Computers and Communication

Communication Revolution

Post-Literate Society

Lessons from the Past

Socratic Dialogue

The Official Medium

Socratic Inquiry

The Official Doctrine

The Method of Doubt

The Quest for Certainty

Return to Interactivity

Non-linear Learning

Disengaged Learning

Non-conformity as Disease

The Institutionalization of Linear Learning

Multimedia Curricula

Our Essential Mission

Digital Dialogue

Interactive Humanities

The Power of Multimedia Learning

The Final Irony

Computers and Communication

We have only belatedly realized that the real revolutionary impact of computers is as tools for communication and learning. After years of regarding computers as powerful, data storage devices, we now employ computers as instruments for a wide variety of new forms of communication. This includes digital telephone transmissions, video conferences, cable systems, instructional devices, bulletin boards, networks, library access, video, CD-ROM, multimedia presentations, and even the playing of Hollywood movies. Computers also provide platforms for desktop publishing, and more recently, for desktop video editing. In this supportive way, computers add greatly to the diversity and availability of works produced for these other important communication media.

Communication Revolution

The impact of these new electronic communication tools has often been compared in importance to the Gutenberg revolution of 1455. At first, today's technologically based communications explosion seems comparable to the rapid expansion of written communication that followed the new technology of moveable type. After analysis, this comparison falls short. If we regard the changes being brought today by computer communications as merely technological advances for making communications more efficient or rapid, we miss real revolutionary significance of these current trends.

Post-Literate Society

Where will these current social trends lead us? We can imagine the alarming prospect of living in a post-literate society in which books are quaint novelties; a society in which information and power are in the hands of an elite few who are electronically connected. Fortunately, this is not the only possible scenario. How can we ascertain the outcome of today's rapid technological changes? The best way to understand the significance of these present developments is through an historical inquiry into the impact made by changes in communication technology on previous stages of our culture. To do this brings us to an analysis of literacy itself.

Socratic Dialogue

In a similar vein the keystone of our own western philosophical tradition, was laid by Socrates, who did not write. Through his life's work Socrates showed us the value of the conversation or dialogue. He preferred this familiar interactive mode of communication for education and elucidation. The dialogue is our most original and universal method of communication; and it is characterized by being immediate, multi-sensory, direct, non-linear and open ended. Written communication, in each case, is the opposite. It is mediated, minimally sensory, abstract, linear and closed ended.

One of the amazing attributes of written communication is that, in spite of these constraints, it has the ability to simulate a derivative version of interactive communication. It is due to the power of the human imagination that written communication is often able to overcome these inherent limitations and successfully replace communication of a more original form. Until now we have relied on writing as our main communication tool; but today, we have the opportunity to employ new array of electronic tools that allow communication to once again be multi-sensory, direct, non-linear and open ended.

The Official Medium

In 403 BC the government of Athens decreed that henceforth the phonetic alphabet would be the officially approved mode of written communication. This is essentially the same primary instrument for communication that we have employed in the West until the present day. Through all the intervening centuries, the mastery of phonetic literacy has remained the primary purpose of schooling.

Socrates would be executed four years later in 399. Plato lived until 347 and died at about age 81. In one generation philosophy went from a teacher who claimed to know nothing; only asking questions, to Plato's quest for timeless truths, immutable forms and immortal ideas.

Socratic Inquiry

Socrates, as portrayed by Plato, did not quote doctrine or claim any special truth. Socrates philosophized and taught by joining in a discussion with another person who thought he knew what justice, courage or the like is. Typically, following Socrates' sympathetic questioning of his friend, it becomes clear that neither knew with certainty. They jointly undertake a new effort to shed light on the issues, and following from Socrates' interrogatory suggestions, new insights are gained. They reach no final solution to the problem; but now conscious of their own need for additional learning, they agree to continue their collective inquiry at a latter time.

Socrates' ageless method of interactive inquiry with no predetermined outcome, no final resolution, no specific content to master, is precisely the pedagogical model that best describes the opportunities for interactive multimedia learning that exist for us today. Educators today can join Epictetus in saying, "Even now although Socrates is dead the memory of what he did or said while still alive is just as helpful or even more so to men", (Discourses IV, 1,169)

The Official Doctrine

After the death of Socrates philosophy would no longer be regarded as a progressive inquiry. Its task was now the identification of permanent truths which could be placed in an appropriately immortal written form. Once ideas were rendered to their permanent, written form it was easy and natural to regard them as having an independent existence of their own. Written ideas were organized into an approved canon that could be passed with certainty to the ensuing generations. The most revered ideas of the past, particularly those of Plato and Aristotle, were in this way passed down in perfect written form to each new generation of students.

