The impact of the telecommunications bill now in congress and new INTERNET
technology has put all educational enterprises pk-graduate schools in the
position of the pony express was in when the telegraph replaced their methods
of sending messages.
If your child can only get a 19th century education provided by your
local school system but they have to compete with children with 21st century
educations from around the world - is he not denied equal protection of
the law, is she not being materially, emotionally and socially damaged
(future earning and life chances) against their will by state action? Are
they not being hurt as much as black children were by segregated schools.
This material damage is caused only because of the local school boards
desire to protect their jobs and a backward technology.
The pony express
has become and institution with powerful unions and barbaric political
power fights like hell to stop the building of the telegraph. When will
you get mad and demand freedom of choice? (footnote on Dewey who remarked
that the basic system was in place by 1860 and has the management and social
structure of railroads)
The new communications deregulation bill will have
the greatest impact on education since the founding of public schools and
colleges. It offers universial competition for the first time, all markets
become open, there are no place for communist style monoplies left.
Edward B. Fiske, former educational editor of the New York Times wrote
the best book on the current problems in education I know about... "Smart
Schools, Smart Kids, Why do some schools work?" with assistance from
Ernest L. Boyer of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of teaching.
(1991, Touchstone Books, Simon & Schuster, Fiske Futures)
Edward B. Fiske argues in this book. . .
"the time for tinkering with the current system of public education
is over. After a decade of trying to make the system work better by such
means as more testing, higher salaries, and tighter curriculums, we must
now face up to the fact that anything short of fundamental structural change
is futile. . . . . American public schools grew up around an early industrial
model that has outlived its usefulness in education as well as in the industry
that created it.
The renewal of public education in this country requires
nothing less than a frontal assault on every aspect of schooling -- the
way we run districts, organize classrooms, use time, measure achievement,
assign students, relate schools to their surroundings, and hold people
accountable. Trying to get more learning out of the current system is like
trying to get the Pony Express to compete with the telegraph by breeding
faster ponies (Fiske, 1991, p. 14+15)."
What is the new antithesis which confronts the existing educational
structures. It seems to me to be almost exactly the conflict between the
old "industrial" order and the new communications revolution.
The new model is Encata on a broadband along with traditional cable services,
telephone, fax, networks, shopping, libraries, books, newspapers and magazines,
and new services not yet imagined.
The social political economic structure
will be as different as the agricultural village was from the industrial
city.
Everything is more internationalized, sky net services from Europe are
there, the BBC and Russian services; educational services offered in South
Africa, libraries in Rome, shops in Hong Kong.
Political loyalties and electoral systems no longer reflect the "community
of interest" so new forms arrive -
The greens as an international
party, the Libertarians, the political support for "free schools"
comes from corporations (Time- Warner, Media and communications, computer
interest, Microsoft, community schools for religious, ecological, political
motivations - special schools for music, art, science and technology, going
world wide.. paid for by new voucher plans and charter schools proposals.
The USS-was fell because of a lack of belief.
The reality and illusion
were just too far apart.
The bureaucrats could not change - the system
become it's own worse enemy. Technology played a part.
They just wanted
to fix the machine tool industry, computers and a few other high tech businesses.
"
They" (the industrial, military, scientific community) realized
they need more open system and "restructuring" to keep up in
the fast changing Global economy - even to build first class weapons. (Second
class weapons are not very useful in a first class war as Philip of Spain
found out).
Now is the time for the end of American Communist enterprises. Those
that are of the managers, by the bureaucrats, and for the administration.
I mean the PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM. Those on the INTERNET realize that it
is silly to have people come to a common spot (classroom) and be talked
at by a single source (teacher) in a one dimension manner. INTERACTIVE
means responsive to the individual - like NEWSWEEK - I want or need to
know about retain marking - give me those stories - I need to know more
about FADS - give me the history and the S&P reports. I want to buy
tires - tell me about what you have - in fact send me your offers - (QBC
HSN) A power shift from BROADCASTING to individuals - not only narrow-casting
but personal and interactive.
Dewey notes rapid progress of his times. Advances in industrialization,
transportation, and communication dictated need to adapt to a continuously
and quickly changing environment. Experience and thinking involve connection
of relationships. This connection is essential for reasoning to occur.
While all thinking results in knowledge, ultimately the value of knowledge
is subordinate to its use in thinking. For we live not in a settled and
finished world, but in one which is going on, and where our main task is
prospective, and where retrospect -- and all knowledge as distinct from
thought is retrospect -- is of value in the solidity, security and fertility
it affords our dealings with the future (Dewey, 1920, pp. 177+178).
The Public School system was set up when Railroads were the dominate
social institution. Dewey says that by 1855 they had all the common elements
they have today - school boards (elected by Teachers, the newspaper and
the local power structure - mostly real estate) superintendents, teacher
colleges, teacher http://www.wiredbrain.netdocuments
JOURNALs, textbooks, state set curriculum, tests (a great outbreak
after WWI) classrooms, rows of desks, age grades, everything except the
blackboard. (
They came in the 1890's).
They can not be reformed but need
shock economics of dealing with the free market of providers of Interactive
systems. It's only a question of
critical mass - enough systems offering a good enough service - I'm
told higher education on the services is growing 10% a month or more. Home
schools and small schools become great modern schools. College and schools
no longer have a state monopoly over certification. Anyone can take a class
anywhere.
*********************************************************** Peter E.
Pflaum Ph.D. GLOBAL_VILLAGE_SCHOOLHOUSE 225 Robinson Road, New Smyrna Beach
INTERACTIVE FL 32169-2176 (904) 428+7924
* home page services pflaupflaupflaupflaump@cfl.rr.com
Technology is going to make the world around us smart
as we move away from proprietary architectures to a standards-based
ecology of information.
