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Home | Author | Volume I | Volume II | Volume III | Acknowledgements | Subject Index THE FUTURE OF HIGHER
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Return to Chapter 1.7 | Go to Chapter 1.9 Volume I - Chapter Eight(Last updated May 3, 2008) In Chinese following the bibliography GLOBAL VIRTUAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY
Perhaps an essential part of a global learning system to serve everyone on the planet, for its planning if not for its administration--designed for the `coming age of creativity' and a `scientific research oriented culture,--might be a consortium of research institutions that in time could involve into a global virtual research system that can do what otherwise might never be possible. The USA National Education Association http://www.nea.org/he has proposed a possible `quality driven’ model that looks forward to a time when consortia “finally link into a global system of education at the graduate level.” It would no longer be necessary for researchers to travel to another country because all research libraries and faculty expertise would be available anywhere via `Internet3.’ Research students would, however, “come together as communities to complete lab requirements” although their partners might be half way around the world. <http://www.educ.fc.ul.pt/cie/seminarios/universidade/pross.htm> Is it futile at this time to discuss the possible plans and structures for a global virtual research consortium that might change every ten years or so as it increasingly involved all kinds of government and private research institutions and organizations. MIT’s Technology Review interviewed the innovative head of DuPont on the future potential of research. He said that he could not remember a time when there was more potential for solving big problems. (See Vol. III. Also see: <http://www.col.org/virtualed/>) Duderstadt (2000) began his chapter on future research with a quotation from the Director of the National Science Foundation who has pointed out that research universities are crucial for dealing with the mammoth problems of our age. We devote Volume II here to an elaboration of that thesis and move beyond it to suggest that since difficult crises and problems lie ahead the research universities must begin to collaborate more effectively on a global scale; for example in the development of gaming and other new learning tools. Such a global research system could focus on big projects (see III and below) and on the training of major scientists, but its goal also should be to help every learner in the world to develop research competencies. This implies a partnership with primary and secondary schools--a way to develop interest in math and science--as well as with all university and government research. Because of the rapidly expanding `knowledge explosion it is becoming almost impossible for anyone to keep up with all data and knowledge in any one field of research, much less in all other related fields of study. It also increasingly require enlarged partnership among researchers and also with an educated public; for example, school children who gather water samples for national research or people in every local community who help keep an eye out for terrorists and other criminals. Such active involvement will help develop public support. In a sense a virtual global research system already begins to exist, consisting of all global-scale research projects that involve researcher partners in many countries. A goal of such a consortium could enlarge collaboration so that all pieces of research can come together into a larger, more holistic understanding of …everything? This thought raises another question: should not all students and learners—in our increasingly science oriented culture—be researchers? (Brown 2000) reported the surprising contribution that 15-year-old `consultants’ brought into a commercial research laboratory when invited to reflect on the laboratory of the future. Duderstadt (2002) pointed out that the “great burst of energy to form the intellectual topography of the university as we know it today” came with specialization. Now the next burst of energy might come with the transcending of specializations so as to deal holistically with problems that will involve many disciplines and kinds of research institutions in their solution. That holistic coordination of research may first be most possible in a virtual global research system. Earlier stages of research in agriculture, medicine, national defense and economic development tended to encourage narrow specialization and the forming of new academic disciplines. The result, Duderstadt said, has been a splintering of departments that are “largely made up of loose confederations in rarefied sub fields who have had more in common with peers at other universities than with campus colleagues.” One result has been bits and pieces of uncoordinated research in many of the social sciences, as more funding for the natural sciences widened a gap between them and the social sciences and humanities. As a result, the speed of change and the information glut now make it clear, he says, that there must be basic alterations in the discipline-focused culture and the structure of the university.’ Can we undertake experiments in cyberspace in areas where traditionally-structured universities are reluctant to make drastic changes? Dertouzos of MIT (Henderson 2001) foresees cyberspace merging with physical space and disappearing. <http://www.umuc.edu/ide/modltabl.html> The largest and most comprehensive research projects—the space program is an example—have to a great extent been made possible by government funding, and of course research funds also from foundations and university budgets. Can experimentation beyond the contemporary system be internationally financed in areas of global research need? Or as in the USA will it require partnership between universities, government, foundations and business corporations? Can science and politics ever deal, for example, with better solutions for global pollution (see McDonough 2002) without enlarging that partnership on a global scale? In cyberspace small teams of researchers—anywhere in the world—who are working in the same area to be more aware of what others are doing, and, where possible, can increasingly collaborate and divide up responsibilities as in the Human Genome Project. Duderstadt laments the `publish or perish’ and `competing for grants’ mentality that pushes individuals into working on small pet projects that are often not coordinated with any larger need. The real issue, however, is a shift in paradigms—in the character of partnerships between governments and universities--transforming “the character of the university itself and in the nature of scholarship itself.” There is, he says, a great confusion about the appropriate balance between basic and applied research, or perhaps better stated between curiosity-driven personal interests of investigators versus strategic research aimed at addressing national priorities.” We here move beyond Duderstadt by adding `badly needed global priorities.’ It is not clear how they can be addressed within the framework of the present system that gives the highest priority to grants for military and other government priorities that often are not the ones most needed globally. (See chapter list of Volume II) Peter Drucker has pointed out that “the great educational needs of tomorrow” are not yet on the research agenda of the major research universities. This is especially true of research areas that need to integrate many areas of knowledge. A National Research Council report (Berry 1997) examined ten then major forces of change resulting from emerging technologies, including the increasing capability for remote collaborative work. One illustration underway is the Alliance between the National University of Singapore, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Nanyang Technological University. In 1999 that alliance launched a highly-collaborative program which had planned by 2005 to develop and offer five interdisciplinary world class graduate engineering programs that would “form a new paradigm for distance collaboration in education, research and `technopreneurship.” (Cerny and Heines 2001) However, humanity needs more larger-scale research projects. For example, a press report on the USA “National Virtual Observatory” (NVO) reported that where the Internet brings the world online, the NVO plans “to put the universe on line.” Uniting astronomical databases of many earthbound and orbiting observatories and the latest technology, data storage and analysis techniques, its goal is “to maximize the potential for new scientific insights from the data by making them available in an accessible, seamlessly united form to professional researchers, amateur astronomers and students.” First, one of the planners reported, “science conducted theoretical models,” second conducted experiments. Now this project illustrates a third significant step forward: scientific exploration through computation methods as a way to cope with the tremendous volume of data that is doubling annually. The NVO was planned to build upon an earlier multi-disciplinary project, also funded by the National Science Foundation, developed to improve methods for “accessing and analyzing large volumes of scientific data.” If ways to distill information and insights from “floods of data” are not developed, one scientist said, “We will end up like shipwrecked sailors on a desert island, surrounded by salt water and unable to slake our thirst.” So the NVO will “do this work through a series of approaches and techniques …known as `grid’ computing (that) lets scientists in multiple institutions easily and rapidly share data and other problem-solving resources.” This NVO project was “inspired by the Digital Sky Project that made data from four different databases available through one seamless web portal. <http://www.npaci.edu/envision/v15.3/digitalsky.html> The NVO planned to seek simultaneously to analyze data from dozens of different databases that are organized differently. Data archives are to be built for the use of the “broad scientific community” to “produce new discovering many years after the data were originally gathered.” Rather than seeking to impose standards on databases, it is hoped that “competition among standards” will encourage further development of standards with links to similar initiatives in Europe and Asia. “Organizers are planning to keep the NVO `virtual’--not located at any one facility—and accessible enough for non-specialists like science teachers and students to use.” The NVO aims to “enable the public to explore directly the wealth of information from society’s investment in our national research facilities.” The NVO will therefore reach across a large community and therefore is likely to change this field of research, as it has been known. Next, we ask, can the `social universe’ of human society also be more holistically researched also? Can forthcoming technology and methods make research in the liberal arts more `scientific’ by inter-relating and cross indexing all databases—and enlarging the volume of case studies (see education research below) so as “to put the `social universe’ online too? By “maximizing the potential for new insights by making more comprehensive data available in an accessible seamlessly unified form to professional researchers, amateur scholars and students? Hitherto this has been impossible because of the vast amounts of data organized in so many different ways. Here too the total scattered information gathered is vast and can be expected to more than double each year. Box charts could be developed to show the interrelationships of many kinds of research, but that would not be the same as a simulation model and map of thee structure of a virtual research university itself. 1.8.0 MOTIVATION, VISION, TASKS Humanity's motivation to design a global virtual research coordination institution and network system for the next (creative) age global society may already be here as new and converging technologies shake up the institutions left over from the agricultural, industrial and knowledge information ages. Motivation may also come from the angry turbulence of our planet and in human society from crises, present and future, that threatens to destroy our planet and civilization. Even now, we cannot be content with institutional structures that permit ethic cleansing, terrorism, that allow hundreds of millions of children to be unnecessarily hungry and sick, that allow the heads of nations to rob their people of billions that should be used for schools and hospitals. We cannot let our current institutions--many still medieval and inadequately researched--fester until all of our children are endangered. Also how can we better cope with organized crime that infiltrates business corporations, government, police, the media and entertainment may require global scale simulations and research? Nor can ignorance of the facts no longer be an excuse in this information/communications age. The term mega-research is ambiguous. It can refer to `big science projects' like outer-space exploration. Shenk (1997) discussed the information glut's overload that is causing "stress, confusion and even ignorance." Too much information is leading to "paralysis by analysis." This causes some scholars to say--with reason McLeod points out--that to try to put all information in a model is the only way to find what fits, what is pertinent and what is missing. H.G. Wells over fifty years ago pointed to the wasteful duplication that results from a lack of coordination in research. What Wells proposed for data management may then have seemed like an unrealistic dream. Now we see it beginning to happen, although only first steps are taken toward what must be done in the next thirty years. Volume 3 here discusses a similarly unmanaged glut of the technologies which could and should make a great contribution to higher education and research. We here provide--by necessity--only a sketchy introduction to the issue of research technology convergence. In various combinations the new technologies can be used for global-scale map-making, design, simulation, creating the architecture for remodeling or redesigning what larger-scale research requires. Paul Kennedy (1993) said that the greatest test facing humanity is how to use the power of technology to find effective ways to free billions of people from starvation, ignorance, injustice and other crises. To ward off criticism that "what you propose is not possible with existing technology," we here ask how to plan how, in coming decades, to use technologies on the scale of orbiting