

.111 tI,i Ht I t

I

Browser
PathKeEdit

I

111' (IIOptions

determine the stringing
of amino acids. Onceff

fp- 10iff'

Proximity

TargetFlF2

410r11[1,,,i)

Microsoft

Start Search
Search Results
Kelp
Logo
Creditsmg

presents thele d ia Encyclopediao 1987 Microsoft Corporation

All Rights Re,wirved
For Demonstration Purposes Only
Publio Performance, Display or Copying Prohibited.

3iWiliARNING TOMORROW

2 1)7

Figure 9.
For novice users, theFileControl

Word Key option displays anarray of selection menus that

Edit

Options

Proximity

TargetRETRIEVE articles

From retrieved
containing any of articles, SELECT
the following
only those which
Keywords:
contain at least

feature a built-in
AND /OR /NOT Boolean

filter.

apaneseFrom selected
articles, DROP
those whichcontain any of

one of these
Keywords:

these unwanted
Keywords:

war

modernart

Figure 10. To activate asearch, the user must pull
down the Control menu andFricyclopedix:.

FileControl

Browser
PathKey
41WordKey

click on the STARTSEARCH option. When thesystem has found all
occurrences of the selectedwords, the user must selectthe SEARCH RESULTS
option.

Stdrt

315

Fl

F2
F3

`;,e,trutt

LEARNING TOMORROW

ieue

rticles, SELECT

rom se ectemy those whicharticles, DROP
those which

ontain at least

contain any ofne tri these

these unwanted

eywords:

Keywords:298

Figure 11.
When the search is complete,a window appears that
displays the articles thatmatch the selection criteria.

FileOptions

Edit

6 Article(sProximity

Targetmatch liordkey search. SELECT: he,
PROP

co

th=
Ke

aian
a)dnw,eapaneseit.

1anguage R
Japanese Music
Japanese Theatre
Kennedy, John F.

P

of

pted

1.-----a

Cancel)t----

Q Multi Media mode

Clear Keywords)

1--

Change Search

Edit Keywords(") Text Only mode(................

Figure 12.
Upon selecting Japanese Art
from the list of articles, theimage, sound, and test data,is transferred to computer
memory from the CD ROM
disc. The boxed words
indicate the presence of theimage showing in Figure 13.

.....1=1.-

Encyclopedia
File

Edit

Control

Options

Proximity

Targeta master portraitist of womenin the wood-block tradition

JAPANESE ART

Classic Tempyo sculpture canknown as Ukiyc-e. His print of athe temples ofwoman playing a poppin is one ofinFemaleStudies"Tenbe foundin

wandering monks. A clay statueof Shukongo-jin was kept as aseoret image, shut away in acabinet for many years, andhas retained its original bright,

Physiognomy."
Katsuohika

Hokusai(1760-11349), whose landscapes

are the best-known feature ofman ofolden odors. One statue of an
his work, was aandenergyry warrior -a od was oreat
astoundingin, an epioted the monk k versatility. In his old age he used
to desoribe himself as "the old
Roben's personal aeity .
Utamaro, one of theman, mad on drawing." It was hegreatest
artistsof who re-introduced landsoape aseighteenth-oentury Japan, wasa subject for prints' before

..,

316

9

LEARNING TOMORROW

Figure 13.
The image associatedwith a hot key andactivated by a mouse#JAPANESE ART

Classic Tempyo
sculpture can be found in
the temples of wanderingmonks. A clay statue of
Shukongo-jin was kept
as a secret image, shutaway in a cabinet for
many

years, and has
retained
its original
bright, golden colors.
One

ill

was createdin 733, and depicted themonk

Figure 14. The Browser index
allows the user to choose thespecific article by selectingfrom a series of alphabeticai
indexes.

Start Ceara
Seardi Ve.ills

Mel,
toqo
Credits

300
317

LEARNING TOMORROW

Roben's

personal +Figure 15. The first page ofan article on John F.
Kennedy reveals two buttons
or hot keys.

Holt IIINItdn lopp111.1
Salons
Proximity
TargetI

FileControlEditwrote the beet

JOHN F. KENNEDYI John F. Kennedy,' 35th presi-

dent of the United State*,the Boston
suburb of Brookline on May 29,[
1917 to Joseph
P. and Roseborn

aeoondM.1 and five sisters, Rosemary,Kathleen, Eunioe, Patrioia, andJean. His family moved to New
York in 1926] spending summers
on Cap- Cod and winters on Palm
Beach.

He planned a career inor journalism andacademia

11liqlFileControlhe graduated oum laude from
Harvard.

John served in the Navy asin'Kennedy.' His three brothers
Joseph P., Jr., Robert F., Edward

Figure 16. A mouse click on
the button containing thewords Joseph P. and Rose F.
Kennedy, calls up a windowof additu nal information on
the Kennedy family. Byclicking on the box
containing OK, the window
disappears and the original
display returns.

seller "While

England Slept" (1949), the year

Edit

Options

commanding officer of a PT
boat in WWII, and was awarded
the Navy and Marine Corps
medal for heroism. John was ex-

peoted by his family to enter
publio life. At the age of 29, he
won his first seat in Congress by
overwhelming his Republioan opponent with the help of hisoamily and friends instead of
the Demooratio party organiza-

ni

Proximity

Intietlid...
Targetseller_ "While

JOHN F. VENNJohn F. K

dent oftsecondbor

suburb of B
1917 to Joe
Kennedy.

H

Joseph P., Jr

M.; and fiveJ

Kathleen,
Jean. His f
York in 19261(ADDITIONAL INFORMATION)

Joseph Kennedy made his fortune in thestock market and retired in 1929. He waschairman of the Securities and Exchange
Commission, and the first Irish-American
to be ambassador to Great Britain. He
and Rose made sure their children learned
to be competitiue winners, interested innational issues.

or

was awarded
arine CorpsJohn was ex-enter
age of 29, he
ily toCongress byof hisinstead ofhelp

journalism

an

:3 di
318

the Navy as
r of a PT

publioan op-

on Cape Cod
Beaoh. He p

academiaW, the year
laude fromLEARNING TOMORROW

the Demooratio party organiza-

Figure 17. A mouse click on
the button containing thewords John F. Kennedy
reveals a picture of JFK in
ull color and video-quality
resolution. In some cases animage button may also haveaudio associated with it. One
button in the JFK article
generates a montage of 30
images while playing
Kennedy's inaugural addressin the background.

MultiMedia

Edit

1,

edia

c

tuns

Proxiout

Ta .e

4

JOHN F. KENNEDY

Will11.111 35th

president of the UnitedStates, second born inthe Boston suburb of
Brookline on May 29 1917

to
three
rothers: Joseph P., Jr.,
His

Robert F., Edward M.; andfive sisters: Rosemary,Eunice,Kathleen,

Patricia, and Jean.
family

moved

to

His
New

York in 1926; spending

302
319

LEARNING TOMORROWSuzanne Ropiequet
Suzanne Ropiequet started her career at Tektronix
and later became one of the first employees ofDlithium Press, an early microcomputer bookpublisher. In addition, she has conducted classes insoftware applications training, written technicaldocumentation, and been a designer and consultant
in the field of interactive video technology. Suzanneis the editor of the best-selling book The Peter
Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC, aswell as CD ROM: The New Papyrus and CD ROM:
Optical Publishing, all published by Microsoft
Press. She is also founder and president of theNorthwest Chapter of the International Interactive
Communications Society (TICS), a trade associationthat specializes in optical-disc technology.

