Computing and computer networking will bring about changes in society much more far-reaching than those brought by the Industrial Revolution, and the university will have to change to keep up. That's the opinion of many members of the university's new Computing and Information Sciences Task Force.
The job of the task force, created by President Hunter Rawlings and Provost Don Randel last month, is to recommend what those changes should be. Its first report is due June 1. A second report, reflecting campus reaction to the first, is due in November.
Task force members include: Robert Richardson, vice provost for research; Polley Ann McClure, vice president for information technologies; Sarah Thomas, university librarian; Robert Constable, chair of the Department of Computer Science; Thomas Coleman, director of the Theory Center; Dan Huttenlocher, professor of computer science; John Abowd, professor of labor economics; Tim Murray, professor of English; Saul Teukolsky, professor of physics; Kerry Cook, associate professor of soil, crop and atmospheric sciences; Geri Gay, associate professor of communication; and Marcia Lyons, visiting assistant professor of digital fine arts.
"... Cornell must ensure that it is intellectually and organizationally prepared to remain a leader in the 'strategic enabling disciplines' that make up the computing and information sciences," reads a portion of the task force's charge. But the group is focusing more on the ideas arising out of the technology than on the technology itself, members say.
"Information technology is as profound a change as the car, the telephone and the TV rolled into one," said Lyons, director of www.mediartspace.cornell.edu, a virtual gallery space for students, who believes the structure of the university will have to change in response to this new culture.
"We're trying to make a distinction between the use of computers as tools versus the use of the ideas that are arising out of this computing and information revolution," said Huttenlocher, who chairs the task force. "How are those ideas affecting various disciplines?"
He cites the arts as an example, pointing out that some visual artists have begun using digital media, while writers are using hypertext. "A lot of these ideas we don't understand," he pointed out. "Computing people don't understand what they could be contributing, and arts people shy away. How do we construct an environment in the university that supports and encourages these extremely cross-discipline interactions?"
"We've had a hierarchical structure, from the top down, but what we're doing is kind of leveling the playing field by bumping into each other [in cyberspace]," Lyons suggested. She thinks it likely that different colleges and departments will develop different organizational structures to suit their needs but, ideally, will interact in what she calls "a harmony of spheres."
But she quickly returns to the technology: "Access is the key. It won't happen if we don't have the technical substructure to support these changes."
There will be an expanding number of courses in the application of technology to the arts, said Murray, who is acting director of the university's Society for the Humanities. He already teaches a course in electronic art and will lead a freshman seminar called Critical Surfing, Art and Culture on the World Wide Web in the fall.
"There will be new pedagogy demands placed by undergraduates who come expecting to receive courses not only on computing but digital culture, digital arts and various applications in the disciplines they want to study," Murray said. "I compare the new possibilities and uncertainties we face to what took place in the age of the newly printed book."
In the social sciences there's a need for new technological resources, according to Abowd, who is associate director of the Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research (CISER). "We have always exposed our students to computing technology," he said, "primarily as a tool for doing research and less as a tool for learning the subject; but [making it a part of their other studies] is not a fundamental change."
What the social scientists need, Abowd said, is more technical support to handle large-scale computing problems, such as the analysis of huge databases, like the publicly available data from the 1990 census.
"The kinds of information technologies that are used by social scientists at some of our competitor universities are much more powerful but are things that our physical scientists have no trouble thinking about here at Cornell," he said. "Just to get a project up and running on the Theory Center's machine requires some experience in that environment, and there is no exposure to that in the training of our grad students and researchers. You can't build large-scale computing capacity in a new area without a serious commitment to support it with professionals."
Although the arts and social sciences are getting a lot of attention, Huttenlocher points out that the physical sciences and engineering are still increasingly making use of computational models and ideas. The university's great strengths in those areas give it a head start in applying the new technologies, he believes. In particular, he said, "The Theory Center is a unique resource, a very talented group of people working closely with a number of faculty." But he noted that it is solely a research facility, with no graduate or undergraduate educational component.
Huttenlocher also echoes the idea of student pressure driving change, noting that, "More and more students show up understanding computers, in fact often better than most of the faculty." Some students, he reports, are not even having telephones installed in their off-campus residences, connecting to the Internet via cable modems and using e-mail for all their communications -- even dating.
But he cautions that this doesn't necessarily mean they know all they need to know. "We also assume they understand writing, but they don't, especially at the university level," he pointed out. "There is a large and relatively unfulfilled need for an educational program of this sort, and it has to be integrated with their field."
All this could add up to changes in curriculum and organizational structure of the university, as well as the creation of new programs, according to Randel. "It's increasingly clear that computing and information sciences will affect every discipline in which the university is engaged, and it's important that we understand what the implications are and how we can bring these developments to bear in these disciplines," he said.
Here are the questions the task force is charged to address:
The new task force, Randel explained, grew out of the work two years ago of a task force on the future of research in science and engineering chaired by John Hopcroft, dean of the College of Engineering, and Norman Scott, professor of agricultural and biological engineering and then-vice president for research and advanced studies. That task force listed three research areas to which the university should give special attention: the biological sciences, advanced materials and information sciences.
"In biological sciences we certainly have shown that we can respond. We have taken serious steps in materials sciences, making new investments and hiring new faculty. Computing and information sciences is likely to be just as important and may lead to changes on a similar scale," Randel said.
"In the end we will just set areas and depend on the individuals to do the things," Huttenlocher said. "Our job is to decide what areas we need to grow in and what undergraduate programs we need. In an Ezra Cornell way, it's about enabling every student and faculty member to bring the ideas of computing to bear."
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