space satellites for dealing with the human social universe. This book, not by or for technologists, questions the extent to which technology drives what happens rather than being shaped to do what humanity now most needs. Wildberger (1997) reported that computers, used for networking and simulations, now have the capacity "to activate the world." The Society for Computer Simulation International's Mission Earth activity focused on simulation as a tool "for use in monitoring a sustainable future for the planet. Scientists and scholars work on research that no one team can do alone.” Shaping adventurous science around problems such as environmental issues requires an extended peer community. Wildberger (1997) anticipated a global multidisciplinary research "natural disaster consortium," related to the mega-research global weather system. He also proposed a spin-off, "a natural disaster industry" which would include telecommunications, insurance, construction, utilities and the manufacture of monitoring devices for communities and families. Tens of thousands of scholars and scientists, scattered all over the world, are at work on bits and pieces of what can add up to some astonishing results as they seek planetary strategies to deal with world hunger, health and ecology. (2.8, 2.9, 2.10.) UNESCO (1995), and at the 1997 conference on the future of higher learning, insisted on international cooperation, based on partnership "and the collective search for quality and relevance," reporting that a dangerous research gap is causing developing nations to fall far behind in ways that can be tragic for humanity's future. Many scientists cannot, for example, afford scholarly journals that are essential if they are to keep up with their own fields of research. (In 2001 thousands of scientists have been rebelling against prohibitively expensive scholarly journals and have been discussing moving all new research papers online where they can be free of charge.) Attention must now be given to the development of global-scale research goals, priorities, values, and philosophy that can create an international research community that adequately incorporates the developing world. Academic freedom must be maintained in the balance between government, academia, volunteer and private educational organizations and business corporations, so that no one commercial or bureaucratic forces will dominate. This requires replacing cumbersome, bureaucratic institutions, such as government monopolies, with flexible networks. Most researchers are modest in their expectations. Yet, as banking, entertainment and politics are being transformed by information technology, something remarkable may also be happening in research. It may be three decades before we know what new shapes of research will emerge, but, whether we wish it or not, the blueprints for what is to be built in cyberspace are being drawn now. The 1997 UNESCO higher education conference noted the importance of advancing knowledge through research in science as well as the arts and humanities and the sharing of research results and of transdisciplinarity. The intellectual and cultural rights on the results of research should be used to the benefit of humanity and should be protected so that they cannot be abused.” Research must be enhanced in all disciplines, including the social and human sciences, education (including higher education), engineering, natural sciences, mathematics, informatics and the arts within the framework of national, regional and international research and development policies. This requires ethical standards, political impartiality, critical capacities and, at the same time, a better articulation with the problems of society and the world of work, basing long-term orientations on societal aims and needs, including respect for cultures and environmental protection.” The UNESCO conference proposed that higher education should reinforce its role of service to society, especially its activities aimed at eliminating poverty, intolerance, violence, illiteracy, hunger, environmental degradation and disease. A major difficulty in this book is how to write for those who have been too busy to keep up with the literature in every field of learning (all of us). Another problem is posed by the research needs of scholars in developing countries whose involvement is crucial for dealing with global crises. We cannot hope to please the experts in any field discussed here. Yet each expert is a novice in many fields other that her/his own. So these brief chapters intend only to ask questions about possible future research and to provoke discussion. We begin with the assumption that the planet’s most crucial crises are all inter-related and can best be coped with by dealing with all of these major problems together. (2.1) 1.8.1 A PROBLEM/RESEARCH-CENTERED VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY Needed is a new driving vision and design for a global virtual model that is research-focused with a vision of education to provide the skilled scientists--and citizen support-- who can enable the healing, feeding, teaching of the world; a vision of expertise to cope with the most difficult crises facing humanity; a vision of a global virtual university system which is focused on the solving of basic problem; a vision that can turn those eight social hurricanes (1.01.) into opportunities. Educators need to decide how academic and other research can and should be restructured to meet the needs of six (to ten?) billion people in an increasingly global society and then develop the technology that best serves these ends:
Supposing that it is true that much-larger scale, holistic research is needed to solve humanity’s most difficult problems, how then might a global virtual research system be structured for such tasks? And what structures—academic not buildings—might help improve the quality of research at all levels of education, primary, secondary, college, graduate school and life long education? Let’s propose these for discussion:
Educators, when they take a long-range view into the future, tend to agree now that we must move into an era of lifelong learning. In part this is true because of the rapid rate of change that is likely to accelerate even more in coming decades. We
note three dimensions. It is recognized that children with special talent (3.8.11) in music—and not only the child prodigy—should have opportunities to develop that talent. However, they also need a broad general education as well. So also children with special aptitudes for science should also have better opportunities to develop that talent, but all children should be encouraged to do research and get an aptitude for real research that can last a lifetime. This is an underused idea rather than a new one. Children have for decades now been cooperating with major `adult’ science research, gathering data, for example, by gathering water samples to test for acid rain. What is missing in most such projects is large-scale research system involvement in recognizing, encouraging and enlargement of such programs. The technology is in place now to do the unthinkable: to involve more and more primary and secondary age students in `adult’ learning and research communities. We will return to this topic here in Volume III, especially in relation to Jonassen (1999) on constructionist learning environments and Jonassen (2001) on mind tools to help children engage in critical, creative and complex thinking. 