33
320

LEARNING TOMORROW

hought Pieces

A number of issues raised at the Conference did not form the central theme forany paper. Many of these were raised in our formal discussion sessions or in
hallway discussions. Others were raised by individuals who attended theConference but did not present papers.

In order not to lose these perspectives, Conference attradees were invited towrite "thought pieces," which summarized their personal perspectives on these"extra issues" in a few pages. These are included in this section.

3 1' G
324

LEARNING TOMORkOW

Assuming That...
Anne Nicol
Apple Computer, Inc.

30 7
325

LEARNING TOMORROWNew technologiesin particular, the integrated sorts of systems described inthis bookhold great promise for learning. Their linking capabilities invite
individually customized and inquiry-driven approaches to knowledge
acquisition. Their interactivity encourages problem-solving activities. And
their capacity for vast storage and quick retrieval puts whole domains of visualand auditory information within reach. Potentially, they become the tools thatenable people to learn in a most meaningful and effective wayby discovery.
Somehow, we all know that discovery learning is "good" learning. Things
that we have found out for ourselves take on special importance; theknowledge we gain is bolstered by personal and emotional content. We
remember what we have discovered longer, and we are more likely to pay
attention to new, related information. But discovery is not always the mosteffective way to learn a particular concept or to achieve a given lea -ringobjective. And even when it is, circumstances in the situation may obstruct thenatural learning process. As designers, we need to carefully examine and test
the assumptions that underlie both the "what" and the "how" of our projects.
Jerome Bruner, an eloquent advocate of discovery learning, reminds us that"discovery favors the well-prepared mind" (Bruner, 1962). His argument isthat there are relevant prerequisite experiences that, in any domain, makediscovery more likely. Let us explore briefl j what the implications ofBruner's statement might be for our new interactive multimedia projects.
Because the users of these systems will often be learning how to use thesystem at the same time they are learning the curriculum delivered by thesystem, there are really two classes of prerequisite experience that needattention. First, navigating through a complex learning environment will
require an understanding of how navigational features of the user interface
may correspond to the organization of information in the system. For
example, the use of arrows to move through levels of information is intuitive
only to the learner who already knows that the information might be organizedin levels and who knows something meaningful about the relationshipbetween levels. This kind of knowledge need not be specific to the disciplineor to the organization of the particular data base. It may come from previous
experience in using other information systems, or from a good advance
overview or map of the system at hand.

A second class of assumptions has to ao with relationships between thelearning process and the subject matter. Most programs that encourage an
inquiry approach assume that learning begins with a learner's question. But as
experienced teachers know, students new to a subject are rarely able toformulate the questions that will lead to fruitful research. Questions of thatsort must be based on hypotheses, and it takes some practice and someknowledge of the field to generate useful hypotheses. The system needs tohave ways of modeling the inquiry process for the learner in the same waythat good instructors lead their students to ask appropriate questions.

327

LEARNING TOMORROW

308

Also, in designing responsive systems, we make assumptions about the
motivation and interest of learners. Taking full advantage of the opportunities
made available by new technologies requires "mindfulness" on the part of thelearner. "This mindfulnessthe deliberate employment of nonautomatic
processesis partly determined by learners' proclivities, perceptions,
expectations, fears, and self-perceptions, and partly by their immediate
experiences with the computer" (Salomon, 1985). The latter we can havecontrol over; the former, we must be ever mindful of ourselves.
Once one develops expertise in an area, it is always difficult to remember what
one "didn't know then." But we can get lots of help by trying out our systems
with "real" students and by working with "real" teachers throughout. We cando the same sorts of task analyses that curriculum writers have always done,in which we identify prerequisite concepts, both cognitive and procedural, foreach important learning objective. To conclude, this is a call for continuing,formative evaluation of our design work, in which we test our assumptions
about learners as well as our program content against educational goals. In
this way, we ensure that the tools we create will truly enhance the learning
process for all learners.

3r;3
328

LEARNING TOMORROW

References
Bruner, Jerome. (1962) On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand.
Cambridge: Hariard University Press.

Salomon, Gavriel. (1985) "Information technologies: What you see is not(always) what you get." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of theAmerican Educational Research Association.

Anne Nicol is an educational psychologist whose research interests are children and television,
children and computers, and human - computer interactions. She has taught ldds of all ages how to use
computers and is currently directing the Human Interface Testing Laboratory at Apple Computer, Inc.
329

LEARNING TOMORROW

01
0 -I, liA Layered Theory of
Design for Optical
Disc Software
Mike LiebholdApple Computer, Inc

331

LEARNING TOMORROW

311

introduction

The following paper is a summary of thoughts after the Multimedia in
Education conference at Apple Computer in 1986.

Most applications of CD-ROM are transformed network-information-retrieval
products. Interactive videodiscs, on the other hand, have been principally
designed for structured computer-aided instruction (CAI). Both, however,neglect the promise and ultimate power of the technology.
CD-ROMs that help a user merely find facts may not offer added value overprint and network services. The media and computational technology areclearly well suited for decision aid. New models of productivity imply more
intelligence than mere search and retrieval.
Videodiscs that have been hard-wiled, tree-structured CAI programs ignore
the vast archival capabilities of the format. A videodisc, for .ample, with 27
minutes of discrete video sequences still has a capacity for 5,400 still
framesa capacity rarely utilized. Videodisc is a data base technology that
may also be used as an instructional resource.

333

LEARNING TOMORROW

3.12

The Four Layers:
An Approach to Optical Disc Software Design

In this paper, I propose a design approach that combines the archival power of
optical media with the intelligence and flexibility of computer software. Thisapproach entails four layers:

Data
Index
BrowserIntelligence

Data Layer
Any combination of five principal data typ may be combined on a compact
or LV (laservision standard) disc:
Text (usually ASCII)
Graphics (including fax, bit maps, vector drawings, and GKS)
Motion (aniiaation, video (ntsc, pal, secam, hdtv, digital))Sound (speech, music, sampled sound)
Code (computer programs, machine instructions)

The key words for this layer are appropriate and coherent. Obviously, if you
are planning a disc on medieval history, footage of the Voyager planetary
flyby would not be useful.

Index Layer
A data base management sy.item of the data on the disc constitutes the index
layer. Following Ted Nelson's Xanadu hypertext concepts, the system should
permit annotation, updates, and personalization. Imagine a photograph of theearth taken from a satelliu, in 1978. A modern meteorologist who understands
a previously unknown cloud formation because of recent research would
clearly want to update the data-base record fee the optical disc image.
A personally annotated version of the library card catolog is also possible.
Since we are considering read-only media, the differential files will have toreside on a magnetic-media floppy or hard disk. You wouldn't be carrying
the entire card catalog around on your floppy, just the pointers to the cards
you have annotated.

