[6] The Computer as a Communication Device Report from SIGCAS/POLICY 98 ACM Conference by Ronda Hauben ronda@umcc.ais.org The SIGCAS/POLICY 98 ACM conference on Computers and Social impact was held in Washington D.C.(1) The conference was a combination of papers, talks and panels about computers and society and about government policy. These papers were interesting in parts, and problematic in other parts. The issue that I felt emerged was the need for a vision for the future development of the Internet, a vision that recognizes the importance of the communication that the Net makes possible, and one that makes it possible to expand and build on the research, educational and scientific origins of the development of the Net. One speaker from the University of Pittsburgh, Professor Janet Ward Schofield, described research conducted under an NSF grant to explore bringing the Internet into the schools in the Pittsburgh area. She described how difficult and yet welcomed was the process. In most cases, the research grant provided 2 or 3 computers with Internet access into certain selected classes. This meant that the Internet was seen as a scarce good. Students asked to use it and disputes arose. The research described how teachers with 30 students and a lesson for the whole class would have difficulty deciding how to integrate 3 students using the Internet into that lesson. There were many others problems discovered. (2) However, what seemed the most important observation that Professor Schofield shared with us during questions after her talk was that those students who used the Internet for communication found it of interest over a long period of time, while those using it to surf the web didn't maintain their interest. Also she observed that when used for communication, students loved using the Internet. After the research group interviewed the students who had taken part in the program, they reported that students felt that with the Internet they could do things that were real, they could create something that someone else would use. Previously so much of what they did was for the teacher, while using the Internet was conducive to the kind of learning that happens with and for others. What students reported was something important to examine. What is the significance of their recognition that the collaborative and interactive learning and communication made possible by using the Internet is interesting and valuable? This is similar to an observation made by Norbert Wiener in a period before computers had become generally accessible and widespread. Wiener recognized that in the development of automation, the feedback one received was crucial to determine how to continue in pursuit of one's objectives. He recognized how the interactive mode and the signals communicated were of crucial importance to the continual operation and development of automatic machinery. Wiener also determined that at the heart of automation was the nature of the relationship between the human and the machine. What should be the role of each in this relationship? This was a crucial question to identify and study. Building on Wiener's work, J.C.R. Licklider, one of the early networking pioneers and visionaries, did a study and concluded that the human-computer relationship was one of symbiosis, or mutual dependence and contribution. (3) Licklider also began to envision an intergalactic computer network. Thus students utilizing the Internet in Professor Schofield's research, had rediscovered something that cybernetic pioneer Norbert Wiener and networking pioneer J.C.R. Licklider had identified and studied. The students were excited by the ability of computers and the Internet to facilitate communication, and interactive, collaborative work and relationships. In the 1930s Norbert Wiener was part of a seminar to encourage an interdisciplinary approach to the problems of communication in animal and machine.(4) In the 1940s Wiener's ideas about communication and feedback in man and machine helped to spawn new visions of research for those interested in communication from a myriad of scientific and engineering disciplines. In the Spring of 1947, Wiener began a series of weekly meetings where those involved in different disciplines would gather and share their research. Jerome Wiesner, from MIT, who participated in those seminars, reports how they gave birth to important new ideas and to collaborative research for many years afterwards.(5) Included in the research that grew out of these seminars was the work on time-sharing and networking. At the heart of the development of time-sharing, the ARPANET and the Internet is the development of the computer as a communications device. Is this new paradigm affecting different areas of computer science research and practice? What new methodological and theoretical developments is this making possible? In order to understand this achievement, however, is it again necessary to undertake interdisciplinary discussion and study? Is it impossible or at least more difficult to understand the role of the computer as a communication device in a particular field if that field of study is isolated from other fields? What will grow out of efforts to foster interdisciplinary research and study and increased communication, around the role of communication in different fields of computer science research and practice? How would such an effort impact the theory and practice of computer science? The past 40 years have seen tremendously important developments in the fields of computers and communications and the marriage of computers and communication. Out of these collaborative relationships and research in the role of communication in different disciplines has grown the current developments that have created the Internet. Discussing and sharing views of what was made possible by the Net has in the past helped to clarify the vision for the future of the Net. We are now standing on a new plateau, but to scale the next summit we need to pause and understand how we have gotten this far. Maintaining a connection with the principles and insights that made our current achievements possible will help to provide the lenses to view the next summit to be scaled. And the continued study of and research into the role of the computer as a communication device will provide the ropes to connect us as we continue the climb. ------ Footnotes (1) The SIGCAS/Policy '98 Conference was held by ACM May 10-12, 1998. See "Proceedings of the Ethics and Social Impact Component", ACM Policy '98. (2) See for example Janet Ward Schofield and Ann Locke Davidson, "The Internet in School: The Shaping of Use by Organizational, Structural, and Cultural Factors," in S. Lobodzinski & I. Tomek (Eds.) Proceedings of WebNet 97 - world Conference of the WWW, Internet, & Intranet (pp. 485-489), Charlottesville, FA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, 1997. Professor Schofield noted that where all students in a class had access to a computer the problem of computer as a scarce resource didn't occur. (3) See for example, Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, 1997, p. 80-83. (4) Ibid. p. 79. (5) Ibid. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reprinted from the Amateur Computerist Vol 9 No 2 Winter 1999-2000. The whole issue or a subscription are available for free via email. Send a request to jrh@ais.org or see http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------