(1) I know Peter disagrees, but I think it is important to put
Academic Computing under a STANDING committee of the faculty, not just
recommend another committee to oversee this.
(2) I am queasy that we don't define what we mean by "short,"
"medium," and "long" range. Some of the "medium" range stuff is
things we should be working on immediately.
(3) Fix the format so that all of the recommendations are numbered.
Currently only the medium range ones are.
(4) The recommendations are too vague. Saying that MIT should study
this or encourage that is not sufficient. We need to list options for
how these things could be carried out, and comment on the costs.
(5) I really hate the phrase "wetware upgrade"
(6) The long-term stuff is vague and not very compelling.
We shoud be folding in some of the material from Dick Larson's
"vision."
(7) The discussions we had on changing the pattern of the relation
between students and the university, from one of an intense 4-5 years,
to one of a more life-long relation -- and how technology could
support that -- seems to have been lost. Perhaps we should add a
chapter or two devoted to visions of what MIT might be like. Again,
Dick's stuff is a good first draft of that.
(8) There is no mention of intellectual property issues in the report.
(9) Is this report only about the Web? What about other technologies?
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Fundamentally, we need to do more work fleshing out the
recommendations. What I would like to see is each recommendation
linked to a paragraph or two of discussion about how to get started.