I've thought a bit about these matters from two perspectives: the
architecture of movements in space and organizational relationships, and
successors to the idea of computer labs and smart classrooms.
Star Trek seems to be rather stuck with mainframes (the main computer) and
notebooks (Picard's desktop unit). The actual future seems more likely to
belong (for many reasons) to distributed computing: lots of individually
powerful chips and boxes, fast-wired to one another, so that whatever
capacity is available anywhere in the network is used for a current task
and users don't know or care where their process is being run. Users see a
customized interface to a virtual machine, as if their computer was local,
when actually it's not. Users access the network capacity in two ways:
personal screen units (maybe foldups? and eventually replaced by eyeglasses
or contact lenses that let you both see the ordinary environment and
superimpose the virtual 3D interface on part of your field of vision when
and where you want it) that you can carry around with you (on/in you), and
standard terminals located all over the place (like phones are now) that
once you log in displays your own customized interface with default access
to your own files, just as if it were a clone of your 'personal' machine.
The nearest we seem to be to this future now is a combination of laptops
that have an infrared or other narrow-band broadcast link to a server
network in the building, and public terminals that get customized to your
personal configuration when you log on. Students are going to either carry
their laptops around or use whatever workstation is available where they
are. The stations can be hard-wired, and fibre is best for bandwidth, but
these are less moveable units. The portables need to be able to connect to
the local network anywhere in the building, and it seems inefficient to do
this with cabling and jacks, and much better to follow the infra-red link
model or whatever follows it with more bandwidth.
Regarding the space itself, I think we have to plan in terms of an eventual
'double-space': physical space and a navigable 3D cyberspace. A lot of the
semiotic materials of the future: texts, images, sounds, videos,
animations, simulations, etc. will not be materially present in the
physical space, but will be 'virtual images' (in the technical sense in
optics): you and others will 'see' them in some place(s), but someone who
is not tuned in to your computer channel will see nothing there (or see
something else there appropriate to their own project or task at the
moment). So I imagine a lot more 'bare space' physically, as if the whole
environment was a sort of 'blue screen'. For various safety and practical
orientation reasons, I don't think these projected images will totally
opaque the physical space background. They will be maybe 80% opaque whie
still leaving some ability to see 'behind' them, just as people who wear a
Walkman can still hear someone talking to them (loudly). (If they were 100%
opaque, it would not matter how bare the physical environment was; but I
think this is too dangerous an option).
In these assistive environments, people will work alone at times, in
face-to-face groups at times (co-viewing virtual texts and images), and in
virtual groups at times. Even without the next-step projective imaging
technologies, people with laptops will do all this, and such a model is
more flexible than fixed workstations. It would even be possible to just
'rent' people laptops, o have them 'signed out' for in-building use only.
They could be configured to the building's network of servers, and only
work with them, but become automatically customized to the user after login
(including the capacity to retrieve user home files by internet ftp). I
think of a billiards parlor (pool hall) where most people rent a cue stick
and some bring their own. There are a lot of interesting psychological and
cultural questions raised by this model about how personally attached
people will be to the machines themselves, vs. to the files or the
customized interface, and what possible 'tragedies of the commons' need to
be attended to with public facilities.
So if we think of a building as a 'machine for living' (FL Wright) and
these as buildings for collaborative learning/meaning-making, then most of
the assistive technology will be invisible (in walls, under floors, above
ceilings, etc.) and the space will be bare and space, the better to make
the 'place' more flexible and customizable. Obviously there will also have
to be some contrasting spaces which have fixed 'place' character and a lot
of rich physical texture to facilitate face-to-face relaxation (like a
Faculty Common Room, or a cafe, etc.). So I imagine three types of
space/place: public spaces which are physically bare but can become various
sorts of workgroup 'places', non-work gathering places with rich visual and
furnishing character (including vistas or open decks to outside
landscaping, and maybe some interior landscaping as well), and private
spaces of two kinds: permanent offices that are physically richly
customized but with at least one 'bare wall', and temporary offices that
are more like the public workspaces.
Since this is getting rather long, let me just raise two more questions and
leave it to further discussion.
Why have public buildings at all? we really need serious, specific, and
convincing answers to this question. Why should there be physical library
buildings? university teaching buildings? If people prefer to work from
home (do they?), if videoconferencing and email serve for communication, if
data is equally available everywhere? an article previously cited here
suggested the benefits of chance meetings on the quads and the relaxation
of walking from your office to the library and back ... is that enough
justification for hundred-million dollar buildings? I don't think we can
design the buildings of the future unless we start from some sort of answer
to this most basic question. (BTW I do believe that people need SOME degree
of FTF interaction to work well together -- but how much?)
One of the modernist dichotomies built into my vision of a possible future
above is the separation of work space from relaxation place even within the
same building. An alternative model is the 'internet cafe' where people can
socialize, eat, drink, and also 'work' on terminals. I like breaking down
the work/leisure dichotomy, but I'm not sure how much work I could get done
in such an environment. I'd like to have places like this as alternative
spaces to pure-work and pure-leisure places, but I'm not sure they
represent a general solution. The same can be said in a way about the
extreme model of everyone working from home. Are homes universally the
kinds of places where people can get work done? I seem to know a lot of
people who doubt this.
JAY.
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JAY L. LEMKE
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
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