+ Page 53 + --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ####### ######## ######## ########### ### ### ## ### ## # ### # Interpersonal Computing and ### ### ## ### ## ### Technology: ### ### ## ### ### An Electronic Journal for ### ######## ### ### the 21st Century ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ## ### ISSN: 1064-4326 ### ### ### ## ### January, 1995 ####### ### ######## ### Volume 3, Number 1, pp. 53-66 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Published by the Center for Teaching and Technology, Academic Computer Center, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057 Additional support provided by the Center for Academic Computing, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802 This article is archived as JAMES IPCTV3N1 on LISTSERV@GUVM (LISTSERV@GUVM.GEORGETOWN.EDU) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT'S ONLINE IN ADELAIDE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA - V 8.0 Frank James Sacred Heart College Senior School, Adelaide, South Australia There are thousands of us on the IPCT list, each with access to telecommunications technology and to technologists in our fifty or more countries. We subscribe to "interpersonal" and we have "access". What can this "interactive" medium do for us? What if one sets out to explore? What's it like, being there, wherever 'there' is? In "cyberspace" or on the "information highway", what one hears sounds more and more like a super-market. What of family and friends and colleagues? Our IPCT discussion list is the 'sleeping giant' of the INTERNET, gradually becoming aware of global extent, but I expect this COMMS giant to waken fully only to the sound of children's conversations, just like the telephone network. On my screen are presented sixteen options, and not one is about sport or the weather. What makes conversations 'happen' where you are? I'm writing this essay as the sort of 'good read' that 'Global Geographic' magazine might give us one day, with colour graphics that you can 'click and drag' to enlarge pictures and maps and hear captions spoken. Hypertext might make links elsewhere, and references could locate and get resources or enable us to make reservations and bookings from the keyboard. Meanwhile, for you and me, at the keyboard, with swift online access to anywhere in the World via the INTERNET, what you experience is still affected by where you are. This became obvious to me when I set out to explore the online world of listservs in August. At first, everything seemed unusually quiet, as if the tide was out in the + Page 54 + information sea, but then the information arrived online with a rush! Who ever heard of three hundred kilobytes of email in one weekend? Here, August is just another month in the academic year and a favorite listserv might be most active only after midnight. I live in Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia [1]. From my home or from where I work, the INTERNET is a phone call away. It spans the World and leaps oceans. It overcomes the tyranny of distance. To visit the Australian National University (or ANU as one says here in OZ), I can point a gopher at info.anu.edu.au and I can read about ELISA, which is the Electronic Library Information Service at ANU. From the ANU, I can explore this rapidly evolving region in the online world. On my exploration, I set out using the PC that I got rebuilt for connection to the household telephone. In my family, all four adults use computers, and the workstation's nice chair and table might be in use at any hour of the day or night. Its hard disk coped well with abundance of email, and even seemed equal to INTERNET listserv email, but I soon learned that people in tertiary institutions all over this Asia-Pacific region like World-Wide-Web a lot, and I thought that I'd have to change my workstation. I don't object to obsolescence if things wear out before they're discarded, and I keep my green screen monitor in use for the same reason I like round headlights on automobiles - nostalgia. 