313
334

LEARNING TOMORROWBrowser Layer
Any disc-based information system may include a wide range of tools or
methods such as the following for finding or navigating through data:
Key word(boolean) search
Alphanumeric search
Topical browsers
Graphic browsers
Intelligent browsers

Key word (boolean) search.
An example would be "Find Saturn and moons" or "Find Lincoln not
automobile." This is a technique fairly familiar to librarians and network database searchers. The most commonly developed application for CD-ROM, it
really needs an intelligent thesaurus and natural-language understanding to be
fully effective in other words, supporting the DWIM commandDo what I
mean!)

Alphanumeric search.
As in a book index, you have abacus under A, baseball under B, andcaptain under C. You need to know the name of what you're looking for inorder to find it.

Topical browsers.
A table of contents is a topical browser. Vast files of data on a CD orvideodisc may be comfortably navigated ')3, chapter, unit, and section or byvarious subject or theme topics. Using various pull-down and pop-up menu
schemes on Xerox and Symbolics Lisp machines, Steve Weyer has
demonstrated great examples of sophisticated, structured topical-browsing
systems.

Graphic browsers.
Maps, diagrams, and charts are all potentially useful as an interface to data.
Point and click on Chicago, Illinois on the map, and the appropriate data-baserecord or picture pops up. Filevision is an early example of this technique.
The MIT movie manual projects produced by Steve Gano, Andy Lippman andothers illustrate the rich variety of applications of digitized images forbrowsing and instruction.
Transparent graphic-overlay in an interactive video environment may, in the
future, permit running video objects to be directly manipulated. As a video
object moves across the screen, a transparent "cursor target" follows:
hypermedia! New 3-D graphics systems also suggest a new opportunity fordirect manipulation of screen "objects."

314
335

LEARNING TOMORROW

Intelligent browsers.
Real-world knowledge is not linear. Three-dimensional arrays or concept
networks of common-sense links gait closer to the way hurans organize
thoughts. Ted Koehler calls them semantic networks. Here's Ted's example:> A fern in the forest >>A tree in the forest >> A logger cuts the tree >> The tree is taken on a truck to the sawmill >> The tree is cut into lumber >> Tht lumber is used to construct a building >> The building was designed by an architect, >> The architect has a computer >the computer has a CRT > > > etc.
We've traveled from a fern to a CRT in comfortable, lateral steps.
Although some work is being done at MCC and elsewhere to automate
construction, accumulation of these links will most likely be an incremental
manual and social process for some time. The emergence of common
hypertext environments will permit communities of scholars to aggregate theirknowledge into machine-readable formats. Greg Crane's Perseus project at
Harvard is a fine example of scholars (in this case, Greek history scholars)
collaborating to construct a hypertext and hypennedia representation of adiscirline.

The Intelligent Layer
Any of the following types of applications may be layered on top of an
optical-disc-based reference system:
Instruction
Simulation
Productivity
Creativity
Serendipity"Expert"
While most videodisc producers have ignored potential reference value of thebrmser layer and gone straight for interactive instruction, most CD-ROM
c zators have stopped at the browser layershort of productive applications
other than information retrieval.

336

LEARNJNO TOMORROW

Clearly, the future of optical disc information systems rests in thedevelopment of new data-rich models of productivity. A hyper-spreadsheet
model of world financial phenomena, if well designed, would be far more
useful then a CD-ROM almanac of financial facts, and an encyclopedia withcurriculum-coordinated courseware more useful than a basic reference. A
stand-alone page-layout program would be considerably enhanced by a libraryr f images, and an intelligent data-base agent would be more helpful than avanilla terminal program, and a simulation of a living biosystem morecompelling than a collection of photos and files.

Mike Lkbhold is Manager of Optical Media Applications in the Advanced Development Group ofApple Computer Inc. He is developing hardware and software systems for optical media-based
information products. Previously he developed publishing relationships for optical media productswith publishers, database companies, and optical software developers. Before joining Apple Computerhe was responsible for advanced market development at ByVideo Inc., a transactional videodisc systemvendor. At the Atari Division of WarneiCoinnumications, he was responsible for the Strategic
Systems Research Laboratory and its MAC on optical information systems.
337

LEARNING TOM ...ROW

316

Links or Stories
A Compromise
Bernard Frischer
UCLA

339

LEARNING TOMORROW

317

All designers of multimedia computer systems for education have to confront
a basic question at some point in their work. Should end users be able torange freely through the various data bases, like scholars in a library, making
whatever connections, or "links," they wish between the data, or should they
be led along a predetermined path through the material to be mastered? This
question is, of course, but a specific form of the fundamental question allteachers must answerno matter what subject they are teaching rr what
technology they are usingabout whether a student learns better a free or astructured environment.
A

The advantages and disadvantages of freedom versus structure are wellknown. Freedom enables students to find themselves, and nothing is more
important to individual development than that; structure can becounterproductive because it forces students to learn what they may not yet beinterested in learning. Structure ensures that students learn something,
however unwillingly; freedom entails the possibility that students wail never
get off the mark and find either themselves or their way through the desired
material. And so on.
It seems clear that the major advantage of computers is precisely their programmability, or their flexibility to interact with users in ways that traditional tools
cannot. A riveting hammer cannot become a machinists hammerlet alone abasin wrenchjust because the job demands a different tool. Obvious as thisobservation is, it has, I daresay, been frequently ignored in computer
applications to education, perhaps because of the genesis of CAI in theories ofmanaged instruction.
In computer-managed instruction, "individualization" is defined simply as
giving students the power to make their way at their own speed along apredetermined routeAndividualization might, however, also be defined asdetermining how a student best learns before deciding whether t. impose
structure or permit freedom. Assuming that a choice must be made between
self- directed and structured learning on the computer, then good instructional
design ought to begin with a profiling of the student to see which approach isappropriate for that student at that time for that subject. The absence of suchprofiling is a major factor, I think, contributing to the otherwise puzzling
failure of most CAI to show statistically significant results. By imposing "oneright way" on all students, most CAI measures up as a wash because it turns
students on or off in about the same percentage of cases.

1See F.B. Baker, Computer Managed Instruction. Theory and °ractice (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1978) 56.
341

LEARNING TOM01010W

3.18

Profiling students before setting them loose in a computerized learning
environment is one way of overcoming the opposition of freedom versus
structure. Another way involves a different conception of the student's role.
When we put students into a highly structured curriculum (whatever thetechnology used for packaging and delivery), we cast them as immaturenot

to say irresponsiblechildren. When we rat students into a situation of
freedom, we cast them as mature budding scholars, able to make their way
responsibly through the material, different from the true master of the subject
only in degree, not in kind.

