Charles: You make some compelling arguments, but I am certain that you took my thoughts a lot further than I would have taken them. Indeed, it would seem that we agree on much more than we disagree. If one examines the history of the Internet, college students have long had access to it since the early 1980's when I was an undergraduate so the technology really is not that new for the specific group that we are discussing. In historical terms, if you are one who takes the long view I can accept your definition of a new technology. I can also agree with you on the problems with the food supply as well. I try to eat organic as much as possible; however, the problem in the U.S. is that ordinary citizens cannot mount consistent efforts against the corporate interests that have access to the lawmakers,policy makers and legal counsel to get things like questionable food in the food supply. All one has to do is look at the current situation in America where there is no national health care to see that the corporate interests are the real interests. Unfortunately, there is a lot of economic Darwinism going on in this country and it is going to take a cataclysmic event to get people to wake up in America. I recently saw a chart that Americans are divided along the same lines today as they were during the Civil War. This is tragic; however, it is very predictable since we never have fully dealt with the aftermath of slavery and economic justice for the working class and middle class in this nation. Getting back to the food supply argument, the agribusiness lobby has Washington lawmakers and the media under control. One can look at Opensecrets.org and see where the money is going every day and see the sponsors during the billboards of the talking head programs on CNN, Fox, MSNBC and the networks. The water situation was actually the subject of a special report by the Center for Public Integrity. It appears that worldwide the softdrink and water companies are assuming control of the market. Actually, the City of Baltimore, where I live, is actually selling its tap to the public because it has consistently been cited as tasting good and being clean. I am actually doing my dissertation on edutainment and convergence, and I disagree with getting rid of brick and mortar institutions for several reasons. First, the sociological dynamic is incalculable for the young people and the older ones too attending institutions of higher learning. Second, the exchange of ideas and cultures is critical to continuing the discourse that Plato began when he began the Academy in ancient Greece. Third, there are certain times when a student needs tactile intervention from the professor or fellow classmates to assist the student in learning a particular skill. Fourth, it would appear that a mix of traditional and technology based courses tend to compliment one another. This appears to be especially true in field based courses in certain majors. For example, I am writer, filmmaker and producer by trade. An electronic field production class does not really lend itself well to graduate students who work in the field as a purely classroom or electronic course. A student needs minimal classroom time for this course which I have taught while focusing on the production in the field setting. He or she should maintain electronic contact with the professor to keep the professor abreast of issues or problems, but there is no need to meet every week during the middle of a production. Finally, I am certain from what I am seeing in classroom and library design, both are happening at my university and others like Hopkins and Maryland, That libraries are becoming more like edutainment centers that will be open 24 hours with card access and digital access to books. The rationale is that there are a finite number of a given book that a school can have and this number may not be enough to serve the students of the college and the Maryland area since all colleges and universities share resources. While I may not on principle agree with the economic determinism that is in use in this nation and globally, I possess enough common sense to understand that historically people in this nation have short memories, are living from pay check to pay check and simply have not demonstrated the consistent political will to stand up to government tyranny, unfairness and pro-business policies. I would have benefited economically from a Bush or Kerry victory; however, I am always amazed at the individuals who continually vote against their own economic best interests. I am beginning to see the long term wisdom of Lou Dobbs on the subject of globalism. Globalism has many tempting factors to businesses, but at the end of the day American businesses will find that the rest of the world will extract its pound of flesh for years of economic and political dominance by the U.S. and that concerns me. Wages for working people have been decreasing for nearly two decades while net worth of the richest 1% keeps rising a higher rate. This cannot last forever with negative consequences for the country and the world. Have a good weekend. -----Original Message----- From: air-l-aoir.org-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-aoir.org-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Charles Ess Sent: Friday, June 24, 2005 5:10 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [UTKSIS-L] [Air-l] How is the Internet bad for us? Chris Heidelberg wrote: <snip>