'Technology awareness' was saying "change!", and I would if I had to, but not otherwise. Long ago, I learned "Never try to know better than the expert, get to know the expert better" - I needed 'information user' expertise. I had started out using gopher software which worked well with my PC. A reference to 'gopher jewels' took me to the Monash University gopher and Systems Librarian Sue Steele who was able to tell me that access to Lynx software would enable me to keep my familiar PC and greenscreen monitor. I was able to get access to Lynx through ACS-Link that Pegasus Networks put online for the Australian Computer Society at the end of 1994. Sue's advice just meant that I could have access to all that tertiary WWW information while keeping my familiar environment. Actually I learned later that it wasn't just nostalgia - Lynx and ASCII favour the vision-impaired. Do you use spectacles, too? I think of libraries and telecommunications as related sources of information skills and technology support. They offer the prospect of access to online interactive personal development education with global accreditation. We can hope that in the near future, using a computer on a network in a Library-resource Centre will give access to all the information skills and technology support needed to successfully update tertiary studies. A PC with a modem might enable home access to it. Learning in the information age is becoming what burning (or combustion as we often say) was in the industrial age, and we will come to value scholars who promote a love of learning in an accomplished learner who can call up learning experiences online. + Page 55 + Today in South Australia, the State library offers Bizline, a service that finds and gets INTERNET resources for people here. People here can learn about where you are, if you ask them to. South Australia is the driest state in the driest continent on Earth, and we study our environment from the air [2] to monitor water quality. We are trying to understand what the migrating birds overhead must live by. Where our forebears built pioneering railways and dug mines underground, now we consider the Glenelg electric tram 'historic'. Have you seen a very large strikingly coloured jet aeroplane flying overhead. There is a Jumbo jet that has travelled the globe, carrying the 'flying kangaroo' of the Australian national airline QANTAS. Its name is Wunala Dreaming, and the story of the flying kangaroo comes from Australian aboriginal culture."Wunala Dreaming" was designed by John and Ros Moriarty, who are principals of the Balaranji Design Studio in Adelaide [3]. West of me, whales swim up Gulf Saint Vincent, past the oil tankers riding at anchor. South along the coast, at Encounter Bay where there was once a whaling station, now people gather to photograph the wales. Matthew Flinders was captain of his sailing ship 'The Investigator' when he had the encounter (with the French explorer Baudin) for which Encounter Bay was named, and if I telnet to library.cc.flinders.edu.au I can logon as 'remote' to find out about whales [12] in the Investigator library at the Flinders University of South Australia. The mountains in the North of the State can be seen from ships in the gulf and are named the Flinders ranges. Baudin named Gulf Saint Vincent. Our IPCT 'sleeping giant' is, of course, no more asleep than these Southern Right Whales in my story. He's inactive while the noise of the age of industry abates, and the INTERNET develops, and the 'HERE BE DRAGONS' signs come down, and all the WWW enthusiasts have had time to read 'the emperor's new clothes.' Like the giant, the whales will take their time, especially as there's said to be a whale nursery out in the bight [2]. Which is not to deny that the Web has some excellent features, but from where I am, that's presently obscured in a lot of strutting and fretting anxiety about (video) display and (processor) power. The 'historic' tramline [4] runs from the centre of Adelaide to its beachside terminus, Glenelg. There are a number of conference and convention facilities at both ends of the tram line and elsewhere. From Glenelg, in 1994, a fast ferry service is proposed to carry tourists to the wildlife and wilderness of Kangaroo Island. Our clear skies, sunshine and scenery encourage movie-makers and painters. There's also a 'solar car challenge'. The scenery encourages artists like Sir Hans Heysen who painted many scenes in the Flinders ranges. A very early silent movie "The Sentimental Bloke" was based on a book by South Australian writer C. J. Denis. More recently, the + Page 56 + movie 'Storm Boy' was based on Colin Thiele's book and was filmed here. South Australian author Kit Denton wrote "The Breaker" which became the movie 'Breaker Morant' that starred Roger Woodward and was also photographed here. I'm working at a keyboard in a room of a fine stone mansion [5]. Paringa Hall was built in the last century, and is the administration building of Sacred Heart College Senior School now. Visitors are surprised to see computers in such a building. The fireplace is marble that came from Italy. Huon pine from Australia's island state, Tasmania, reminds me of the sailing ships that carried South Australian grain to Europe, and needed to be swift to make the extra trip in any season before ice in Europe's rivers ended the trade for that year. Now we do sail-training in a tall ship named "One and All" to learn