In the previous section, I sketched some broad categories of scholarly practice. In this section, I lay out a few principles to guide the design of computer environments which might support and augment such practice.
III.A. Augment only where technology does what cannot be done using traditional media (paper, plastic...).
Consequently, we must aim to integrate electronic with physical media such as books and slides and artifacts. For example, from this hybrid perspective, online bibliographies take on a new role as a boundary layer, or interface, between fast-growing digital archives and the far more extensive analog world. They constitute a ready-made sense-making[23] facility.
III.B. Preserve the intellectual content of the scholar's work over all changes in technology. This means, for example, that we must expand the notion of preservation to include responsibilities such as data conversion as standards change, and software frameworks mutate.
III.C. Raze the wall between "research-ware" and "learning-ware."
Scholars are both creators and absorbers of knowledge. Scholars may be novices in some contexts and experts in others. Students are scholars, too, in less experienced or perhaps more transient stages.
Whenever possible, we should demand powerful, programmable environments which can be masked to present appropriately simplified interfaces to users. This way, students can learn to use the same tools that experts in their chosen professions may use.[24]
Much software which is called courseware deserves to be retired, but perhaps for the same reason any complex but non-repurposable software would be retired. Certainly software which merely recreate programmed workbooks ("page-turners") can be considered a waste of money and skill. (Qv. V.F.3.) Put more charitably, such authoring may be relegated to commercial publishers who are interested in replicating paper workbooks.
III.D. Lower the walls between disciplinary tools, so that scholars will be free to choose from the entire span of computer technologies, should they be prepared and disposed to do so.
III.E. Design for the scholars and scholarly practices
In participatory design, there typically is a learning/design spiral, starting with interviews and observations of faculty and students.[25] The designers then decide how to synthesize environments which augment, or amplify practices in academic domains as appropriate. (See V.B below for remarks on how scholars' own practices might evolve as they grow familiar the topography of software. and learn what is easy, what is difficult, what is feasible and enriching.)
Technologists are beginning to recognize a need for more seamlessly integrated environments. Andreas Paepcke recently gave a talk on the necessity of surveying user practices. His conclusion, unsurprisingly, was that much more integrated tools (workspaces) were needed in the business office. The same desideratum informs our discussion of scholarly spaces. However, workspaces designed for one community, even if they share some basic tools like word processors and communications applications, need not suit another. We expect academic cyberspaces to support different processes than, say a bank office or hospital.
III.F. Adapt scholar-spaces to the peculiar habits of the individual scholar.
Following in the spirit of ubiquitous computing and personal information design, we will enrich the scholar's environment rather than expect to contain all scholarly activities in a single box. While individual productivity tools -- word processors, multimedia mail applications, presentation applications -- may be obtained from commercial vendors, we do not expect scholarly workspaces to appear ready-made from commercial sources, simply because scholarly habits do not match the workflow practices of a business office.
These principles:
- Augment only where technology does what cannot be done using traditional media,
- Preserve the intellectual content of the scholar's work over all changes in technology,
- Raze the wall between "research-ware" and "learning-ware,"
- Lower the walls between disciplinary tools,
- Design for the scholars and scholarly practices,
- Adapt scholar-spaces to the peculiar habits of the individual scholar
place consequent requirements on the technological and organizational infrastructures, which are the subject of the next two sections.
[23] cite: (look up CS PCD seminar abstract from 1993-1994, on sense-making.) I prefer "sense-making" to "finding aid" because of its greater generality and because it captures better how we might use information tools.
[24] A very practical consequence is that academic software developers can work on capability masks, templates and rich structured media composition tools, which tend to be more useful than software or hardware that's bound to one syllabus. Textbooks written in Mathematica can be viewed as an extremely sophisticated examples of such "software narrative."
[25] Of course, there is no real beginning to this spiral. See, for example Derrida's examination of Condillac's "origin of writing" in the section on writing and telecommunication inSignature, Event Context.