A third role is also possible, at least in many humanistic disciplinesthat of
explorer. Explorers, whatever their age, are people who have invested theirlimited resources of time and money into travel to a self-selected place thatthey wish to get to know better. To this end, they typically put themselves
into learning situations that are sometimes structured and sometimes
unstructured. For example, before embarking, the typical explorer willconsult with others who have already made the trip and will read books on avariety of topics and levels. That is, the explorer will consider a variety ofstructured approaches to mastering the subject and may well put together apersonal synthesis of them all. Once arrived at the destination, the explorer
continues to seek out structured learningfor example, a guided tourwhile
also continually breaking out of this routine by freely exploring theenvironment, making connections and discoveries along the way.
Applying this to multimedia computer programming, I would conclude byclaiming that "links or stories" is an unnecessary choiceone we are not, infact, forced to make. If the user is viewed as an explorernot as a"student"then at every moment, both guided tours ("stories ") and free
exploration ("making links") should be options provided by the program. The
explorer metaphor is, of course, especially appropriate for a project such as
the one I am working on (Cicero), where the student is, quite literally, an
explorer sent back in time to a re-creation of ancient Rome. However, mutatis
mutandis (as the Romans said), there is no reason why the metaphor could
not be applied in many other contexts, even where the world of the program is
not an imaginary trip to an exotic time and place.

342

LEARNING TOMORROWGetting a Boost
from the RealWorld
Ted Kaehler
Apple Computer, Inc.

320
343

LEARNING TOMORROW

"Direct manipulation" of things on the screen is a powerful idea, because it
draws on experience we have in the real world. Once a person "gets it" thatthey can drag icons around on the Macintosh screen, you don't have to
explain the details. They already know what to expect. Moving a file fromone folder to another is very much like moving groceries from a paper bag to
the refrigerator. We unconsciously make up little algorithms to do thesetasks, and when we see a direct analogy on the computer screen, we cantransfer our knowledge. We stop thinking out every step and start doing theactions unconsciously.
Programming languages have gotten a similar boost from the real world,, but
at a more abstract level. An "object" is a package of data and procedures thatbelong together. Object-oriented programming encourages the programmer tothink of each part of his or her system as a "thing." When the programmer has
divided the system into the right set of partsthe set that corresponds best to
how he or she thinks about it on a visceral levelwriting code becomes mucheasier. When the objects are aptly named, they behave as one would expect,
and the programmer can skip a level or two of abstraction and mental
translation. A package of data and procedures named a "push-down-stack" ismuch easier to use when it acts like a single "object," behaves as a stackshould, and can be mated simply by saying "make me a new stack."
One of the problems with object-oriented languages is that objects are difficult
to edit directly. Objects are exactly what you want for constructing a card
catalog for a library. However, it is very laborious to edit a card from theprogramming language (the program to change one field is more complex thanthe card). The time-honored solution is to build a specialized editor, so thatthe user can directly manipulate the data on the card. Building a specialized
object editor is difficultm fact, often harder than writing the original
program. Since objects are hard to manipulate, they are scarce. The
programmer is in the awkward position of wanting to play in a universe but
having to create every blade of grass.

A hypertext system combined with an object-oriented language is a fusion ofthese worlds. All around you is a wealth of objectsparagraphs, links,
documents, pictures, and spreadsheets. These objects are there because they
are actually being used. At last there is something real to talk about, and withan object-oriented language, the talking is the best we know how to do. A
little fragment of code is all one needs to say, "When I click on this button,
check that this field contains a date and that this field is a legal call number fora book." Many objects, such as paragraphs, records, and pictures are alreadythere in full bloom. The hypertext system provides a good editor "for free."

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Laura Gould and Bill Finzer's Programming by Rehearsal and Dan Ingalls's
Ariel are two early Toms that allowed programmers to directly manipulate
an object as soon as it was created (without building a specialized editor).
Systems that allow me object-oriented ease of description and programming,
but that also have the richness of data and the highly honed editors of a
hypertext system will be quite compelling. I hope this fusion will help us tocomplete the unfulfilled visionwhat the average person thought of when heor she first heard the wads "personal computer?'

Ted Kaehler, a Senior Engineer at Apple Computer, was educated at Stanford and Carnegie-Mellon(M.S. in Computer Science). He was a member of the SmallTalk group at Xerox P.A.R.C. for 14
years oefore joining Apple in 1985. Currently he is a member of the Advanced Technology Group at
Apple.
346.LEARNING TOMORROW

3:2

Authoring with
Hypermedia
Carol Kaehler
Apple Computer, Inc.

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With hypermedia, authors have the ability to create large and complex learning
environments that can be easily navigated and annotated by users. Twochallenges in designing an interface for such an environment are as follows:
1. Showing users of the system where they are in relationship to the rest of

the systemanswering the inevitaLte "Where am I? Show me a map."
2. Preventing readers from being overwhelmed with the amount of
information to be navigated.

Hypamedia at once causes and offers solutions for both problems. Becauseof the branching nature of hypermedia systems, it's easy to go down a pathand lose sight of where you came from. You might be able to look back one
level, or retrace single steps, or even see a map of the system. But a better
solution is to design a system that includes an ever-present map that changes
as you traverse it. For example, in a system that includes both text andgraphics, you might use familiar graphic symbols such as notebook tabs thatchange as you move from subject to subject, creating the illusion that you'rein a geographical location of a bookthe reference chapter or the index, forexample.

The second problemmaking a large amount of information seem negotiable,
is a natural outcome of using such built-in maps. The user doesn't see 1,000
forbidding pages of text, but rather a simple graphic notebook with seven oreight subjects. The structure belies the complexity within.
Hypermedia also brings serendipitous rewards. Entering the realm of
1:ypermedia, authors might worry that readers will feel uneasy not knowing
exactly how much of the book remains to be read. Readers are used tojudging what they have yet to conquer in a subject by how many pages arebehind them and how many are still ahead. But instead of this anticipatedproblem, hypermedia authors discover that you can hide bulk behind a simple
interface. And so readers who might be overwhelmed by a thick book (or 800
kilobytes of information) see only a small, easily navigated notebook.

Carol Kaehler is a Senior Technical Writer at Apple Computer. She was educated as a musician(M.A. in Music Theory and Composition) but joined Apple in 1982 to write Macintosh, the owner sguide for the Macintosh computer. She also wrote the manuals for MacPaint and MacProject. Her mostrecent work at Apple has been in developing a hypertext help facility.
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Navigation in
Large Knowledge
SpacesSteven Weyer
Apple Computer, Inc.

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Effective multimedia presentations are possible, but more a product of art thanscience. How can authoring environments provide the right amount of
guidance and constraints so that creativity can be encouraged while special
effects for their own sake are discouraged? As presentations become lesscanned and more interactive, personabzable and unanticipated, intelligencemust be present to help in not only selecting (or generating) where to go next
based on content, but also in making the trinsition between media styles ofsource and destination (e.g., the analog of film's cut, fade, or dissolve).
Navigating and learning in large knowledge spaces are central to bothVivarium (Alan Kay's project at Apple) and CYC (Doug Lenat's project at
MCC). The Vivarium approach to information exploration is to create animal
assistantscreatures with behavior, delegated plans, limited intelligence, andperhaps personalitieswho act as surrogates in exploring a "knowledge
grotto." CYC employs a more direct approach for the user by amplifying andcreating sensory cues for the many dimensions of the knowledge space, andby suggesting filters to apply or axes to follow. Both are long-term, high-risk
projects; however, such approaches are necessary if we are to deal with large
knowledge bases in which we wish to deal with content as concepts rather
than just literal text.

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Multimedia in
Education
Summary Chapter
Kristina Hooper
Apple Computer, Inc.