what life used to teach every day. Australians have long known the importance of reliable long-distance communications. From another room in Paringa Hall, Marist Brother Joseph McAteer made pioneering radio broadcasts using the callsign 5AQ, seventy years ago, Australia looks large on a wall map of the World or on a globe, even when you look at Europe or America. Western Australia (nearer to Asia) is old, in terms of the age of rocks found on the surface of the Earth. Eastern Australia (nearer to the USA) is much younger in these terms. In the South, where I am, where the two are joined, are the Flinders ranges and near the Southern Ocean are the Adelaide Hills. [9] Seen on a big map, Gulf Saint Vincent is one of two gulfs with Kangaroo Island across its mouth, and Encounter Bay is nearby, on the Southern Ocean. Those whales referred to earlier are called Southern Right Wales. West of Kangaroo island is the Great Australian Bight. We've felt the impact of technology here. In the year 2000, the school holidays will shift because of the Sydney Olympics on television! Email enabled a grade ten class where I am working, to participate in the Dalai Lama's televised press conference in Sydney during his 1992 visit to Australia. Responding to our question, he spoke of a role of bringing together 'eastern' geography with 'western' culture. That started me planning to telecommunicate. If you get a World globe and locate cities like Perth, Adelaide and Sydney on a continent the size of Australia, you can see immediately why we Australians are so interested in this medium of interpersonal computing, which seems to us like a magic carpet. This is the era of Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC), so when I enter at the prompt Nexus>find apec, the Nexus computer promptly 'finds' in its 'countries' database, some fifteen APEC member countries including the USA, Canada and Australia, as well as Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. The next APEC meeting will be held in Osaka, Japan. A later APEC meeting may be held in Darwin, Australia. For me, this medium conjures up visions of magic carpets and teeming marketplace's. Doesn't that sound like APEC? + Page 57 + The working week here is close to that in Asia and the Pacific, but even if I was flying a magic carpet, time zone differences would matter, and they can be an impediment,just as language differences once were. In Australia, our national capital, Canberra is a day away from me by car, hours even by aeroplane, and always a different time zone. I was using the INTERNET gopher, so I subscribed to 'go-pher-it' to learn online and an early exercise had me in contact with the Asian Institute of Technology gopher at emailhost.ait.ac.th in Bangkok in Thailand, and where the time difference from Adelaide is four hours. If it's afternoon in Adelaide, it's earlier in Bangkok, perhaps morning. That would make it early morning in Europe and the USA is the other way across the dateline from Adelaide, so (on the calendar) it's yesterday evening there. Asia and the markets of the East don't seem so far from here. When my working day has started in winter in Adelaide at 08:56 in the morning, as I read my 'World Time' software, Hong Kong time is very different, just 08:26 when there's daylight saving there, and in Peking it's just 07:26, while across the dateline, in New York it's 19:26 yesterday evening if there's no daylight saving. Do I really know what time it is, if I'm clinging to that MDA monitor? Yes I do, but I'm exploring. Even Matthew Flinders explored in an old ship [7]. Nexus copes with an abundance of email well, and is really easy and reliable, so my email address, fjames@nexus.edu.au, is on this online Information Service of the South Australian Department of Education and Children's Services. Nexus is at their Angle Park Computing Centre. Among other services, like online newspapers, they offer access to the INTERNET. The 'Australian Associated Press' database on Nexus says (about the design on that airplane) "Wunala (kangaroo) Dreaming tells the story of journeys by spirit ancestors in the form of kangaroos across the Australian landscape." Nexus also gives access to the Presscom database of Newscorp, and many other databases and services. Nexus also has 'chat', and that's VERY important to me - it's about youngsters loving learning using computers. State Premier Dean Brown has a vision for Information Technology [6]; IT is important in Adelaide. Telecommunications technology got me the 'World Time' software that I used above (from the Adelaide oracle-PC bulletin board), and IT enables me to get online software support from Melbourne, which is 500 miles away, for custom business software. I dialup Nexus and