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	Rex Ballard - Director of Electronic Distribution
	Standard & Poor's/McGraw-Hill
	Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect
	the Management of the McGraw-Hill Companies.
	http://cnj.digex.net/~rballard


On Mon, 1 Jul 1996, Barry A. Hollander wrote:

> On Sun, 30 Jun 1996 17:35:58 -0400 Scott J. Anderson said:
> 
> >Today's Washington Post features the first of a four-part series on the Web
> >and its impact on society....
> >
>       ...snip snip...
> 
> >One, Is this true, and, two, if so, what does this mean for journalism?
> >I'll let others jump in before submitting my own thoughts.
> 
>       I've often wondered what the Web will "do" to the way people
>       think.  Certainly television influenced to some degree the
>       way we think, the way we expect information to be approached.
>       Postman was right so long ago when he spoke of society amusing
>       itself to death.

The Web, and the Internet in general, has created several phenonminea
already.  The availability of Web Pages, News Groups, Mailing Lists, and
chat groups, all based on specific personal interests at the time of the
user's choosing has created something tantamount to "Intellectual
Anarchy".

When television monopolised the time and thought processes of young and
old alike, you had little choice but to watch what the network gave you.
When I was growing up, we had the choice of 4 television stations, and the
educational television station (which went off the air before "Prime
Time" for the first few years).  Three of the stations were network
affiliates, the third was re-runs and old movies.

This oligopoly was rather peculiar in that they all did the same thing at
the same time.  At 5:00 PM you had the local News. At 6:00 PM you had the
national news. At 7:00 PM you had "Family Hour sitcoms", at 8:00 PM you
had "Prime Time" movies.  During the daytime, you had soap operas.  On
saturday morning you had cartoons, on sunday you had religeous
programming, and on saturday and sunday afternoons you had Sports.

If you wanted to watch cartoons on tuesday afternoon, tough.  If you
wanted to watch Sitcoms on a weekend afternoon, too bad.  If you wanted to
watch Science Fiction, you had to wait until Friday Night (when you would
have to choose between "Time Tunnel" and "Star Trek".

In addition, the television would tell you what was good and bad.  In the
1950s and early 1960's the Blacks marching for civil rights was BAD, the
Wars and Killing people was good.  I remember sitting under my mom's
sewing machine and watching a soap opera where the couple couldn't be seen
after they started kissing, then, less than an hour later, sitting next to
my Dad watching a soldier shoot a Vietnameze POW in the back of the head.
A sexual fantasy was forbidden, while cold-blooded murder of 12-17 year
old POWs was considered great footage.

This definitely conflicted with what my Grandfather would teach me.
	Love your Neighbor as Yourself.
	Thou shalt not kill.
	Only God has the right to Judge.
	....

Then of course there were those families on television.  You know, the
one's where Mom work designer dresses, pearls, and heels all day while
taking care of her children, cooking dinner, and appearantly doing the
laundry.  Of course, the only time it looked hard was when a man did it
imcompetantly.

The internet challenges all of this.  If I want to get up at 3:00 in the
morning and find out about Linux programming, where to buy a reptile, or
how to make chocolate chip cookies, I can do it.

>       The Web is similar to the way our own brains work.  If you've
>       read the work in spreading activation theory or other models
>       of the mind, you'll see the similarities.  However, in order
>       to take advantage of this input, there must be a good, solid
>       base of knowledge.  I'm afraid this is where the problem
>       will come--an unwieldy knowledge base attempting to glean
>       information from a medium that, IMHO, makes it difficult to learn.
>       Honestly, I've not read the work on hypertext learning (educators
>       have been writing about this for years).  I could be wrong.

There are many paradigms within the internet, the "Web" is just one of
those paradigms (the most glamorous).  Good-old news, e-mail, and chat
each provide new opportunities to not only hear an incredibly diverse
range of opinions and viewpoints, but also to contribute our little
tidbits of wisdom.  It's even possible to contribute and insight, idea, or
viewpoint that becomes national policy (or international treaty) the next
day.


>       For journalists?  If their role is to inform, it only gets
>       worse.  As it is, a remarkably high number of people know
>       relatively little about politics.  Many don't care.  

Actually, the internet becomes a bold new opportunity.  The internet
journalist need not go out to visit an interviewee, they only need to post
follow-ups and ask interesting questions.  For the "exclusive" they can
send an e-mail reply and hope for an exclusive response.