1.8.2 GLOBAL LEARNING AND RESEARCH COMMUNITIES How can we design, create, sustain and improve global “virtual learning communities’ that are research oriented and `research communities’ that are learning oriented? Jonassen (1996) reported research on using technology informing learning communities. These include discourse communities; communities of practice, knowledge-building communities and learning communities which tend to overlap and combine in various ways. Classrooms, however, have generally not been learning communities “because students are disconnected or are competing with one another” rather than working together to accomplish common tasks and goals. Rather than being places of enquiry many higher education classrooms also are still “requiring student to conform to prepackaged instructional requirements.” Yet they are taught to learn `what will be on the test’ rather than becoming partners in using technologies to explore, construct, experiment, evaluate, reflect and in other ways venture into the unknown to learn together. “The human brain is the only brain in the biosphere whose potential cannot be realized on its own,” Donald (2001) says. “It needs to become part of a network and our human networks—complex, fuzzy and multilayered—are radically different from our computers and their networks. We depend deeply on our communities and education depends on our learning communities Constructing learning communities, Jonassen (1999) points out, ‘is an emerging science, so the state of the art is changing rapidly. He has proposed `constructionist learning environments that are based on technologies that “afford students the tools to explore, experiment, construct, converse and reflect on what they are doing, so that they learn from their experiences.” Since environments are spaces, the global virtual research university must design and construct more than the virtual laboratories that now exist through telecommunications. How can every learner—whether on a campus or isolated at home can participate in `group exploration spaces.” For one thing, communities require personal acquaintance, and some faculty are surprised to discover that at the end of a term they still know very little about silent class members on the back row. On the other hand, distance educators are often discovering ways to become better educated with each class member since learners must present a great deal of information about themselves to the other member of the class. The same could be done in a face-to-class, of course, as each class member shares a web page of personal information about long-range goals and plans for this class. This technology-facilitated acquaintance of course, is but on way that new tools can help the process of creating community and powerful research environments. Community grows not only out of personal acquaintance, but more importantly out of shared work goals, experiments, discussion and other aspects of effective research teamwork. This takes for granted now available sophisticated communications for exchange of data and real-time collaboration—described in Volume II (2.3, 2.4., 2.5., 2.6) Donald (2001) pointed out that we find it easy to picture in our minds the collective work that went into the construction of the great pyramids or that built thousands of Model-T Ford cars. It is more difficult to picture the “invisible mental labors of generations of scholars, composers…and research institutes.” Today thousands of people are involved in “distributive cognitive systems “ Even if absolutely convinced that they are working totally on their own, they actually are nodes in a system, “especially those who are close to the heart of culture.” In research “the individual, on a good day, might render some small service to a vast system that has assembled knowledge networks…and is developing a global reach.” We elsewhere note the research potential of computer networking, the World Wide Web and whatever their successors may be, for `collective intelligence' (CI), the bringing of many minds from many countries together in cyberspace for creative thinking and collective imaginative. Ornstein (1990) worried that the human mental system is failing to understand our complex technological society. How can scattered efforts be brought together to produce a rapid change of mind; perhaps even the equivalent, in our human social universe, of the unified theory of everything that cosmologists seek in understanding the physical universe? The potential of networking for CI is illustrated by a conferencing that proceeded, facilitated and afterwards continued discussion on whether global poverty (2.12.1) might best be overcome by providing distance education to everyone in the world, (2.17.1) examining that process to see what might be learned. (http://www.globalknowledge.org) Possibilities for a virtual global research consortium are seen, we suggest, when Duderstadt points to the “speed of change itself (becoming) the central issue of intellectual life. Global teams are needed to cope with vast amounts of ever-changing data. Biology, Duderstadt pointed out, is becoming more dependent upon other fields, such as math, physics and chemistry, not to mention the serious ethical questions contemporary biology is raising. Furthermore, he says, as the interdisciplinary momentum (becomes) a fundamental and long-term restructuring of the nature of scholarly activity—knowledge becomes central to the global economy.” Narrow answers will not succeed in an increasingly complex, interdependent world.” So the scientists and other scholars who collaborate with others in quite distant fields and nations are “the potential seeds for a new and vibrant intellectual community” in the shift from `small think’ to `big think.’ This global-scale expansion of what Duderstadt proposes will be facilitated, he says, “when intelligent software agents roam far and wide, instantly and effortlessly extracting necessary details from networks containing the knowledge of the world.” It is essential to note that we are not speaking of an either/or here. University departments and disciplines will long be valued and continued. At the same time wider communities and entire new paradigms can be explored in collaborative global virtual space. It is clear to Duderstadt that the universities of the future “will be far more interconnected through a web of structures,” some virtual and some in traditional space.” Perhaps, he says, the most straightforward strategy will facilitate the creation…of alternative structures that are non-disciplinary in nature.” We suggest that these alternative research structures may first appear in virtual space. The most important part of any research takes place in human minds. How can partnership with technology empower the minds of researchers? How can such technology partnership empower research teams—whose members in many countries work together online and in cyberspace—and their `collective mind?’ (These questions need to be elaborated a bit in Volumes II and III.) “Everyone in my field," one distinguished social scientist said, “Is pushing a different theory, everyone is working with a different set of data. There is little talking with other researchers in our own field--much less in other disciplines--and "we seem to know more and more about less and less. Perhaps we need to know more about chaos theory!" Another also said "we are swamped by complexity and seem lost in a swamp of chaotic uncertainty."" Soon perhaps researchers will better be able to cope with it has science and engineering unite and new technologies converse. We earlier pointed to; <http://itri.loyola.edu/ConvergingTechnologies/Report/NBIC_pre_publication.pdf> Although many researchers may feel that they do their scholarly work and scientific thinking in isolation, they actually “ do (their) most important intellectual work as connected members of cultural networks. This gives (their) minds a corporate dimension that have largely been ignored until recently.” (Donald 2001) Banks and other corporate business structures distribute work over many minds that develop ideas, perceptions and agendas. They too “distribute their intellectual work over many minds” using symbolic devices such as computers. “Individual minds are thus integrated into a corporate process, in which individual minds play an indispensable role.” Connected individual minds are even more important. Language, Donald says, originates in cognitive communities “in the interconnected and distributed activity of many brains” and involves knowledge networks, feeling networks and memory networks, “all of which form the cognitive heart of culture.” 1.8.3. MINDS, RESEARCH AND CULTURE SExploring the implications of Donald’s (2001) description of how human minds develop in culture and are inseparable from culture, what could a global virtual research university do to facilitate, enlarge and improve the quality of `scientific culture’ as the context for professional researchers?’ Donald says that scientists have neglected enculturation. Cognitive science, he says, has studied `mind’ as if it is entirely within a single brain, seeing culture as relevant only as part of the environment. The `isolated mind model’ works well with animals but humans link with and profit from “a vast storehouse of knowledge and skill they have accumulated in our cultural memory across any millennia. Deep enculturation is quite distinct from the effect of the social environment… leading to the installation of totally new cognitive architectures, such as the neural wiring diagram that supports mathematical to musical literacy.” Our cultures invade us and set our agendas, Donald (2001) pointed out. And once we have assimilated and internalized the norms, habits and symbolic conventions of a culture we can never again be totally alone even if we are in solitary confinement. “Culture influences what moves us, what we look for and how we think for the rest of our lives.” Sure, he says, the creative spark still depends on the `individual conscious mind,’ “but creativity cannot be exploited or even defined, without a cultural context.” Geniuses travel within the cultural system and culture can confer great power on anyone “who plays the system.” Donald said of culture that across the centuries a complex web of habits, customs and beliefs have emerged…as also in science. “These are now unconscious…in cultures as in individuals” and automation has become “the other side of advanced consciousness.” The conscious mind is thus part of a larger fabric, much of which exists outside our grasp.” Nevertheless, he says, our minds “harness themselves to the tremendous organizing energy of culture.” But ironically our elaborate `cultural games are subjecting our brains to forces that are far beyond our control. If it is true as he suggests—“that we are a culturally bound species and live in a symbiosis with our collective creation; if it is true that we seek culture as birds seek air and that in return, culture shapes our minds—then shouldn’t the relation of minds and culture be central and crucial in the shaping of virtual university research structures?. “The nature and range of human conscious experience are no longer a biological given,” Donald has concluded. Rather they depend on a somewhat unpredictable chemistry of brain and culture “whereby the processes of mind can be endlessly rewritten and rearranged by cultural forces.” Can virtual higher education take culture and cultures more seriously, without neglecting the `individual-conscious-mind-in culture?’ 1.8.4. A GLOBAL CULTURE THAT IS SCIENTIFIC Or should the goal be to infuse an emerging global culture with an enlarged appreciation for science and especially to help every person participate in and value research as along-range goal? The walls between disciplines and professional schools seem firm and often almost impenetrable in the conventional residential university, often even in areas and on projects when it is essential that they work together. Perhaps in virtual space they can become more flexible, more transdisciplinary, so that the discovery, transmission and preserving of knowledge can be more holistic. ` Michael Dertouzos (1997) confessed that bringing opposites together has always intrigued him: “Faith and reason, Art and technology, Creativity and analysis. Humor and seriousness.” All of these, he said, are apparent contradictions “yet they harbor in their union a power greater than each part.” He mentions that because of his concern for the gulf between technologists and humanists. Surely, he reminds us, we need specialties but as it is, scholars are less and less able to do more than cooperate, to actively collaborate on more large-scale research projects as well as joint courses. He laments “that the world’s people, having drifted away from their wholeness in the pre-Enlightenment age” found comfort in successful science and increasing prosperity. But now “we have discovered, often painfully, that something is still missing.” As a result there is unrest with academia as it is. Yet, he says, it is a big mistake to blame technology. “That is like blaming the hammer you built for smashing your thumb. Or course it did but you wielded it.” And it also helped you do an important job! Many complaints about technology are really in part a longing to put together again many things that “the Enlightenment yanked apart.” And there is a real danger that ‘remote` and virtual’ information technology and its effects will greatly increase the unrest. Those who begin to see across the gulf between the humanities and technology, and of course Dertouzos began with himself, will see this split “as a further reduction of our ability to cope with the increasingly complex world around us.” Some researchers and decision-makers, as the crises grow worse. will “try to break the hammer.” Those who successfully move to a new course can begin by recognizing that the Enlightenment, including its current consequences, was “our historic process” through which humanity had to move. But now we must move ahead into a time when each discipline will no longer looks at a problem only through its own eyes and will not study its own isolated pieces of the problem only through its separate discipline. If, Dertouzos has said, we see that our world is “a huge ball of intertwined red and blue string” then sooner or later we must see that we can never understand it by focusing only one color. Humanities and technology are interwoven strands, and whether we realize it or not both humanities and technology are inside each of us and central to our existing culture and future. So “the big challenge before us...is the…unification of our technology with our humanity.” We