there it is - the INTERNET, and if I want to know what the Newscorp newspapers say, I can dial-up Presscom or access it through Nexus. I dialled up Presscom to read (our Newscorp papers) about the SA State Premier, Dean Brown, and his "vision for South Australia and Information Technology"[6]. Onscreen with Presscom, one immediately sees a global trend - there with the (Adelaide) Advertiser and (neighbourhood) Messenger are the (Sydney) 'Australian', (London) Times, and (Hong Kong) 'South China Morning Post'. I think the message Mr. Brown would want me to get across is "It's all happening here in IT!". + Page 58 + This medium enables greater participation for disabled people, whether students, teachers or parents, in mainstream education. Here in Adelaide, the Disability Information Centre's bulletin board 'COMMON GROUND' is a source of software, information and encouragement for schools assisting people who have disabilities. Nexus brings the INTERNET's AskERIC service's assistance for their teachers. It also enables an institution to reach out to potential students in earlier stages of education. Students can arrive ready to make informed decisions based on experience of what's on offer and following interaction both with staff who might want them in their classes and with the students they might meet there. When young people make decisions about investing their time and intellectual capital the decision can be supported online like the 'home loan' ads they see on TV. Hundreds of miles nearer to Asia across Australia's 'Nullabor' plain from Adelaide is the capital city of Western Australia, Perth. There one finds Curtin University of Technology (by gopher, point at info.curtin.edu.au). Lecturing at Curtin's school of Information Systems is Heinz Dreher, who does distance education across vast distances, even by Australian standards. This medium enables a student in Antartica to submit papers. The address dreher_h@cc.curtin.edu.au finds him at Curtin Uni. At Curtin, Heinz was also my source of software and expertise in responding to the now-standard question "How do they cope with all that reading these days?" The HyperSACE Navigator was decision support software developed to support senior secondary students here (at SHCS) making decisions about their studies leading to the South Australian Certificate of Education (SACE). The objective was to minimise ammendments to enrolment subsequent to the decision. Heinz is the Australasian agent for the Hypershell (TM) software from Text Technology Ltd. in England. While I never trialled 'the Navigator' for wide distribution, because I didn't develop it up to the 'expert system' performance at which it could usefully support an experienced teacher/administrator, the exercise convinced me that telecommunications is an appropriate delivery system for such services, and vital in support of any trials/development/upgrade cycle when one wants to use software and expertise from interstate or overseas. How do you trial life-decision support software like the Navigator? Software trials are necessary, but error really isn't! I had hypertext software and lots of ideas for search and pattern-matching that Heinz supplied - and it HAD to be trialled and revised before students, teachers and parents could rely on it! One could hardly do software trials as part of actual life decision-making! Instead, I used 'heritage' material from Presscom. Here a newspaper online database really excells! I got abundant + Page 59 + material that was involving because it was topical, and I got an idea of how to present it to 'sell'. Then we could do trials for readability. Of course, one would want to negotiate copyright permission and payment the moment this material went off-campus or ceased to be on-campus trials software. Pointing a gopher at info.curtin.edu.au brings up Curtin University's gopher in Perth where the time zone is within hours of APEC member countries like Hong Kong and Indonesia and Malaysia. Curtin University, like the University of South Australia, is involved in group support computing where members of the group may be on different continents. Curtin University does group computing across oceans from Perth, and here in Adelaide, the University of South Australia has a facility called EpiCentre that was judged outstanding at the 1994 state COMTECH exhibition, winning the SA Information Technology installation of the year award. Epicentre is about the transfer of technology and will progressively encompass group decision processes, multimedia, and global public networking (from the ACS(SA) branch newsletter 'Leading Edge'). The IBM personal computer (PC) amazed us once. I thought that was a long time ago until mine started writing Japanese. These