Information Highway
The implications of such a knowledge-access tool is that the Internet will become as useful to you as the books on your shelf or as the encyclopedia at the library.
The implications of such a knowledge-access tool is that the Internet will become as useful to you as the books on your shelf or as the encyclopedia at the library.
I see the Internet potentially as one of the ways that there can be a large number of users responding to a broadcast. When that happens, broadcasting becomes communication.
On-demand digital video and multimedia applications promise exciting services. Customers click a remote-control pad to order and instantly receive a film or show from a library of thousands of programs. School students wander through a multimedia book that offers text, sound, and video clips, or play interactive games with other people from all over the world.
The Information Superhighway promises new applications including videoconferences, on-demand video, and multimedia, where users interactively participate with video.
Computers complement television. No technological pathway – neither Muppets nor modem – leads directly to a good education.
Isolated facts don’t make an education. Meaning doesn’t come from data alone. Creative problem solving depends on context, interrelationships and experience. The surrounding matrix may be more important than the individual lumps of information. And only human beings can teach the connections between things.
What does computer literacy mean to a child who can’t read at grade level and can’t interpret what she reads? … Have we ever spoken of automobile literacy or microwave oven literacy?
Our schools face serious problems, including overcrowded classrooms, teacher incompetence and a lack of security. Local education budgets hardly cover salaries, books and paper. Computers address none of these problems. They’re expensive, quickly become obsolete, and drain scarce capital budgets. Yet school administrators want them desperately. What’s wrong with this picture? … Today’s standard connections, Ethernet and coaxial cable, will be obsolete within a decade.
With millions of users posting messages to the network, the valuable gets lost in the dross … With everyone able to upload their works to the network, the Internet begins to resemble publisher’s slush piles. It’s up to the reader to separate out the dregs. What’s missing from the network are genuine editors.
Combined with the latest Internet browsers, the World Wide Web promises to make the Internet a comfortable environment for everyone, including computer-phobic people.