will continue to need our specialties, he says. “For we need them to cope with the complexities around us.” Integrative thinking, however, must reshape the curricula of high school and college, with children adequately prepared for it “by childhood stories and toys.” And he points to the fact that the reshaping of information technology, so that it has a more human face can contribute significantly to the new collaboration between human values and purposes and our machines. Bailey (1996) has pointed out that the goal, now possible with new collaborative technologies, should be for students not to practice science as scientists do who are “still grounded in the sequential maths of the Industrial Age” but rather a collaborative science that can involve tens of thousands of computers and humans in large collaborative projects; for example in bringing together what may be learned about the world’s great river systems. Learners will be able to `listen’ to data they never had heard before, much as the first scientific scholars learned to listen. “The availability of new public data about our planet represents the Information Age’s first big `gold rush,” Bailey says. “ In mining the data and o sharing the evolving programs that explore it, today’s informational forty-niners may do more than find gold patterns.” The difficulties of `listening’ to the wider patterns of life,” Bailey has said, “are formidable. The Egyptians, for example, have been trying to do so from the dawn of history” so they could control floods. More recently, “while physical scientists were finding ways to predict successfully the behavior of planets…the patterns of the Nile valley remained a mystery.. .” Scientists need “computers to do more than listen to patterns of rainfall and subsequent flooding.” They must deal with an environment in which humans play a crucial role as well as satellite data about the Nile valley. “Organizations such as the Consortium for International Earth Science information Network <http://www.ciesin.org> have been established specifically to bring together “data on actions involving a human component, such as agriculture, industry, and population (with physical science data like ice levels and global temperatures.” (Quote from CIESIN) The current availability of such vast data, Bailey has said, “puts us at the same sort of historic threshold that the first Greek and Babylonian scientists successfully crossed.” So today’s students are entering equally exciting possibilities for exploration. “Given the new data riches available,” he says. “Our goal must be much higher: in Thoreau’s words, `to anticipate, not the sunrise and dawn merely, but…Nature herself;” a job for big science. (From the bottom-up.).. SYSTEM/PLANS; HOLISTIC, SOCIAL, POLITICALIt is too early to anticipate that a global virtual consortium of research universities will develop comprehensive, unified research plans for dealing with all human problems together. Perhaps, however, the slogan: Think globally, act locally can begin to replace present procedures which often seem Think sort of globally once in a while and act locally on occasion. Some gardeners do a beautiful job locally to plan and develop a specialized, beautiful and very productive garden even where soil and other factors are limiting. Now that the tools are at hand shouldn’t we develop a plan to treat the entire earth as a `natural global garden?' (as on research in volume 2.) The entire earth is photographed from space in such detail that a farmer can be advised where best to locate his pig pen and what crops to plant on different parcels of land, as seen in the CARES project at the University of Missouri (1.2) which can increasingly bring together all of the data relevant to one meter of land. A farmer can turn ever meter of his acres into a `specialized garden, beautiful and more productive.’ Farmers in a region can work together on a larger plan to preserve, enrich and beautify their acres. On learners learning to use and using satellite information, see <http://www.esri.com/esripress>. On the historical, cultures and civilizations context see <http://apolyton.net/>. Collaborative Research. For example, all the agricultural researchers in world’s universities and other research institutes could now network together with all other helpful disciplines needed for a “global ecology and agricultural research design.” It might take decades to inter-relate and harmonize all of the regional ecological simulations and photo data all over the world, but the results could perhaps save humanity from as yet unforeseen famines or other disasters. Interestingly enough, because of the Internet, the World Wide Web and other new technologies the effort need not be prohibitively expensive. It could make better use of existing research funds and programs by coordinating them as part of an emerging global-wide plan. All kinds or local information, collected and researched locally, could be interconnected so that bits and pieces of research--even river pollution data collected by school children--could become part of a master “global garden” plan. Many minds could come together to use collective intelligence to match what can be done on thousands of interconnected super-computers in developing a `global holistic global garden design with the goal of replacing polluted, most degrading and impoverished environments., transforming them into healthy places for children. For example, the major objective of a Global Garden Cities Plan would be to redesign cities for people rather than just for industry and transportation. So why not research on a great master plan for the planet (see Volume II)? A Virtual Research University simulation model should perhaps begin to map all of the world’s research organizations—and their online collaboration. <http://www7.nationalacademies.org/guirr/Impact_of_Info_Tech_for_the_Future_of_the_Res_Univ.html>Return to Chapter 1.7 | Go to Chapter 1.9 Bibliographical NotesS. et al. 1997. “Bits of Power: Issues in Access to Scientific Data.” Washington DC: National Academy Press. Brown, John Seely. 2000. “Growing Up Digital.” Change. March/April. Cerny, Melinda and Jesse Heines. 2001. “Across Twelve Time Zones.” T. H. E. Journal, February. Dertouzos, Michael. 1999. “The Future of Computing.” Scientific American, August. Donald, Merlin. 2001. A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness.. New York; W. W. Norton. Duderstadt, James J. 2000. A University for the 21st Century. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. (And <http://milproj.ummu.umich.edu>.Henderson, Carter. 2001. “How the Internet is Changing Our Loves.” Futurist, July. Jonassen, David. 1996.Computers in the Classroom. Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice Hall. Jonassen, David. 2000. Computers as Mindtools for Schools. Upper Saddle River NJ, Merrill/Prentice Hall.. Jonassen, David et al. 1999. Learning With Technology. Upper Saddle River, NJ, Merrill/Prentice Hall. Rhodes, Frank H. T. 2001. The Creation of the Future: The Role of the American University. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Shenk, David. 1997. Data Smog. San Francisco, HarperEdge. Wildberger, A. M. 1997. ‘AI and Simulation.” Simulation, July. 第八章 全球虚拟研究性大学随着全球化社会和空间时代的出现，人们已经迫切期望建立一个全球化学习系统，其最基本的规划和实施系统应该是由各研究机构围绕科学研究文化进行合作，逐渐演变而来的全球虚拟研究系统，该系统可以成就其他方式不可能企及的建树。美国国家教育协会提出一个可能的质量驱动模式推动教育联合体和全球研究生教育体系互为联网的时代的到来.)