Once received in this concrete form, the philosophical ideas inherited from the masters would no longer be doubted or questioned. Major schools of philosophy, lasting for many generations, served as apologists for this or that approved doctrine. The written concretization of the philosophical concepts of Plato and Aristotle led to generations of scholars who saw their task as the repetition, interpretation and propagation of these official doctrines. No longer a creative inquiry, philosophy became mere exegesis. For most of the history of our culture the central lesson of Socrates was lost. The task of educators was to serve as scribes, passing down the established knowledge that had been organized into an approved curriculum.

The Method of Doubt

The publication of Descartes' Method of Doubt in Discourse on Method in 1634, can be said to mark the beginning of modern philosophy. Descartes took the unheard of approach of publishing his revolutionary work in French. His famous "Cogito" should most appropriately be cited as, "Je pense; donc, je suis". In order to move beyond the established ideas of his day he found it necessary to break away from the official written language in which the entrenched ideas were immortalized. His fear of the power of the intellectual establishment caused him to withhold the publication of his own books; and he hoped that by publishing in French rather than Latin he could directly reach a new class of educated and sympathetic readers. Even though Descartes is often blamed for much of the intellectual confusion that followed, it is hard for us to imagine the rise of modern scientific and philosophical thought without his pivotal contribution.

Following Descartes, for the next four hundred years, philosophers would turn their attention to the problems that arose from the Dualism that he proposed. For Descartes reality consisted of two separate realms, the ideal and the real. Their only connection was at the specific locus of the pineal gland in the human brain. Both the Rationalist and Empiricist schools of thought that have existed into our own times can be seen as the intellectual descendants of Descartes, each group emphasizing its own preferred half of Descartes' duality. Even after this central turning point in the history of ideas, the singular importance of the Socratic method of open-ended inquiry was still not fully appreciated.

The Quest for Certainty

It was not until our present century that some of our best American thinkers provided us with a theory of knowledge that set aside this ancient quest for certainty and the pursuit of unchanging truths. Thinkers like William James, John Dewey and George Herbert Mead developed theories in which learning and knowing were regarded as functional or instrumental human activities rather than ends in themselves. For them acquiring knowledge consisted neither of the uncovering of eternal truths nor the search for empirical certitude. Knowing ensued, rather, from human interactions with the world and with each other. Their philosophical inquiry into the nature of knowing led them to develop a theory of 'interaction' that has interesting parallels with the models for interactive learning that have arisen from the ranks of the computer community in our own time.

One of the most successful attempts to offer a theory of human knowledge without falling into the Cartesian trap was that proposed by John Dewey. Rather than giving primary status to either the Knower or the Known, Dewey's conception concentrated on the act of knowing itself. All knowing involves "interaction". Meanings do not exist in objects or in minds, prior to the act of knowing.

From the point of view of technical philosophy, the nature of knowledge has always been the foundation and point of departure for philosophies that have separated knowing from doing and making, and that in consequence have elevated the objects of knowledge, as measures of genuine reality, above experiences of affection and practical action. If, accordingly, it can be shown that the actual procedures by which the most authentic and dependable knowledge is attained have completely surrendered the separation of knowing and doing; if it can be shown that overtly executed operations of interaction are requisite to obtain the knowledge called scientific, the chief fortress of the classic philosophical tradition crumbles into dust. (The Quest For Certainty, 1929 78-79)

Throughout Dewey's long career one basic concept is constant as the foundation of his theory of knowing and learning. This overriding idea is his conception of "interaction". Interaction is crucial to learning because it is central to experience itself.

Experience is a matter to the interaction of organism with its environment, an environment that is human as well as physical, that includes the tradition and institutions as well as local surroundings. The organism brings with it through its own structure, native and acquired, forces that play a part in the interaction. The self acts as well as undergoes, and its undergoings are not impressions stamped upon an inert wax but depend upon the way the organism reacts and responds. (Art as Experience, 1934 p.246)

It is, at the least, a remarkable coincidence that an interactive theory of knowing and learning was developed by early twentieth century American philosophers and that a similar concept would independently arise from the electronic village that is so influential in our own time. Today's hardware and software developers intuitively know that the real value of their work arises from its ability to enhance communication, promote interactive learning, and provide those who use their products with a breadth of experience that can be obtained in no other way. For today's technicians the added power of interactive software is self-evident; its value is demonstrated through actual practice and it requires no theoretical justification.