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As the old saying goes, "you had to be there." The June Conference on
Multimedia in Education, on which this book is based, was an exciting affair.
We talked about more issues than I can even recall, all of which seemed
central at the moment to the main topic. We discussed issues that had beenraised years agohypertext, augmentation of human intellect, theopportt nities of videodiscs in an interactive environmentwondering once
again st by these notions hadn't already "taken off." We mused about past
projects and future plans. And we decided that "now is the time" for themultimedia revolution, and that among all of us in the group we had theinsight and perspective to "pull it off" ( "it" being a combination of marketing,educating, designing, computing, visualizing, cognizing, saving the world,and making money).
And then we all rested, for it was as exhausting as it was exhilarating toengage in all these important ideas and plans.

The chapters you have just read rep-sent the efforts of all the participants
after they had rested, after they had taken a step back from the excitement of
the moment and come to the task of putting down on paper what they thought
were the major issues in th:s (once again) newly focused field.

Different Perspectives
As you probably have noted, the perspectives of all these people are quite
different. Such was the intent of the Conference. For the perspectives of alarge number of constituenciesincluding educators, computer scientists,
TV producers and broadcasters, entertainment companies, hardware
developers, software drigners, dreamers, realists, publishers, engineers, andcognitive theoristsare .11 required for the successful development of thecomputer-based multimedia revolution that was addressed in our Conference
ana that is considered in this book
The current issues are just how these traditions can merge, and the kinds ofexperiences that are available once this is done. Interestingly, it is difficult to
describe the hoped-for experience from these multiple perspectives. And it ishard to describe the nature of the products that result from these perspectives.
They are somewhat like books, but not quite. Sometimes they are more likemovies, but then they change in character to become more encyclopedic orhteractive. Occasionally, these presentations are compared to educationals)ftware, yet the high production values available from optical media (such as
sounds and images) man t clear that though these new presentations share":rieractivity" with this .ware, there are great differences that require
mention.

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In time, we will probably stop describing such experiences Iccording to othermodels with which we are more familiar, and we will begin to call them by
their own names (which are yet to be determined; "multimedia presentations"is only a current, inadequate, working title). In addition, more and more
people will focus their activities on this class of experiences, without
explicitly acknowledging that the roots of their interests or talents are incomputer science, television, or other well-established disciplines. When thishappens, we will know that the revolution in interactive multimedia
experiences has occurred.

Varied Projects
A major criterion for selection of attendees at the Conference (in addition to asense of humor and a keen insight on the issues) was that they be involved in
specific activities in the general area of multimedia. The reasoning was that tounderstand this new area one needs to be working directly in it. Morecentrally, it seems that people have been talking about this general field
extensively over the last few decades, without producing many highly visible
examples that can be scrutinized and learned from And it seems like the time
has come to deliver on the (excellent) rhetoric, and try to "make it happen"(and along the way find out what "it" really is, as well as to honestly assess
whether "it" is worth the effort).

The specifics of the projects with which Conference attendees are involved are
typically elaborated in the chapters. However, it is also useful toacknowledge the range of these projects in order to appreciate the generality of
the class of presentations and experiences that technologies in themultimedia/computer area allow. It is also a useful exercise to contemplate theconcrete examples described apart from all the reasoning described in thechapters; this provides a reality check on the entire multimedia endeavor.
Doug Engelbart's Augmentation System was functioning years ago,
providing the core for a research community, enabling collaborative work on
complex problems. His current work at McDonnell Douglas is an attempt toreinitiate such work and experiment in the use of technology incommunication and problem solving Norm Meyrowitz's Hypermedia
Project at Brown University is clearly about to take off; it is available now tostudents in a number of classes. eve Weyer's early work at Xerox forbrowsing a history text, as well as his work at Atari using the Grolier
encyclopedic data base, make explicit just how browsing can be incorporated
into the use of large-scale data bases. The NoteCard System, developed byFrank Halasz, is now a product available through Xerox, and a specificexample of how linkage systems might be designed.

3 31
360

LEARNING TOMORROWLarry Friedlander has completed a graphical simulation of theatricalperformances on a computer for use by his students at Stanford, and has
successfully demonstrated a prototype of a videodis.:-based system to explore
still and moving images of theaters and performances. Bernard Frischer ismoving quickly, with the assistance of UCLA, to produce a travel system forteachiN the Classics. And Robert Campbell and Patricia Hanlon haveproduced an example of the kinds of presentations a teacher inig: make to aclass from available materials related to the Grapes of Wrath.
Sam Gibbon at Bank Street College has already distributed a television series
and supporting print and computer materials in the area of science and matheducation (Voyage of the MI II) and is in the midst of preparing a second
series (Voyage of the Mae II), which will incorporate videodiscs. Tom
Anderson has demonstrated his concepts of reuse of physi-s material very
effectively, and is actively in olved in productions baseu on thisdemonstration.
The CD-ROM Encyclopedia product provided by Grolier is still a major
example of a working CD-ROM system; Peter Cook's recent work willclearly expand the capabilities of ,his product to include more flexibility andimagery. The National Geographic Society is now committed todevelopments in computer software and extensions of their past optical media
efforts in enhancing geographic understanding, as described by GeorgePeterson.

Steve Gant.':

about personalized imagery are surely providing the basis
stems at Hewlett-Packard, some of which we hope to seeesoon. Similarly, Doug Crockford's version of fun will
pronably be available to a wide audience soor And as stated earlier,
Microsoft's mu.dmedia encyclopedia demonstration, described by SuzanneRopieque,, is alter 1y highly visible, providing a very useful example of acomputer multimedia experience for all of us to examine and enjoy.

fo' a

:

Prior to reading this book, one would think there was little in common among
Shakespeare, physics, Grapes of Wrath, and the Classics. Similarly,
television and print publishing may have seemed quite unrelated, as did--ncyclopedias and entertaining storytelling, broadcast television andpersonalized imagery production, collaborative work environments andclassrooms, and sophisticated hypertext systems and classroom computing. I
hope that this book has made it possible for you to see the interconnections ofthese very different efforts, as well as notice that new technologies canprovide augmentation in all these areas, expanding our personal experiences
and improving our capabilities (and those of our schoolchildren).

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Ten Themes
There are a number of themes that pervade many of the chapters, most ofwhich are the same themes that hallway and dinner conversations focused onat the Conference. Important among these are the following:

1. What Is the Nature of Interactivity? Are Linear Presentations
Obsolete?
It is currently quite fashionable to be in favor of interactivity. In a relatedvein, concepts like "personalization," "browsing," "manipulable," "divergent
displays," and "discovery learning" havethinking,"
gained great mileage in the computer education revolution. And this is only
appropriate.