在全球范围内，各高等教育机构之间团结一直形成伙伴关系的原则对于各个领域的教育和培训都是非常关键的。这有助于人们对全球问题的理解；有助于民主政府发挥作用；有助于人们解决问题；有助于来自不同文化，有不同价值关的人们生活在一起。 --联合或教科文组织（UNESCO 1997） 人们内心的本质想法就是希望能处理利用由文化集合所产生的巨大能量。这正如雕刻家雕塑泥土一样，文化也能“雕塑”我们的心智。 --多纳德（Merlin Donald） 现在任何个人或团队都不可能具备所有必须的知识、技术以及专业去解决复杂的研究问题。 --库姆罗夫Robb Krumloff
也许创建一个全球化的学习体系关键在于自己能有一个由各研究机构组合的共同体。这一共同体能及时地推进合理化的虚拟研究体系。这一体系并不是为政府行政机关服务的，而是为了空间时代space age 的到来以科学为基础的文化而设计的。全国教育联盟（the National Education Association）http://www.nea.org/he已经提出了一种质量推动模式(a possible quality driven model)。这一模式的目标是希望在将来能有一个公会团体把全球研究生层次的教育系统连接起来.这样一来,所有的研究型图书馆和教授专家等信息都可通过因特网进行查找,研究者就不必浪费时间往返于各国了.而且,即使研究生们的同伴在世界不同的地方，他们仍可以像在一个社区里那样一起完成实验要求。<http://www.educ.fc.ul.pt/cie/seminarios/universidade/pross.htm> 此时此刻我们讨论建立一个全球化的研究型虚拟机构的可行性是不是徒劳无功的呢?因为事物的变化是很快的，每十年就会有很大变化,或者很快就会有各政府,私人研究机构以组织参与进来。MIT Technology Review曾经就未来社会研究的可能形式采访了具有创新精神的DuPont领导。该领导就曾指出他不能明确指出什么时候需要解决多大的问题[he could not remember a time when there was more potential for solving big problems.] (参见 Vol. III.并参见: <http://www.col.org/virtualed/>) 杜德斯塔兹（Duderstadt 2000)在他关于讨论研究的文章开篇就引用了国家科学基金会会长的话[the Director of the National Science Foundation] 的话,会长指出在我们的这个时代研究型大学在解决”巨大”问题方面将起着到头等重要的作用.我们在第二卷里会详细地展开这一主题。他还进一步指出各种危机与困难已摆在面前时，研究型大学应该在全球范围内（例如网络游戏发展及新的学习工具的出现）更有效地展开合作。 这样一个全球性的研究体系可以关注许多大的项目问题（见下面卷3）,关注主要科学家与小学中学的合作伙伴关系的培训，以及所有大学及政府的研究。这是发展提升大学在数学及科学方面兴趣的途径。由于“知识爆炸”的快速蔓延，任何一个人都不可能了解其自身研究领域里的所有新的技术资料和信息，更不用说在其它相关研究领域里的信息了。这一趋势就不断地要求在研究所之间扩大合作能形成一个有素质的公众群体。例如：学生们能采集水标本形成全国性的研究，或是在不同社区的人们能够一起关注恐怖分子及犯罪分子，这样一种积极参与将有助于形成一种社会支持（public support）。 从某种意义而言，这种全球化的研究性虚拟系统已经产生。这一体系囊括了所有全球性的研究工程以及许多国家的研究者。建立这样一个共同体的目标在于它能够扩大各个研究领域的范围，使人们对研究项目有更广泛更全面的理解。但它这一想法又引出一个问题：当以文化为基奠的科学不断增长时，为什么我们的学生和学习者就不能都成为研究者呢？[Should not all students and learners in our increasingly science oriented culture be researchers?] (Brown曾在2000年就报导了由15岁的顾问们所做出的惊人贡献，当他们被邀请一起对未来实验室作出反思预见时他们提了“商业性的研究实验室”的设想。 杜德斯塔兹指出：正如我们所了解的，在这个能量爆炸的时代形成了大学里的地形志，专业分化也就随之产生了。[Duderstadt points out that Burst of energy to form the intellectual topography of the university as we know it today came with specialization] 现在我们跨过专业更全面的考虑与解决问题时将会产生新的能量与动力，并吸引更多的学科研究所的参与，这样一种全面整体的研究合作将会在全球化的虚拟研究系统中首先得以实现。较早阶段关于农业、医药，国防和经济发展方面的研究要求细化专业方向形成新的学科。但其结果正如杜德斯塔兹（Duderstadt）所说，各院所细化后由更多更专业领域研究组成使得合作更加松散，而且这样一来使得大学之间的相似性增加而不是在大学同事之间，这也导致了在社会科学领域出现了许许多多零星的不相合作的研究，在自然科学领域投入的大量资金也远了其与社会科学以及集体主义科学之间的关系，杜德斯塔兹（Dudrstat）指出快速的发展变化以及知识信息的供大于求要求我们要对只关注学科的文化与结构的大学有根本性的变革，我们能对那些不情愿作出彻底的传统结构大学在网络空间里进行实验变革吗？麻省理工的德尔图佐斯（Dertouzos）(Henderson 2001) 就曾预言网络空间与物理空间将融合并最终消失。<http://www.umuc.edu/ide/modltabl.html> 最广泛最复杂的研究工程--空间项目是在政府基金、合作研究基金及大学预算的支持下进行的。它将可能成为一个样本，被广泛采用。与当前的体系不同，我们考虑的是一种研究实验能否因其全球性研究的需要而得到各地的资金支持，或者如美国一样，这一研究实验能否取得各大学，政府、基金会以及团体的合作，例如，如果不在全球范围内扩大合作伙伴关系科学与政治能很好地解决全球污染问题是吗？（See Mcdonough2002）。在人类基因工程中（the Human Genome Project），世界各个地区的研究者们虽然从事相同的工作领域，但通过网络空间他们能赶上研究进程与前沿，如果有可能，他们还可以增加合作并重新分工。 杜德斯塔兹Duderstadt laments the publish or perish and competing for grants mentality that pushes individuals into working in small pet projects that are often not coordinated with any larger need.