There are going to be two big changes over the next year. The first
is the use of extensible browsers (e.g., the incorporation of Java
into Netscape).
One possible consequence of this is another round of fragmentation.
At the moment, the Web achieves a high level of interoperability
because if its rather low level of capabilities. As a taste of what's
coming, Seth Tucker would like to incrorporate Web-based
videoconferencing in his lab support for 6.037, something that right
now can be done easily only with SGI machines. As we see more use of
fancy helper applications, and more use of extensibility, we'll see
more and more applications supported on "the Web", but that does not
mean they will be widely accessible.
This is the perennial strategic challenge: to what extent should MIT
be providing/developing/mandating a coherent family of services for
educational technology? Our current short term recommendation:
The program of distribution of Web software should continue. MIT needs
a clear and consistent source of tools and support for those
interested in Web browsing, for those interested in Web publishing,
and, especially, those who wish to develop interactive educational Web
applications.
sounds straightforward. But this is an accident of the current simple
phase of Web development, and it will seem like a much harder task a
year from now.
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The second big change is security. Right now the Web is completely
open for all practical purposes. Although we've talked about
copyright and other restriction issues, this has mostly been in
hypotheticals, because there's no convenient technlology for access
control or usage monitoring.
This will definitely change over the next year, and the issues will
arise for real.
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I agree with Bob that the report is too starry-eyed about the Web,
and, in particular, we need to say something about the down side of
all this. On the other hand, I like the section on long-term models
for MIT, because it raises provocative and controversial issues. For
me, the dehumanizing aspect of a computer-communications based
education is an important foil to keep in mind, because it will make
us focus on the things that make real education different from that.
The bottom line is that academic computing will be a major aspect of
future MIT educational development, both operationally and in
challenging our vision of where our educational priorities should be.
In terms of oversight and operation, academic computing needs to be
involved with faculty and educational planning in a much more intimate
way than it has been in the past.
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I also agree that the long-term recommendations need more teeth and
specificity. "Long-range" here is descirbed as things that require
more than a year for implementation. How about some more long-range
things? But also how about some possible models for how to get
started on both the long and medium-term recommendations? My cynical
belief is that recommendations of the form "MIT should do X" will be
ignored. For each recommendation, we need to say who should do it,
and when they should start, and where the resources should come from.
-- Hal