We still need a name for the UCD: UNIVERSAL COMMUNICATION DEVICE
or "information - communications - appliance - utility-
network computer, cable or wireless black box modem ( or digital connection to replace the analog ), play station,
boom box, CD, DVD, telephone, wireless, cordless, portable, TV,
radio, pager, laptop, notebook, library, GPS, map, yellow pages,
combat walk and talk and call in air strikes more".
The market for the bandwidth and the appliances is
global - with billions of clients world wide.
The money is in software now moving from "programs" to
content.
The content will be interactive media that includes
program functions. ISP such as AOL, will provide multimedia E-mail
as a word processor that can handle graphics, photographs, soon
video and data files.
The browser becomes a universal systems
package do all the most common functions as plug-ins.
The USB
universal serial bus ties to printers, sound and video systems,
play stations, phones, keyboards and voice commands, other
appliances and services. Microsoft-NBC-General Electric, merge
into a convergence of media and communications services. Time-Warner,
the News Corp., Disney-ABC, are positioning themselves for the
transformation of many business into one.
The current crop of
Internet stocks are unlikely to be very important.
Other business includes finance, matching buyers and sellers, and
a thousand other ideas and items.
The ISP becomes a bank and
travel agent, department store, and service center. Wal-mart,
Sears and other may need their own ISP. Clients will pay the ISP
for telephone service, cable, lease of hardware, Internet, credit,
and may buy their insurance, tickets, or dishes from a company
they trust, so it all adds up.
A limited set of functions and libraries in or around a CPU, with
the capacities of a play station, will run a package of on demand
utilities called from the network. Once there is a break in the
bandwidth, your browser can quickly call down any packages it may
need - high speed smart updates means you don’t have to have
everything stored. Office systems can do this now but are afraid
to be pioneers with arrows in their backs. Once Sun, Oracle, IBM
or others really have high performance objective networks there
will be no need for the bloated windows operation systems.
The market often is as slow as the political process in facing
the inevitable forces of technology and social history. Cartels
and semi-monopolies are the natural outcome of free competition
because organizations can join together to control markets.
The robber barons of the late 19th and early 20th century, such
as Morgan, Carnegie, Mellon, Rockefeller, Stanford, Dupont
controlled steel and oil, railroads and chemicals. General Motors
president Alfred P. Sloan worked with the du Pont's to control
the auto market. A U.S. Court of Appeals finds that Aluminum Co.
of America (Alcoa) held a 90 percent monopoly in U.S. aluminum
ingot production before the war, a monopoly enjoyed by the
Mellons for more than half a century. See RCA (NBC - Victor )
below..
Sun's McNealy portrays perils of running the Wintel 'gauntlet' )
( Windows/intel )
Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems Inc., one could easily
draw the conclusion that most of the ills in the computer
industry stem from one company and one company only.
The charismatic McNealy used large portions of his keynote
address here Thursday at Sun's JavaOne developers conference, as
well as a subsequent press conference, to paint Microsoft Corp.
as a ruthless monopoly destroying companies and promoting a
flawed business model.
"
The market economy works until somebody gets so much market
power that they are beyond market principles," he said.
McNealy said Microsoft's monopoly on the desktop through the
Windows operating system enables it to sell "bloat"
like Office 2000 that people have to buy.
"
The other opportunity it has is to go out and buy little
companies that wouldn't normally be successful, bundle them into
their Windows or Office hairball and use their lock-in and
monopoly leverage to make them successful and drive everyone else
out of business," McNealy said. "That makes everybody
want to sell their company for a price lower than they want to
because if you're not the one bought, you're done."
One of the best examples of how new technologies can be dominated
by powerful forces that control standards was the companion
development of hardware ( Radios, phonographs, and then
television ) as well as soft ware, the programming, records and
content necessary to sell the product. People won’t buy
radios or TV if there are no stations, there can’t be
stations until people have radios or TVs. RCA supported the
networks in order to sell radios.
Then they made more from the
broadcasting then they did from hardware.
Sarnoff, David, 1891–1971, American radio and television
pioneer; b. Russia. He worked for the Marconi Wireless Co.,
winning recognition as the narrator of the Titanic disaster (1912).
After the Radio Corp. of America absorbed (1921) Marconi, Sarnoff
became general manager. As president (after 1930) and chairman of
the board (from 1947) of RCA, he played a major role in the
development of television.
A superheterodyne circuit developed by U.S. Army Signal Corps
major Edwin Howard Armstrong, 26, became the basic design for all
amplitude modulation (AM) radios. It greatly increases the
selectivity and sensitivity of radio receivers over a wide band
of frequencies (see 1906; FM, 1933). Radio Corp. of America (RCA)
was founded by Owen D. Young (see 1919) who loans Ernst
Alexanderson to RCA which will employ him as chief engineer for 5
years (see 1906). RCA acquired the Victor Co. and become a radio-phonograph
colossus but anti-trust court actions will separate RCA from GE (see
VICTROLA, 1906; NBC, 1926). David Sarnoff urges marketing of a
simple "radio music box."
The American Marconi Co. says
his plan will make the radio "a ‘household utility’
in the same sense as the piano or phonograph" (see 1912;
1920).
American radio and television pioneer who proposed the first
commercial radio receiver and in 1926 formed the National
Broadcasting Company.
The first vinylite phonograph record
appears in October. RCA-Victor issues a new recording of the 1895
Richard Strauss work Till Eulenspiegels Lustige Streiche, but
vinylite will not displace shellac until the perfection of long-playing
records (see 1948).
MSN now does the best search
