Distance Education in Transition - Master of Distance Education ...

"Information" and "Knowledge" - On the Semantic Transformation of Two Central Terms
Exponential growth
External process
Extrahuman retention
Tendency to fractionating, distribution
New complex types of information
Subject-specific demarcations overcome
Media-specific demarcations overcome
Communication extended locally and as to time
Contact with "remote-presence" reality
Mediated reality
Virtuality
Detached from the social situation
No central anthropological meaning
Slow growth
Internal processes
Retention concentrated in people
Strives to achieve completeness, entirety
Accustomed types of knowledge
Subject-specific demarcations strengthened
Media-specific demarcations present
Communication restricted locally and as to time
Contact with present reality
Contact to reality
Reality
Socially anchored
Important anthropological dimension
Retroactive Effects on Traditional Knowledge
The present situation cannot be described to a sufficient extent if traditional knowledge
and informed knowledge are placed next to one another, compared with one another and
serious differences are brought out. In this context it is also extremely interesting how
the situation shown has an effect on traditional knowledge. This deserves an examination
of its own. Here we can only provide two indications.
Early Experiences in Digital Spaces
At first it seems obvious to assume that at present younger adults have different and
unconventional cognitive skills and routines if they spent many years of their childhood
in front of a computer and played highly interactive computer games with great
fascination. They link items of information together in a different way; are able skilfully
to associate situations with one another which are at great distances from one another;
are used to the opacity of the world of the computer; are able to solve problems in a
state of uncertainty; can think in a networked and multicausal manner; develop
creativity as if it were a game; develop their own strategies, which they use to achieve
goals they have set themselves and have trained subjectively significant actions. There
are signs that because of these special experiences other networks have been created in
their central nervous systems (Pöppel, 1995, p. 76).
If this were the case it would probably have had an effect on the way they deal with
traditional knowledge, including scientific knowledge. What do they in fact have are
new forms of evaluating, storing and reactivating knowledge. This cognitive characterisation
appears to be so significant that adults who grew up with computers and the Internet are
referred to as the "Net generation" (Tapscott, 1997).
When they are faced with the task of acquiring knowledge in the traditional way, these
individuals, and it will probably be correct to assume this, will do this from a different
angle, approach it with different attitudes and perhaps work under a different horizon of
values.
Selective Experiences in Virtual Spaces
But we must also expect that even older adults who did not pass through the school of
computer games will have experienced the effects of the computerisation of our life.
Even if they produce traditional knowledge, they cannot ignore the presence of rapidly
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