Can you imagine interviewing Bill Joy, Bill Gates, or even Bill Clinton
via the internet?

The advantage of the internet interview is that people can appear more
coherent, wise, and tactful than they might be in "Live" interactions,
because they can take the time to carefully think out their responses,
articulate their views, and actually respond to a thoughtfully worded
question.

In addition, you can get policy and direction from the actual policy
makers, rather than their "Face Men".  Lloyd Mints was a quiet man of few
words, with an "If you knew what I knew, you'd die" smile, and a way of
frustrating interviewers to no end.  He was one of the architects of the
Federal Reserve system and taught several of the subsequent chairmen of
the Reserve.  The press generally ignored him because he wasn't a good
"Image", even though he was extremely influential.  Can you imagine what
it might be like to be able to get his insights via a "web" interview?

Internet discussions in various newsgroups would have given you the
"Scoop" on the Unabomber, the Freemen, the Internet, the Web, or the even
the low-down on products such as Windows-NT, or Linux.  You can get
hundreds of human interest stories from the "Father's Manifesto" group.

>	The web
>       may increase participation among some, draw in others who
>       generally tune out, but two things must be there in order
>       for people to process information:  ability and motivation.
>       You must be motivated to seek out or pay attention, and
>       you must have the ability to make sense out of it all.

Everyone is interested in SOMETHING!  Too often the teacher in a classroom
is confronted with very intelligent children whose interests have
trancended the material covered in her classroom.  The traditional
classroom does not provide structures for allowing the gifted child to
pursue these interests.

I have known of several young men who learned to read because their
teachers brought Playboy or Forum to the remedial reading classroom.  They
went from 3rd grade to high school reading proficiency in less than 1
year.

I was lucky enough to be recognized as a gifted writer by an English
teacher.  She had several of my writings published in the school paper.
The following year I was on the Journalism team as a photographer and
editorial contributor.  I had the unusual ability to write articles that
move people into taking action.  For 25 years since then, I have written
articles that resulted in:
	Civil Rights for Students.
	Extended session/Split Session schooling.
	Narcotics Anonymous' Basic Text.
	Availability of the Internet to Non-Technical people.
	The migration of publishers onto the internet.
	The recognition of Father's rights in Dissolution of Marriage.
	The loosening of Encryption Standards.
	The increased acceptance of sexual diversity (Gay, TV, TS, Role Play).

Those who know me describe me as a cross between Robin Williams, Richard
Simmons, and Jim Curry.  Not exactly the guy you want to put on the 6:00
News to discuss the future of a paradise created by Technogeeks (which I
am in the inside :-).

>       I think elementary schools are on the wrong track by playing
>       up the Internet and computers in the schools.  We may pay
>       for it further down the road.

I was one of the pioneers in educational software, working for Accelerated
Schools (and it's spin-off Accelerated Systems) in 1980-1981.  We were a
private school and carefully monitored using standardized test results and
other review criteria.  Our promise to the parents was that they would
increase 2 grade-levels for each year they attended this school.

When I came to this organization, they had two Apple computers.  One was
for the accountant, the other was for letting the kids play "Video Games"
as a reward for meeting their classroom objectives (Read Winning Systems
by Carl Peterson for more information about the reward theory)

After completing a contract to customise the billing, I was commissioned
to procure and write educational software and procure computers.  Within
less than 12 months, we had over 85 computers ranging in price from $200
to $2000.  We found that there were an abundance of good programs which
kept the kids very interested.  In addition, they were permitted to do
classwork on computers as a reward for achievements in the core agenda.

Test scores shot off the charts.  On of the graduates went from a
predictible future of Colorado State Prison in Canyon City to the Air
Force Academy in Colorado Springs in less than 18 months.  We also let
them learn to program.  We had 7 year old kids writing their own video
games in BASIC.  One of them (about 12) started writing a "Lunar Lander"
game in FORTH.

Computers in the schools are neither good nor bad.  They represent one of
many opportunities to capture a child's interest in such a way that he
excels in ALL of his subjects.  The danger is when a motivation subject,
be it sports, theater, music, computers, or electronics, is allowed to
overwhelm the cirriculum to the detriment of the other subjects.


	Rex Ballard
	http://cnj.digex.net/~rballard



From rballard@cnj.digex.net Fri Jul  5 13:49:17 1996
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