However, the future of research will be just that electronic based research with electronic citations because of the economics of maintaining libraries and the costs of books, especially textbooks and research based books. Um, you may well be correct. But at the risk of sounding excessively critical, this also sounds very much like much of the rhetoric that characteristically accompanies new technologies, especially in the United States - in my experience, the culture most likely to embrace new technologies uncritically. As an example, U.S. folk largely accepted genetically modified foods without much of a question mark, while several European countries (Denmark, Norway, Austria) organized consensus conferences to determine whether or not these should be introduced into the food stream and market (with a resounding 'no' as a result). The latter do _not_ automatically assume newer is necessarily better or inevitable - but open to critical evaluation, especially as a function of democratic governance. The point is not to say that one is better than another - I prefer the more critical/democratic approach, but my European friends often look with envy at the U.S. where, in Hofstede's terms, our low uncertainty avoidance (= willingness to take risks) means precisely that we innovate and diffuse new technologies at a rather brisk clip. Both are good.

But beyond the potential fallacy of self-fulfilling prophecy - underneath this I also hear at least an economic determinism, again, characteristically North American. Lots of countries and cultures make choices - for anything ranging from food and wine to quality of books - that are not fully constrained by economic efficiencies, but include other values that frame economic considerations. You're certainly correct that print-based media will continue to be expensive - but this is by itself not a drop-dead argument for the inevitability of electronic media. It is conceivable - whatever one may make of the values matrix that results in such choices - that both individuals and cultures will continue to prefer certain media, despite less expensive alternatives, simply because they are valued for any number of reasons. A simple example is water - bottled water in the U.S. was considered a namby-pamby European luxury some 30 years ago, and now is a mainstay of U.S. culture, even though it's far more expensive (and usually better) than what comes out of the tap. More recently, people my age will remember that in the 1990s, arguments similar to yours were made to declare that distance learning and the virtual university would eliminate "bricks-and-mortar" colleges and universities within ten years. For one thing, the proponents got their economics wrong - the costs of the former turned out to be much higher than most anticipated. But it also turned out that, for better and/or for worse, people - especially traditional-age students - _like_ the educational (and extra-curricular) experience provided in real-world, embodied settings - and are indeed quite willing to pay a premium for it.

This current discourse reminds me of the concerns by teachers during the 1970's when I was in grade school and parents and teachers complained about the use of calculators, and now nearly every math and science class requires excessive calculator usage because of the element of time. My point is that students should have the fundamentals of great research and practice it; however, we all need to recognize that when Google finishes its work it will simply be too easy and practical not to fully utilize electronic services. The more important key may be that students properly give credit to sources and that the sources be "approved" by the professor. Davis is an excellent person to teach the basics.

I'm not sure I have a quarrel here - but I would add a caveat. Yes, calculators, etc. came in - and I believe it's clear that basic math skills, including the ability to do simple math in one's head, or even with a piece of paper, went out, as many of the teachers and parents worried it would. Albert Borgmann writes perceptively on this, I think: a feature of modern technology is to make things easier for us on the surface of use - by relying on increasingly complicated technological systems underneath - resulting in a "de-skilling" in many ways. Kids who can velcro their shoes may no longer learn to tie a simple knot - and the cashier who grew up with calculators apparently cannot figure out (this happened the other day) that four grapefruit at $.50 each total to $2.00. (I'm not making this up.) Of course I want my students - not to mention, little ol' me - to have access to the latest and greatest databases and search technologies for their research; but my observation (as someone who has taught freshman almost every year since 1980) is that even with rising standardized test scores, every year my students are less and less capable of doing very much _without_ electronic aids. So I worry about confident predictions about what _will_ happen in the indefinite and as-yet-to-be-chosen future - especially when these seem (perhaps I misread you here) to _not_ worry about the consequences, not of _complementing_ the use of traditional print-based scholarship with electronic counterparts, but of replacing the former with the latter entirely? thoughts and comments welcome - I'm sure I'm wrong here in important ways - and happy weekend, charles ess Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html Co-chair, CATaC: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac/ Professor II, Globalization and Applied Ethics Programmes Norwegian University of Science and Technology NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway http://www.anvendtetikk.ntnu.no/pres/bridgingcultures.php Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23 _______________________________________________ The Air-l-aoir.org@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/