Non-linear Learning

We can each recall going to a dictionary or encyclopedia and becoming sidetracked as our eye catches a series of articles unrelated to our original purpose. We find ourselves drawn by a natural curiosity that must be innate to us all. Moving from topic to topic, we reach an outcome that could never have been foreseen. We are engrossed and involved by some new and insightful combination of ideas. We loose awareness of our primary objective; and for the moment we posses no self-consciousness. We catch ourselves and wonder how much time has passed. We might even self-consciously look to see if anyone has seen us 'wasting' so much time; and then, finally, we return to our original task.

Even with an inanimate reference book we have managed to interact productively in a totally absorbing way. New information need not be acquired in a rigid, predetermined sequence. What our minds do best is to supply the connections between randomly acquired bits of information in ways that give them a personal meaning for us. Reflection on these everyday learning experiences provides us with the best conceptual model for understanding the function of multimedia learning.

While this type of learning experience will never win high marks for efficiency or for meeting deadlines, this direct and open ended transaction with sensory information is characteristic of the way we actually learn best. After reflection we recognize that such mundane incidental musings often provide us with insightful, authentic, and high quality learning experiences. New insights and original ideas frequently result from this type of open-ended and transansactional state of mind.

Disengaged Learning

It is unfortunate that this familiar, natural and spontaneous type of learning has so little in common with the disengaged types of learning that are required in our children's schools. In the typical school, the rich contributions of non-linear learning are not merely ignored; they are often treated as aberrations. Students who address the world in an open-ended, non-linear and spontaneous way are out of step with the majority and they disrupt the desired harmony of the educational program. Today, these students, are routinely diagnosed as suffering from various aliments, such as 'attention deficit disorder' or 'hyperactivity'. Even those students who simply bridle at the constraints of our conventional curricula are diagnosed as suffering from these newly discovered medical conditions. Those who are identified as 'non-compliant' are given the required drugs to alleviate their symptoms. For unexplained reasons these 'disabilities' most often afflict boys and members of racial minorities.

Non-conformity as Disease

With alarming frequency, children who are unsuccessful in conforming to our established educational system are regarded as having medical aliments, genetic disabilities or psychiatric problems. In spite of being an increasingly popular practice, this rapid move to the medical diagnoses and drug treatment our educational non-conformists is cause for concern. When viewed from a broader historical perspective, the medical treatment of children who are out of step with our established educational procedures, makes no more sense than the routine psychiatric diagnosis and medical treatment of political non-conformists in the former Soviet Union.

The Institutionalization of Linear Learning

It is, rather, our learning institutions and our curricula that are in need of diagnoses and medication. For countless generations, with a process not unlike natural selection, those who are comfortable, successful and compliant in our learning institutions are promoted to places of authority in our society. A large number of persons who are most at home operating within the confines of an institutional educational setting remain in our schools to run the programs and develop the curriculum for the next generation. As a result persons who prefer abstract, linear learning and highly structured environments are by default perpetually in charge of many of our educational institutions.

Most of us can remember a few teachers who inspired us to learn and grow in a relevant and exciting way. Some of the most important lessons they taught are hard to measure, but their impact will remain with us always. Abstract, linear learning is, on the other hand, easy to measure and quantify. This makes it all the more desirable for those who prefer their world to be orderly, controllable, predictable and closed. Real learning is not like that.

Multimedia Curricula

What we need are tools for learning that are compatible with the open-ended and interactive structure that learning assumes in our everyday lives. A thoroughly developed collection of multimedia learning tools would constitute a fundamentally improved curriculum. Even if multimedia learning is never universally employed, it should certainly be used to provide an alternative for children who are identified as 'learning different'. A more naturally engaging media-based curriculum would help to reduce the growing class of marginally educated youngsters who can find no productive place in our society.

Today, due to our new wealth of technical tools, we can for the first time provide a fully interactive course of study that involves all the senses in an active way. We are no longer limited to traditional curricula that engender the feeling of separation that students often sense between their internal meanings and the external, abstract knowledge they are asked to learn. Early in this century, before computers existed and the personal computer could not even be imagined, John Dewey proposed an interactive model for learning. Over fifty years later, we can now fully implement the interactive model that he summed up in the following way:

The word "interaction," ...assigns equal rights to both factors in experience--objective and internal conditions. The trouble with traditional education was not that it emphasized the external conditions that enter into the control of the experiences but that it paid so little attention to the internal factors which also decide what kind of experience is had. (Experience and Education, 1938 p42)

Our Essential Mission

For Dewey the task of educators is no less than to identify and promote situations in which interactive knowing can flourish.