days my IBM-compatible 'clone' still gives valuable service as an email server, in which capacity its fourty megabyte hard disk is plenty. Its MDA green screen monitor is fine in gopherspace, although as World-Wide-Web grows in popularity, that clone's days seem numbered. It can still amaze me though, like when its business-like green screen suddenly filled and re-filled with Japanese characters. I couldn't read that, but Rich came to the rescue. Rich is Richard M. Pavonarius, and he is Kidlink Japan Coordinator at the Koga City Board of Education in Japan. His address there is richard@apic.or.jp and I learned that the KIDLINK listserv in North Dakota speaks more languages than I do. Richard might respond to your email about teaching languages other than English. Needing diversion, and to exercise some telecomms skills, I set out to explore the INTERNET. When William was tutoring it, and Cathy was studying it, our dinner table conversation was often about 'teaching critical thinking' and when I heard conversation about 'teaching critical thinking', I felt at home. I was, after all, on the IPCT List. Explorers bring back things. I wanted an ASCII copy of 'The Rime of the ancient Mariner' off the INTERNET. Watching the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Moonwalk on TV, I recalled someone, and it might have been Marshall McLuhan, quoting from 'Rime' "We were the first, who ever burst, into that silent sea" when the Astronauts were preparing to step out into the Sea of Tranquility.[8] And 'Rime' was indeed around, Project Gutenberg was working on it, and gave me a copy! + Page 60 + When I 'found' IPCT, I was looking for something like CEGSA (that is, like home because CEGSA stands for Computers in Education Group of South Australia). I was looking on the AskERIC 'Virtual Library' attracted by their idea of 'Human mediation'. I liked what I read IPCT stands for - Computing is 'Interpersonal' to me, and the Technology is there as it must be, but it's on the end of the line. I like that - people first! CEGSA delivers development experiences to teachers, and maybe we can get responses on 'the Highway'". Send email to Ingrid who knows about teaching and learning and computers and children and schools and ... . Ingrid's address is igaffney@nexus.edu.au and I'm recommending CEGSA to you because people who teach about email consult widely - they don't respond to abundance of email by waiting for it to go away! The school at Adelaide's 'Technology Park' is called 'the Technology school of the future'. So its 'neighbours' might include major players in the Information Technology scene in Adelaide like EDS, Motorola and Australis Media. Gawain Duncan is 'Coordinator of Information Technology' at the school, and his address is gduncan@nexus.edu.au or he's also on the OZ-E-MAIL service. At annual CEGSA Conferences, I've enjoyed listening to people who've published about CMC like Professor Jonathon Anderson, Dean of the faculty of Education of Flinders University. I remember reading what Jonathon wrote in 'The Edutel Book' about the telecommunications medium videotex and education. Videotex brought together television sets and computers operating at both ends of telephone lines. This was not narrowcasting, the television technology was for display purposes, not communications, but it was interactive and user friendly, and gave us experience of email and buying and selling online and it had colour (if 'chunky') graphics. Educators used it to deliver learning experiences, and Jonathon published about that, too, as I recall. Venues for conferences and conventions abound here and there is an annual 'round'. I certainly recall the 1992 state IT conference, which was held at the Whalers' Inn at Encounter Bay, because I needed the state's award winning airborne intensive care program of the Royal Adelaide Hospital [14] which regularly carries out 'retrievals' over vast distances, even over seas and as far as China. In 1991, for me, a network called ACCNet was the 'star' of a great conference. I'm still thinking about the keynote addresses of ACC91 MOSAIC. Held in conjuction with 'Shaping Organisations, Shaping Technology' of IFIP, ACC91 MOSAIC marked the silver jubillee of the Australian Computer Society (ACS). Telecommunications and networks help you make the most of conferences. They certainly assist organisers and presenters but the major potential impact is on what conferees can get out of attendance. There was dialup access to ACCNet that supported the ACC91 MOSAIC Conference which was held at the Adelaide Convention Centre on 8-9 October, ACCNet was a multi-vendor network, from which conference delegates could retrieve information + Page 61 + and get many services, including conference