The computer (which now comes in many flavors and many different forms,
many of which are simultaneously reasonably priced and quite powerful)allows for the realization of dreams that address these concepts in pragmatic
terms. We truly can now reflect on our own intuitions of our thoughtprocesseswhat William James at the turn of the century described as the"perching and flights" of consciousnessand we can dream of machines thatcan mimic these processes, as well as machines that can assist us in making
good use of these mental ramblings.
Yet when one seriously attempts to design "interactiv- experiences" thatincorporate the aforementioned concepts, it becomes less and less clear justwhat we mean by the word "interactive" and whether or not we are all talking
about Cie same thing. More critically, it becomes unclear whether interactive
necessarily implies something that is good (and conversely that linear
presentations are necessarily bad).
Anyone who has looked . run-of-the-mill computer software or branching
videodiscs that continually interrupt the viewer with multitudes of unappealing
choices understands that interactivir; is not a sufficient condition for a goodexperience. Similarly, those of us who have sat on the edge of our seats in
lecture halls and theaters, enjoying a nonpassive experience even though wehave no control of outcomes or opportunity for any interaction, mustacknowledge that there really is something to the crafts of rhetoric andstorytelling.
Looking at this seriously, it becomes clear that we must start to understandwhat the most important aspects of interactivity are, and how complex
interactivity has to be in order to produce experiences that are qualitatively
different from noninteractive situations. We must, for example, have a crisp
answer to questions like the following, the answers for which are based on
analyses rather than "religion":

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> Isn't most of "interactivity" gained by the ability tostart a.id stop, review and preview, presentations?
> Are videotapes then the major innovation ininteractivity, not computers?
> Aren't too many choices distracting?
> Isn't the personalization provided by self selection
artificial?

> Where does interactivity fit into classic theories
of narratives, and of the importance of beginnings,
middles and ends in determining the impact ofan experience?
> Where is the correct place for the artistic expressionof an author in an interactive presentation?
> How can an author create resolution for aviewer in an interactive environment?
> What marks the end of an interactive opportunity?
We must develop a common vocabulary to discuss these questions, including
a set of well-defined words to describe agreed-upon concepts, as well as a setof common exemplars to which we can refer in our analyses.
In sum, we need to give lin the simplicity of the equations that proclaim
interactivity as good and 'ar presentations as bad. We can then focus on
our task of using new technologies to create effective and engaging
experiences, taking advantage of all past experiences (in interactive andnoninteractive areas) as well as all available media (digital and analog).

(See Chapters by Anderson, Crockford, anJ Gibbon)
2. What can be done with all the imagery made possible withvideodiscs and the sounds enabled by compact discs? Is any ofthis really new?
Frequently, one is struck with the feeling of having "heard it all before,"
particularly if one spends much time in the field of education. The pessimistic
intetpretation of this is that everything is a fad, and that most of what we arehearing lately about new technologies is all hype. The optimistic
interpretation is that good ideas stay around, no master how badly they arehandled, and that, eventually, they will gamer the appropriate momentum tobe "done right."

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334

The idea of using images and sounds it education is clearly age-old, an ideathat has been the basis for the development of a range of audio-visualtechnologies and materials running the gamut from overhead projectors to
television, slide shows to elaborate movies. And the notion that since
images and sounds are available cheaply, they should be used in education"
has clearly been overworn in the educational community.
Yet the use of multimedia computer presentations to solve problems thatcannot be addressed effectively in any other context is extremely appropriate,
as well as exciting. This direction of motivation and developmentpresented
often in this Conferenceis highly compelling and convincing vis-i-vis theimportance of these new AV presentations. What we still need, however, arefully developed examples that make this obviousto remove this issue fromacademic argument and let it face the scrutiny of potential audiences. We needexamples that make explicit the wide range of ways that sights and sounds can
add to educational Ixperiences, and specific evaluations showing how thesecontribute to the learning process. Our current psychological theories argue
that multisensory learning should enhancer zierstanding, though few of thestudies available address interactive situations. It will be interesting to findout just what differences these presentations can make when they are underuser control.
In doing this it is important, however, to realize that there are a large numberof components that will need to be in place if examples are to be effective.
The existence of new hardware and new hardware standardsbe they CDI or
DVI or LVROM or CDROM or Videodiscsdo in fact provide an
opportunity not available to even the most talented designer before. For the
shear amount of information is at a scale hardly imagined possible before, ascale that makes possible highly textured information environments whichvery few of us have ever expenenced. And the variety of information allowedby this scale of information storagefor music and images in particularmake possible the intertwining of different presentations, presentations thatare manipulable, in new and exciting ways.

Similarly, new software tools and new ideas for interfaces in a range ofapplication domainsmany of which are described in this bookare
surfacing frequently of late, many of these offering direct access to
information by teachers and other non-computer professionals.
The interactions of hardware, software, and interface innovations can provide
for some longlasting and solid changes in educational environments.
Changes in scale of information, in the tools for information manipulation, inthe cost of widely distributed data bases, and in the "appearance" ofinformation, promise revolutions in the human processing of information;
education can focus on human thought and thoughtfulness in a range of
media, and defocus from the memori of textual facts as the current very new
potentials are realized.

364):EARNING TOMORROWS)

(See Chapters by Campbell/Hanlon, Friedlander, and Anderson)

3. Are emotional presentations appropriate to education? Orshould technology efforts be used primarily to present "factual
data" in educational settings?
At the Conference, there were interesting arguments presented for both sides
If this issue. A number of people couldn't believe that others thoughtemotions were inappropriate and manipulative in the classroom. They argued
that emotions are already present in classrooms, and that emotional
involvement is critical to make materials relevant to students and to allow any
depth of understanding or interest in a topic.
People on the other sid.: of this argument insisted that emotional manipulationof students was "unfair" and inappropriate to the pedagogical enterprise.
They found the techniques of the theater and the movie screen highly
dan ;emus in a learning environment; they found the use or music to increase
the impact of a political message very unsettling, for example, as they did thetheatrical embellishment of a personal discussion/argument portraying
controversies. Typically, these people argued that the task at hand, for them
anyway, was rot to polarize arguments or to use readily available
multisensory techniques to arouse and crnvince. Instead, their task was toaccumulate available data and to provide tools so that people could accessthese.

It is unclear which approach is appropriate. It is clear, however, that as
multisensory presentations and tools for their organization are made available
by new technologies, people will need to learn to use them and to interpretthem, much as they have already done for textual presentations. It is also
clear that there will be many controversies about the appropriate use of thesetechnologies in educational institutions (which is not so surprising).

4A. Is the central task in the design of educational presentations
to link large amounts of information? Or is it to "tell stories"?
Should presentations emulate libraries as reference centers orclassrooms (as teaching centers)? Is ther a significant
difference between encyclopedias and textbooks and TV
documentaries and novels and lectures?

4B. What balance is required between directed search andbrowsing paradigms? Can one count on individuals to bring
their own questions and research strategies to their tasks, ormust the technological environments provide these?
A number of the presentations at the Conference focused on hypertext
systems, systems that enabled the linking of various sorts of available data.
Similarly, a number of these presentations dealt principally with encyclopedic
presentations, presentations deliberately designed to put a very broad range of
information "at the fingertips" of the viewer.

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These emphases are extremely exciting and are realistic given technologicaladvances, including general extended memory and increased speeds ofprocessing, as well as advances in software design and existing and expectedadvances in knowledge representation.