然而真正的问题是在政府与大学之间的合作特征上要有一种范式转变,我们应该改变对能否达到基础研究与应用的平衡这一问题的想法，更准确的说就是：在追求国家特权时，如何处理由研究者个人兴趣推动的研究与有计划的战略性研究之间的关系。We here move beyond Duderstadt by adding “badly needed global prioities”。目前并不清楚为什么军事等国家权利在目前现在的体制下得到这样高的重视,其实他们并不是最需要全球化的. 德拉克（Peter Drucker） 曾经指出,未来巨大的教育需求还没有成为主要研究型大学研究议程中。各研究领域很有必要综合各个领域的知识。在Berry 1997年提到National research council 的报告中就曾指出由于不断的涌现的科学技术而产生的十种社会推动力中就包括了增加远距离的合作能力。正在进行的新加坡国立大学、麻省理工学院和南洋技学院的合作便是一个很好的证明。该联盟于1999年创立了一个高度合作项目目标：在2005年时能发展并提供5门世界级多学科的研究生工程项目这将会教育研究以及technopreneurship领域提供远程合作的新范式. 然而人文科学需要的是更大范围的研究工程。曾有一则关于NAO National Virtual Observatory 的报道。报道中指出因特网能将连接世界连接，那么NVO就能将宇宙连接。各earthbound and orbiting 天文台、庞大的天文数据库、最新技术数据储存库以及各种分析技术,并将其完美地整合起来且让专家研究员,业余天文爱好者及学生的易于搜集。通过整合后的数据能最大程度的开发我们新的科学视角。其中一位计划者指出,科学研究首先可指导理论模式还可指导实验研究。这一工程还阐明了更具意义的奋斗目标:以通过计算方法进行的科学研究来应对每年成倍增长的惊人数据量。The NVO以National Science Foundation早期资助的多学科(multi-disciplinary)工程为基础,不断改进、获得并分析大容量科学数据的方法.一位科学曾经说过:如果在数据泛滥时代不改进行精炼提取信息和观点的方法我们将会像惨遭海难的船员，被遗弃在荒岛上一样被海水包围但又无能解渴。因此NVO将通过一系列的方法来进行这一项“grid computing”工程，以让在多样研究所里的科学家们快速简便地到数据及解决问题所需要材料。 NVO项目的提出是受到了Digital Sky Project的启发。<http://www.npaci.edu/envision/v15.3/digitalsky.html> Digital Sky Project以4个可进行的不同数据库中取得数据后整合到一个网站中。 与此同时NVO也打算分析几十类以不同方式组成的数据库里的数据，他们将建立数据档案带以更好地为广阔科学化社区服务（the use of the broad scientific community）数据在开始被整合后的几年里将会有新的的发现，NVO并不是要给数据套上各类标准框框，他们是期望通过这种标准间的竞争来推进欧洲及亚洲地区与其有相似发明的标准发展（Will encourage further development of stands with link to similar initiatives in Europe and Asia）。组织者将NVO虚拟化，使它不局限于一个（one facility）各种非专家型人员如教师和学生也能参与其中。NVO的目的在于增加公众以国家研究机构的社会投资中直接探究信息财富的能力（最后一句不够理解） 也许我们会接着问，“关于人类社会的社会宇宙”（social universe）也能够进行更整体的研究吗？即将到来的科技手段会使文科领域的研究更科学化吗？通过数据间的相互联系及指示，扩大案例研究的范畴（see education research below）能使“社会宇宙”在线连接吗？能否做出便于取用且以完美形式结合的综合数据帮助专业研究员、业余学习者及学生能最大限度地开发新视角的前能。迄今为止，由于大量数据以各种不同的方式结合，这些设想还不可能实现。Here too are the total scattered information gathered is vast and can be expected to more than double each year. 我们可以改进Box Charts 以展现各种研究间的联系。但这与虚拟化研究大学其本身的虚拟模型以及树状结构图是不相同的。
1.8.0研究动机、研究前景和研究使命随着全球化社会空间时代的出现，人们已经迫切期望建立一个由各研究机构与网络合作的全球化虚拟研究，因为新的整合技术促使农业、工业以及知识信息时代下的研究机构必须进行大的改组和改革。而各种现在正在产生或将来即将爆发的对我们的地球及人类文明的破坏和危机，会使社会上不断出现暴乱，这也是促使我们希望创建一个全球化虚拟研究的动因。即使是现在，我们对那些纵容种族灭绝的事件、恐怖事件、以及让成千上万的孩子无辜地得病的状况，以及某些国家领导侵吞千万人民上缴的本该用来修建学校和医院的钱财的不完善的法制度结构仍然感到束手无策。目前许多机构还很保守，没有充分地对上述现象进行研究。我们不能任其恶化直到我们的孩子陷入危机之中。那么，我们应如何更好地克服那些有组织的犯罪呢？现在，这些罪行已渗透到各种商业组织，政府警察，媒体以及娱乐等各方面，可能会需要全球规模的仿真研究。 在当今信息交流时代，没有足够信息和资料进行这方面的研究已经是站不住脚的理由。 对“超级研究（mega-research）”的定义还很模糊。它可以指空间项目那样的“大科学工程”。杉克（Shenk 1997）曾说过，大量信息已超出人们的负荷，已经使人们感到压力和困惑甚至变得无知。太多的信息反而会使人们变得“分析麻木”，正如麦克劳德（Mcleod）论证的那样。许多学者由此指出，我们应该努力建构一个可以容纳所有信息的模式，这是唯一的途径帮助人们去判断哪些信息是最相关最适宜的，还缺失了哪些信息。曾在50年前）韦尔斯（H.G. Wells）就指出由于研究中缺乏了合作会导致许多重复性工作的浪费，他提出的数据管理在当时看来是一个不切实际的梦想。但现在我们发现这个梦想已经能够实现。虽然现在只是万里长征的第一步，在接下来的30年里必定会最终实现。 在第三册中，我们也会讨论与之相类似的难以控制的技术爆炸情况，这将对我们的高等教育和研究做出巨大的贡献。在这里，我们很有必要对关于研究技术整合的问题作一个简要介绍。由于各种各样的相互联系，各种新技术可用来进行全球范围的地图绘制、设计、模拟实验或因更大范围研究的需要而对建筑进行重新设计与规划，肯尼迪（Paul Kennedy 1993）曾说过，人类目前面临的最大的挑战就是如何利用科学技术的力量寻求人类摆脱饥荒、无知、不公平及其它危机的最有效的方法。为了避免人们关于“你提出的设想仅依靠当前的技术是不可能实现 |