Quick response to report: improved over earlier edition, but still
needs at least one additional round of changes.
Concrete suggestions:
1. As we do on the WWW, repeat our charge at the beginning:
"Investigate the opportunities offered by today's advanced technologies
to education. Recommend a course of action to the President of MIT.
The specific technologies to be considered include, but are not
restricted to, the following:
The Internet
The World Wide Web
CD-ROMs
Hypertext
Hypermedia
Multimedia
Personal portable communication
Personal portable computation
Interactive television"
Then transition to the WWW as a present day metaphor, the WWW being
representative of the above class of tecnologies and sufficiently
advanced in its present state to offer specific current opportunities
(and risks) to MIT. But then caution that 10 years from now, the
technologies are likely to be very different, allowing even more
capabilities in areas that our committee did not have time to pursue
(due to time and resource constraints).
2. To excite, motivate and position the reader, frame the problem with
a "vision" piece. Several of us on the committee have made many
concrete suggestions along these lines.
3. The "report" still reads as if its authors are enamored of the WWW.
While this may or may not be true (I think it varies over committee
members), the bits and bytes of the WWW get in the way of our key role,
that of strategic planners for MIT. We should state our vision first
and let the power of the WWW creep up on the "reader" by understating
the Web's capabilities, a type of British soft-spoken approach. This
way we are also less prone to criticism as "techies" in love with the
latest and greatest technology craze.
4. The long range recommendations need more arguments, more thought,
and more consideration as to their implementation.
5. As strategic planners, I don't think we should get mired down in any
additional bureaucratic details involving the minutia of our short range
recommendations. It is easy for a reader to get bogged down in the
familiarity of one's current milieu while then ignoring the difficult
but much more important terrain of the large picture 10 years out.
6. The "authorship" of the report should show the entire committee as
co-authors.
Dick Larson