People often paused at the Conference to consider this approach in somedetail, however, remembering that there are already large amounts of data
available that they don't use very often. Also, reflecting on how they do theirown work, they remembered how particular situations and compelling stories
and people had led them to their profession, and that these same elements
continued to motivate them in their activities. And they began to discuss justhow poorly prepared most students are for schooling, and how few of themseem interested in anything.
In many conversations people then argued that even the most well presented"linkage map" would not be enough to engage learners' interests, that it wasvery important to provide "motivating overviews" and "engaging situations"to people so that moving through these webs of information would becompelling. And it was suggested that this was the prime opportunity ofmultimedia presentations that shcold not be ignored. Similarly it was argued
that the "nodes" of a linkage system should frequently be highly engaging,
often providing elements of surprise and humanness in the presentation ofboth factual and conceptual data. The argument was that cognitive activities
and affective activities are not mutually exclusive, and that in fact affective
presentations were not mere accompaniments to "serious presentations" butwere in fact their very essence.

In other conversations people argued that the first task was the provision oflarge data bases, principally of existing materials, and that the incorporation of
new media presentations and fa' affective elements could be a task at a later
time, after this large task was accomplished. Similarly arguments were madethat suggested that systems should be modeled on motivated individuals first,
that the study of these individuals could be of the most help in the design ofinitial systems. As the proficiency of systems increased, tney could be
modified to account for the generation of initial curiosity.
The general sense of the Conference, and of the chapters in general, is thatthese different approaches are highly compatible, and that on reflection,
probably both are critical for success of any system. What was also
acknowledged is that some people will work on systems that emphasize one
approach, given their beliefs and others will work en the other. Optimally atsome point, there would be a merging of approaches; designers would learn
from the successes of each approach and incorporate them in new examples.

(See Chapters by Weyer and Meyrowitz and Thought Piece by
Frischer)

5. What will it require to make the presentations now quite
familiar in research laboratories available to the generalcommunity? Why is it seeming to take so long?
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Doug Engelbart's work in the general area of "augmentation of human
intellect" was very nicely demonstrated in the 1960s in his SRI Laboratories.
He organized a community of workers who used a system to keep track ofitself. He demonstrated hypertext systems and systems for collaborative
activities. He developed the mouse (as well as a range of other input devices)and showed how they could be used. He set up working videoconferencing
systems, with computers as central elements.
A lot of this work was followed up at Xerox PARC, as systems weredeveloped that combined text and graphics, and that showed the advantagesof an object-oriented programming language (Smalltalk). Interfaces weredeveloped that made the powerful computing resources accessible to users,
including programmers of these new systems and individuals involved in
education.
J.C.R. Lick leider and Craig Fields extended the multimedia character of workthat focused on human-usable computer systems in their ARPA funding
programs. Negroponte's Architecture Machine Group projects were extremely
important for this class of activities. The Aspen Project, for example, madeclear that videodiscs could be used under computer control to do things thatwere never before possiblein this case, the apparent travel through a town.
The Movie Manual project provided a specific example of just how text,
moving a:id still images, and sounds could be made available to users underinteractive control. The Bicycle Repair Manual provided another example ofmultimedia projects made possible by the combination of optical media andcomputers. The "Put That Mzre" demonstration also made explicit just how

multuntdia input devicesvoice and direct, manual pointingcould
complement large-screen presentations of data And the SDMS (Spatial DataManagement System) demonstrations made explicit how these different
multimedia techniques could be used for "navigation through information
space," extending the usability of large data base systems.
Yet even with these explicit examples, multimedit, experiences have seemed to
be stuck in the imaginations of researchers and in the special environments offlourishing research laboratories. For example, videodiscs generally havebeen quite unsuccessful in entering marketplaces. Though CD audio has been
widely accepted in the marketplace, it is unclear whether CD-ROM will beable to build on this success, or whether computer/CD-ROM combinations (inwhatever form) will find tasks beyond reference works that show theirpotentials.

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"The chicken and egg" problem is blamed for a lot of this: if there is no
hardware, there will be no applications; or if there is no successful
application, there will be no hardware investment; and so forth ad infinitum.
Standards issues and multiplicities of hardware options are also blamed; until
there is a standard CD-ROM format, investors are uncomfortable in using thismedium very seriously given the risk involved. And the general digital vs.
analog encoding argument also seems to get in the way of coherent action;
computer folks are slow to understand why video is anything more than anuisance, and video and graphic designers see little motivation to weak very
hard in cumbersome digital media on short-term projects.
And so the conversations go on in limited commmities, and very little getsdone that is visible to many people. In addition, given the lack of funding for
projects, few people are given the opportunity to take on the challenge ofmultimedia presentations, and so few are trained in the multiplicity of areas
required to address the design of such presentations. Even fewer people are
involved in the integration of the huge number of issues that must be
addressed and simplified to produce coherent products. More and morepotential becomes availableinterruptibility, interaction, individualization,
consistent interfaces, sounds, images, moving images, dynamic computer
graphicsand still there are few success stories.
No one will probably ever know why this is all taking so long, though clearly
we all have our pet hypotheses. (My pet notion, incidentally, is that ourculture fundamentally does not know much about the personal manipulationof information, particularly sound and image information; we are consumersof complex -Wia, but not generators. This provides a great block in"convincing people" of the worthiness of multimedia presentations; it also
results in a limited set of experiences on which designers in this new media
can draw.)
What is important is that conferences like our June Conference and documents
like this book keep trying out the ideas again and again, gathering momentum
for some great successes. For indeed, the potential is certainly sitting there
awaiting our cleverness.

6. What do we know from cognitive theory to mold our efforts
in designing with new multimedia interactive systems?
Fundamental to the entire field of cognition is the finding that unless people
engage a task, they will not learn from it. William James pointed this out atthe beginning of this century, and research over the last 20 years has provided
elaborations of this basic point.
The interactive nature of the multimedia presentations discussed as well as theemphasis on browsing modes will encourage active involvement by users,
an therefore, it should enhance learning. Interactions with high-quality
sounds and images will be unique in these presentations; more traditional
media, including most existing computer software, simply do not provide
learners with access to changeable images and sounds. This capability should
enhance learning in ways we have yet to anticipate.

LEARNING TOMORROW 3 33

368,

Another fundamental finding is that materials that are rich in sensorial

contentespecially visual displaysare quite effectively remembered.
Moreover, the use of visual materials in learning situationsdiagrams as well
as photographic imageshas been shown to enhance learning consistently.
Finally, the entire investigation of knowledge representationin computer
representations as well as in mental modelsemphasizes the ;importance of
the interlinking of conceptual materials, something that is a major focus inwork on hypermedia as well as simpler hyperter.t systems. Though we arestill naive in matters concerning how users will interact with capabilities forthe interlinking of materials, as well as with materials that are presented tothem in interlinked contexts, it seems that this approach to the presentation ofmaterials should make explicit to learners the importance of interrelationshipsof ideas, and therefore enhance learning. These experiences can thenemphasize "metacognitive skills," which are showing themselves 'gain andagain in basic research investigations to be critical for important learning.
And so the basic research in cognition supports the notion that multimedia
presentations should be highly effective in learning.
From a slightly different perspective, multimedia presentations will allow
cognitive researchers to study multisensory and interactive learning in waysthat 1..ve been prevented in the past, given technological difficulties in image
and sound presentations as well as the lack of tools for observing complex
user responses. And so we can look forward to some valuable interactions
between the field of cognition and multimedia approaches, each enhancing theother.

