IN THE BUBBLE JOHN THACKARA - witz cultural

158 Chapter 7
All this is a bottom-up, distributed, self-organizing process. The relevance
of this, for institutions of higher learning, is not that students should create
their own courses. Rather, it is that online content needs to leverage the
same kind of social ecology that drives networked interaction in online
multiplayer games. Says Herz: ‘‘Beyond the technological infrastructure,
there is a cultural infrastructure in place to leverage these interpersonal
dynamics. Tools and editing modes allow players to extend the game experience.
But more important than the stand-alone benefit of these assets
is their value as social currency. The creator of a popular level, object, or
plug-in may not receive monetary remuneration. But he garners notice,
and even acclaim, from his fellow gamers.’’ 61
New Geographies of Learning
Technology fixes for education are an old and discredited story. The delivery
of precooked content, by whatever means, is not teaching. Radio,
film, television, the videocassette recorder, fax machines, the personal computer,
the Internet, and now the mobile phone: It was promised of each of
these, in turn, that here was a wonder cure that would transform education
for the better. And yet here we are, hundreds of years after the first books
were printed, and teachers are still giving lectures, and students still line
up to hear them. Why? They do this because the best learning involves
embodiment—live experiences and conversation between people: Most
people prefer talking to one another to talking to themselves. Educational
institutions change slowly and social interaction remains their core activity.
This is not to deny that our learning infrastructures need to evolve.
More than 70 percent of learning experiences in the modern workplace
are informal or accidental, not structured or sponsored by an employer or
a school. 62 This kind of learning is pervasive, continuous, and profoundly
social. It happens wherever people do their work: on a shop floor, around a
conference table, on site with customers, or in a laboratory.
So let’s be optimistic and anticipate a near future in which tech disappears
quietly into the background, just as electricity did a hundred years
ago. What, then, will be the important design issues among those I have
discussed here? There are three that matter. The first issue before us is
time: We need far more time for learning than we allow ourselves now.
The second issue is the need to redesign the job descriptions that define