programme infomation, colour photogaphic quality images of fellow conferees, a 'Tour of Adelaide', and access to AARNET and INTERNET email. The Defence Information Technology industry here builds (among other things) submarines and over the horizon radar. Southern hemisphere and Northern hemisphere systems differ, it seems. An Australian project with a large IT component is the Jindalee Over-the-horizon Radar Network (JORN). The meaning of 'Jindalee' is complex, but I think JORN might be to radar rather as 'stealth' is to bombers - JORN enables you to watch over-the-horizon, while JORN itself on the ground, is spread out and difficult to identify. I enjoyed a sort of 'virtual reality' television presentation involving a yet-to-be-seen starship Enterprise done jointly by Apple computers and the Submarine Corporation at the most recent conference. I was impressed, but I don't think they gave away any secrets. My own IT conference interests always include (employment) opportunities in the developing IT field for young South Australians. I guess it's not that different where you are. Life gets more complex, and Interpersonal communication skills developed at work get more and more use in everyday life. Increasingly, people come together in telecommunicating groups to make decisions and prognoses that each member of the group must 'own.' Developments in medical science and a global interest in healthy living produce communication challenges, just as concern about airline saftey does. Remote sensing technology uses invisible rays and computer assistance to produce onscreen 'pictures of things that aren't there', but it finds resources and validates strategies that enable us to manage conditions that have been mysterious and until now, spoken of in whispers. Management strategies of 'early detection followed by prompt intervention' require communication about models and constructs. In families also, communication become more challenging. Global consciousness involves communicating about the abstractions of models and constructs, and as concerns about concepts like safety become ever more widespread, we are talking about abstract concepts at an early age, and quality of life depends on applying what's learned. Everywhere, communication gets more difficult across generations, and when this communication breaks down, how do we notice that? We lament the passing of indigenous cultures, but today in our cities, how many people cannot speak the language of their grandparents - and how many wouldn't know what it was? If that's a problem, have computers and communication a part to play in a response? Our concept of 'proof' changes as we apply concepts of statistical variation to the scientific method and the word 'cure' becomes difficult to use in reliable communication. More and better communication is needed between those who must respond to what's produced by computers (not least those 'pictures of things that aren't + Page 62 + there'). Does the computer really have the power to make these abstract concepts concrete? Application of artificial intelligence and expert systems will make reliable interpersonal communication of abstractions more essential and more challenging. Once, saying "Smoking causes lung cancer" in a staff meeting, would bring a caution "You can't prove that!", from a colleague trying to save me from, being sued. Indeed I couldn't prove it 'beyond a reasonable doubt', which I think is the criminal law standard of proof. These days, people have heard a lot about 'passive smoking' and 'civil law' actions go on a different idea of proof (it is something more like 'on the balance of probabilities), and if one says in a staff meeting "Smoking causes lung cancer." there is little likelihood of contradiction. Some things must change, and here in Australia, there was a time, not that long ago, when 'bronzed' was held to be a good thing for an Aussie to be. Changing ideas about, for instance, exposure to the Sun's rays and skin damage meant changes in the culture that we want to transmit from one generation to the next and provides challenges in the techniques of interpersonal communications. In our culture, there is a lot to lose by getting this one wrong! More and more people want a sustainable expectation that family members can stay in full-time education well past the age at which they would once have left school, past indeed tha age at which they would once have left home. This calls for learning, for an educated citizenry. Now that grand daughter learns abstractions about 'healthy living' in pre-school, communication with her becomes more challenging for grandma. One sees maturity in this medium in widening access as 'entry level' comes to mean 'age three to age eighty