(See Chapters by Anderson and Gano)
7. How will multimedia educational "stations" fit into schools?
Or will they?
Schools will be required to invest in new hardware in order to deliver themultimedia experiences discussed in this book. This obstacle will prove to be
extremely large for some school districts, whereas it will be minor for others.
Recent histories of computer purchases in schools suggest optimism; schools
will find new ways to finance hardware when it is shown that the materials
delivered with these tecnnologies are important to their business of teaching

and lemur

In addition, teaching staffs will need to adjust their methods of presentation inorder to take advantage of multimedia presentations. Though experienceswith audio-visual materials and with computers will help in this adjustment,
there will be clear shifts in emphasis that are suggested by multimedia
presentations.

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Some of these shifts may be well beyond the curricular guidelines in certain
areas, and in advance of the training of individual teachers. In addition, they
may well be inconsistent with policies designed to maximize standardized testscores.
The challenge to the multimedia designer in all these regards is to create some
applications that are clearly attractive and superior to materials now available.
Unless there is a clear superiority demonstrated, there will be no motivation
for making substantial classroom changes.
Of course, some teachers will grab hold of new materials and expand them inways that make it obvious how these new materials both suit standard criteria
and expand the opportunities for teachers and students. Clearly, newmultimedia presentation designers need to work with these kinds of teachers
to encourage these elaborations, and to suit the presentations to classroom
realities. Given the pendulum shifts typical of the educational establishment,
there is a clear chance that these new presentations can catch on inclassrooms. Whether or not they stay in classrooms will be a function of justhow good they really are, and just how accessible they are forindividualization by both teachers and students.

(See Chapters by Campbell/Hanlon and Gibbon)

8. How can we best develop a language to describe the"experience" of a technology-based presentation? How can weboth focus on the hardware/software required for the delivery ofthis experience and be sure that the experience is the primary
motivator and criterion for developments?
The intrigue of new hardware and software developments is highly exciting
and compelling. Processors are faster, software is more accessible, and thequality of possible presentations is ever higher. It is extremely tempting totake on these issues for their own sake.
For a different group of individuals, the development of new experiences in
the learning and work environment is of paramount interest. New techniques
for engaging students as well as engaging one's own mind are central to theinterests of this group; a new technology is interesting only because it offers
a new opportunity for human thinking/entertainment/etc.

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Both perspectives are key to the development of multimedia experiences, asboth the technologies and the experiences of users are critical to the success ofthese presentations. At the moment, the description of the experiences ofusers seems to be the gaping hole in dialog necessary for co-development ofthese perspectives. The current approach is the explicit demonstration ofexperiences that can be directly evaluated. Such an approach typicallyrequires a large technological and financial investment, however, whichmeans that there are not very many public articulations of what the goal is of amultimedia learning environment. Similarly, there are few instances in whichthese demonstrations are of large enough scale to allow much systematic
analysis and testing.
So one is left only with the approach to make as many examples as possible,
and to develop some that can be widely available and widely tested. With
experience, we can hope to develop a descriptive (if not prescriptive) language
to "get better at all this" more systematically.
(See Chapter by Crockford)

9. Will there/should there be a standard interface to multimedia
experiences? What is the appropriate metaphor for thisinterface? Is it the familiar desktop? The understandable spatial
map? A task-oriented environment? A set of research tools? A
number of construction kits?
The Apple Desktop Interface provides an attractive interface for a wide rangeof tasks. More critically, it provides a consistent interface for a range ofapplications, thereby providing users with easy access to many materials
without new training for each one. This allows users to focus more quickly
on the task and materials at hand, and to use computer tools easily andintuitively. It also allows developers access to a range of conventions ofinteractions, allowing them to focus on particular applications rather than on
new and different interfaces for different tasks. And it provides developers
with a constituency that does not require training and explanations from themost basic level.
This interface should therefore serve an imt role in the development ofmultimedia applications; it provides a flexile beginning for a range of userinteractions.

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However, as multimedia applications develop, there will clearly beelaborations to this interface, Ind most probably some extensions that arequite significant. As Friedlander finds in his application, a task-oriented
metaphor is central to some educational situations. Campbell and Hanlon, as
well as Meyrowitz and Weyer, suggest that a linking framework is key to theuse of sophisticated text as well as image and se'md browsing andmanipulatic n. Frischer is betting that a spatial metaphor will suit his students'
explorations of ancient civilizations. Cinematic metaphors are suggested by
Gano's analyses. The Microsoft encyclopedia clearly relies on the metaphorof a book, and the specific organization of reference books. And othermetaphorsincluding sets of research tools, agents, and construction
kitsclearly repres,;nt other quite viable alternatives for user accessibility tomultimedia presentations.
It's currently unclear which of these approaches ik most generalizable or mostuseful. The sense is in fact that until we have examples we won't really )crow
which way to proceed most confidently. Over the next few months and years
we will begin to see each of these kinds of metaphors and more and lessel-borate interfaces that make use of them. It will be interesting to see whichapproach-4f anyproves to be the favorite for this new class ofapplications. It will also be interesting to see how the Apple Desktop Interface
can stretcl to include all of these requirements and approaches.

(See Chapters by Cook, Frischer and Friedlander)
10. What happens when you combine the traditions of moviemaking, graphic design, computer education, encyclopedia
development, text publication, public television, computer
workstation design, classroom teaching, library organization,entertainment, and psychology?

Can it possibly be boring? Will the results be something new?
Will the results be significant educationally? Will they beentertaining? Can they possibly be both?

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LEARNING TOMORROWWill "multimedia experiences" be similar to the experiences ofwatching a finely crafted movie, writing a heartfelt letter,having a tantalizing conversation, visiting a great library,hearing a fine lecture, attending a symphony, listening to yourfavorite grandmother, viewing great old newsclips, playing theviolin, opening a brand new book you've been waiting for,browsing in your favorite bookstore, effortlessly painting agreat picture, reading your favorite magazine, working at a
flexible word processor or a spreadsheet, playing a great
videogame, winning at Monopoly ....?

Or will they be more like taking exams in school?

It is bound to be an interesting next era in the multimedia
applications business!

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Kristina Hooper
Kristina Hooper was trained as a cognitive scientist
at Stanford (A.B.) and the University of California
at San Diego (Ph.D.). In her research over the last
15 years, she has extended this perspective into theareas of picture recognition, imagery, and visualtechnologies. Her early activities included a
postdoctoral fellowship in architecture, a faculty
position at the University of California at Santa
Cruz, a DARPA project on geographic information
systems that led to a visiting faculty appointment at
MIT working on the Aspen Project, and an NSF
grant to study the use of computer graphics inteaching calculus.
With the birth of her son Matthew, Hooper moved
to the Atari Sunnyvale Research Lab where she
became director of R&D, and Matthew became theresident "developmental prototyke." Her daughter
Erika was born as the Atari dream ended, andHooper moved on to Apple's Education ResearchGroup. A new baby girl will be born as this bookgoes to press. The plan is that this book will help togenerate multimedi materials in the near term forthese inquiring minds, as well as many oti: ?rs.

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