Continuity and interaction in their active union with each other provide the measure of the educative significance and value of an experience. The immediate and direct concern of an educator is then with the situations in which interaction takes place. (Experience and Education, 1938 44-45)

All students and educators share this one central and essential mission; namely, the production and enhancement of those interactive experiences from which meaningful learning arises. All of our repeated attempts to develop a perfect and final body of knowledge to require of each new generation are doomed to failure. Possessing the perfect curriculum is no more attainable than the perfect apprehension of Plato's immortal Forms. Knowledge never exists independent of the knower. Knowing is an action that always entails the experiences of a person interacting in a specific environmental context. Meanings arise only in relation to the intentions and interests of an individual learner. In this way each learner already possesses his own personal curriculum.

As we contemplate the unsettling prospect of life in a post-literate society we can envision a proliferation of homes in which the only literature is TV Guide; but even for these families, reading provides important meanings, and it and needs to be carried out competently and accurately. Today we know children for whom reading consists of mastering the intricate instructions of video games. These individuals, like us all, possess their own internal curriculum that not only contains content but provides motivation and meaning. The mastery of reading will inevitably provide the tools for handling sophisticated ideas and concepts even when the reading skills arose from illustrated comic books, video games and movie listings. Even in a post-literate society each learner already posses his own customized curriculum.

The task of educators is to provide opportunities for increasingly higher quality interactions that are most appropriate and meaningful for the learner. This is not a random or laissez faire procedure but rather constitutes a subtle art that requires of the educator a broad background of knowledge and a high degree of empathy for each learner. The teacher must also possess a sophisticated insight into the creative learning processes that have occurred in her own life. Only these reflective insights into her own learning experiences can provide the teacher with the empathy required to provide the proper interactive opportunities for her students while making use of the whole variety of learning tools we now possess.

Interactive Humanities

As a specific example, in recent decades a wealth of enlightening film and video productions that have been created through the Division of Public Programs of The National Endowment for the Humanities. Now, with existing technology, this astonishing and superb variety of programs can be reformatted as fully interactive, multimedia educational resources. Now that personal computers can display video, this vast storehouse of educational and research resources can be made available to students and scholars in a convenient, low cost, transportable and interactive form.
These advances are technically feasible since the majority of computers being purchased today are equipped with CD-ROMs. Six hundred and eighty megabytes of searchable information or seventy minutes of interactive digital video are now available to even the most novice computer user. When the entire text of a twenty volume encyclopedia is placed on one of these small, inexpensive plastic disks, most of the disk remains empty.

The Power of Multimedia Learning

With the exception of spoken language, reading will remain our most important single tool for learning. Although we recognize reading as our most important tool; that is not to say that it is always the best tool for learning. The power of sound; including narration, sound effects and music, plus the power of motion; including animation, film and video, added to the power of images; including photographs, charts and graphics can be combined along with text in a new multimedia format. This results in an efficiency of communication and ease of learning that are inevitably more successful than when text stands alone. The pedagogic power of multimedia is not only intuitively apprehended, but also empirically demonstrated. Its advantages as a preferred mode of learning have been repeatedly documented through experimental procedures.

The personal computer has freed us of the constraints of our one-dimensional, "litero-centric" model for learning. We can now return learning to its original interactive, direct and multi-sensory foundation. The personal computer makes it finally possible for us to develop new curricula based on our age-old model of interactive Socratic inquiry. Our children deserve no less than a complete multimedia curriculum.

The Final Irony

In this age of electronic communication there can never again be a shortage of information. Due to the super-abundance of information available today it has been replaced as the primary currency of education. Information is so accessible that it has become a surplus commodity; and like all surplus commodities, it has lost its value. The educational currency that maintains its value for the present and for all times is interactive growth.

Now that educators are freed from being the primary source of information for their students; one might wonder if they will become obsolete. On the contrary, the teacher is now finally free to relate to students in a more creative and productive way; the teacher is now an agent for growth. Rather than performing the routine tasks of providing information, the teacher can fulfill her primary mission which is promoting those interactions that result in growth.

As we move to multimedia learning, there is a final irony. The multimedia computer is proving to be the best educational tool for teaching reading itself. In the end, this may be its greatest contribution. Rather than supplanting reading, multimedia communication can provide the learner with the best introduction to the more highly distilled and more subtle form of communication found only in the realm of ideas and letters.