six' rather than '386 minimum' and acceptable standards refers to getting reliable gale warnings rather than video display parameters. Doesn't this mean we are reaching the end of the steep part of the learning curve, and the end of the 'happy days'? Wider access means new people who bring their enthusiasms with them. It doesn't mean converts who must learn a hobbyist approach to learning using computers. As more and more people get access to the INTERNET, we witness an 'information explosion' about quilting and cooking. This is about basic human needs, not mysteries or myths. I doubt that 'virtual food' will be much praised, and people my age want to have the telling of the tale of the Emporer's virtual clothes. The INTERNET might yet become a good safe place for kids! Today's students at all levels of education must read to make choices in a broadened range of subjects and options. Years ago, students left school singing "no more teachers, no more books!" The HyperSPACE Navigator was to be curriculum decision support software. 'The Navigator' was a response to a situation in which people, not + Page 63 + only students, need all the support they can get when making decisions that involve strategies for information management. It was becoming apparent that there had been very little done in this field (I'm not aware of anything other than Heinz Dreher's MBA Course Outline software at Curtin) when a 'bleed' while I was attending the 1992 state Information Technology Conference at Victor Harbour stopped me doing further work on it and also gave me cause to benefit from the State's award-winning airborne retrieval service, but I have no useful recollection of the trip so I must refer you to that newspaper item. Archie and Veronica were names from the past that I thought I heard in connection with the INTERNET, but Archie and Veronica had been in COMICS! Then I heard "Jughead." There could be NO mistake! I notice the list RALLY-L along with IPCT-L and IPCT-J at Georgetown University. Shades of my undergraduate youth! I suspect that I, and other IPCT listers, got a glimpse into a future of teenagers using automobiles to get mobile. I saw liberation in this access to technology and to technologists: Others, like teachers and parents found the vision threatening. Perhaps youngsters 'chatting' now, affects you and me like the thought of us reading comics affected an earlier generration. Now that K-12 school is 'normal', one can no longer assume students arrive at higher education 'competition ready'. Their experience of school will largely be of membership in one of a 'normal distribution' cohort, that progresses year by year and hardly anyone 'fails', not of having a place in the pecking order of a competitive group (poisson distribution) which, once it separates itself from the majority of students is clearly meant for higher achievement and becomes increasiongly aware of a capacity for success and a taste for competition. Members of the group that is headed for University no longer know it. It is said of sail training that it teaches what can no longer be learned in everyday life. The example I've heard quoted is "A flapping sail might sink the ship, and you might be asked to risk losing your life without quibble so that others will live". Such a lesson about the importance of sometimes being prompt in obedience when working in groups seems unlikely to be learned in daily life now. Might there bean equivalent for scholarly values in future? Perhaps global chatting about the weather and other mundane and not-so-mundane topics can support the development of communication skills for everyday living that will be needed in our technologically advanced, globally oriented future. Perhaps by using this medium we can learn about responding to the challenges of abundant information that we once saw in terms of opimising the use of scarce resources. I foresee a future when any telephone can have a keyboard and a screen with graphic images good enough to support conference calls about satellite monitoring of water quality or group decisions about surgical procedures. Even then, more 'traffic' will be generated by the kids on the line 'conferring' ten times a week about who'll be + Page 64 + where with whom on Saturday while practicising manipulating the talking heads of their peer group onscreen with the mouse. Mind you, it'll be great for undergraduates preparing tutorial group presentations, and researchers viewing post script (.EPS) files before publishing papers. Here I am, like you, sitting on a curb where an information highway passes, trying to teach road manners by example, but weren't we learning to swim in the information sea a little while ago? - I guess that's the communications revolution - the metaphors keep changing and can't be relied on, and one is always hearing about convergence of solecisms and oxymorons. Personally, I'm less than comfortable with the 'sleeping giant' metaphor - I'm not asleep, and I don't think you are. Well, it's a sunny holiday in Adelaide, shall I go to the beach now, and watch [10] as the whales come closer to the foreshore, or shall I log on to Nexus first to see what IPCT listers [11] are posting? Here the predators in the Gulf need measures to ensure their survival [13], and the whales know the water's fine for swimming. I think that scholars should be 'in the swim' in telecommunications, too. p.s. about communications revolution, I expect the word 'internet' to become an adjective soon, as part of its rehabilitation, and in preparation for the word being used to describe a part of mainstream human communication. ************************************************************ References: retrieved from Presscom unless otherwise stated [1] Innes, Stuart The Advertiser, 30 Sep 94, page 5, news item headed "SA strategy set to sell eco-tourism to the world", Presscom [2] Griggs, Tim, Business Australian, THE INNOVATORS COLUMN, page 24, 06 Dec 93, headed "Key to underground treasure up In the air", retrieved from Presscom [3] Mail, 04 Sep 94, page 13, news item headed, "Aboriginal livery a `beacon for reconciliation' Art takes to skies", Presscom [4] The Advertiser, metro, 15 Dec 1994, page 17, news item, by Carol Altmann headed "65 years on, the trams are still on track", Presscom [5] Messenger, 06 Dec 89, page 14 news item headed, "Mansion a reminder of wealthy pioneers", , Presscom [6] Colin James and David Pemberthy, The Advertiser, 06 October 1994, Presscom, a page one news item headed "Asian boom for SA: Adelaide to plug into high-tech 'highway", Presscom + Page 65 + [7] Baker, Sidney J., My own Destroyer, a hiography of Matthew Flinders, 1962, Currawong, [8] Coleridge, S. T., Rime of the Ancient Mariner,(1889) ESTES AND LAURIAT. [9] 'RESTLESS EARTH' series of 16mm Colour Movies, 1972-3 United States [10] The Advertiser, 16 Sep 94, metro, page 7, news item, by Leanne Weir, Headed "Breaching, tail lobbing, pectoral fin slapping and body rolling . . . a wallowing whale weaves its way north A mighty display of the right stuff" [11] Berge. Z. L. 'Letter from the Publisher' IPCT Journal Volume 2 Number 4 October 1994, archived CONTENTS IPCTV2N4 on LISTSERV@GUVM [12] Judd, Mark. ... [et al.], A Guide to whales and whale watching in South Australia, [Adelaide, S. Aust.] : South Australian Museum, c1992, ISBN 0730819949 [13] 23 Dec 94, The Advertiser, metro ed, page 1, news item, by David Penberthy ,headed "Anglers face ban on great white sharks [14] 30 May 94, Advertiser, metro, page 7, news item by Leanne Weir headed `Teamwork' brings top health award Presscom is an electronic Newspaper database online in South Australia that I can subscribe to and dial up direct or access online through Nexus. Presscom newspapers range from the neighbourhood 'Messenger', Adelaide 'Advertiser' and (Sydney) 'Australian' to the (Hong Kong) 'South China Morning Post' and (London) 'Times' Nexus is the eleectronic information service of the South Australian Department of Children's services and Education --------------------------------------------------------------------------- BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH I had worked with computers and telecommunications in the 60s when I started working at Sacred Heart College Senior School at Somerton Park, a suburb of Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia, within walking distance of the beach. In the thirty years since, I have taught mainly Maths, Science and Religious Education, and have been involved extensively in professional development and curriculum development activities and in developing educational technology at the College. I have a special interest in using computers to telecommunicate, because following a series of strokes starting in 1976, I can read my green screeen PC monitor much more readily than I can read print. + Page 66 + --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Copyright Statement --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Interpersonal Computing and Technology: An Electronic Journal for the 21st Century Copyright 1995 Georgetown University. Copyright of individual articles in this publication is retained by the individual authors. Copyright of the compilation as a whole is held by Georgetown University. It is asked that any republication of this article state that the article was first published in IPCT-J. Contributions to IPCT-J can be submitted by electronic mail in APA style to: Gerald Phillips, Editor IPCT-J GMP3@PSUVM.PSU.EDU