Computer Networks and Globalization

D. Martinovic
University of Windsor
and
J. Magliaro
University of Windsor
Abstract
Communication and information computer networks connect the world in ways
that make globalization more natural and inequity more subtle. As educators, we look at
these phenomena holistically analyzing them from the realists view, thus exploring tensions,
(in)equity and (in)justice, and from the idealists view, thus embracing connectivity,
convergence and development of a collective consciousness. In an increasingly market-
driven world we find examples of openness and human generosity that are based on
networks, specifically the Internet. After addressing open movements in publishing, software
industry and education, we describe the possibility of a dialectic equilibrium between
globalization and indigenousness in view of ecologically designed future smart networks
Keywords: Computer Networks, Internet, Open Access, Open Source, Open Education
Every single problem you can think of, poverty, peace, the
environment, is solved with education or including education, said
Professor Negroponte. The digital divide is a learning divide -
digital is the means through which children learn learning. This is,
we believe, the way to do it. (Twist, 2005, para. 36-37)
The process of testing pharmaceutical products must comply with strict
regulations before entering the consumer market. It seems that similar rules do not hold
for computer technology products. Is it because we believe that computer technology
does not affect our bodies or psyche? More time is needed in order to study the effects
of the new hardware and software products on humans, as individuals, groups, and
societies. Unfortunately, this time is limited by the computer companies rushing to
engage already saturated markets and conquer new ones. In this paper we write about
Brock Education Vol 16, No. 2, 2007
Dr. Dragana Martinovic teaches in the area of Mathematics Education (Secondary) at the
University of Windsor. She can be reached at dragana@uwindsor.ca
Jelena Magliaro has her M.Ed. and works at the Leddy Library at the University of
Windsor. She can reached at jelena@uwindsor.ca
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D. Martinovic & J. Magliaro
30
computer networks, particularly the Internet, which by encompassing virtually the
whole world greatly affects and extends the social space of influence.
Conceptual Framework
Coincidentally with the development of computer technologies, by the end of the
20
th
century, education became a booming enterprise. Some of the contributing factors
were related to the adoption of lifelong learning (e.g., retraining of workers) as a
principle and convenient propagation of the new, largely computer networks-based,
educational tools (e.g., learning management systems, instructional Web sites). As a
consequence, educators are expected to develop pedagogies suitable for addressing new
societal demands and meet rapidly changing student expectations (Koper, 2004). The
notion of quick changes in education brought up by new technologies and societal
changes is not shared by everybody. Some believe there is no reason to worry, since
historically inert schools will very likely be unaffected by computer technology for a
long time. Only the learners who themselves experience learning with technology,
especially the emerging possibilities of the Web, may eventually bring change to the
educational system (Kearsley, 2004).
According to Oblinger (2004), modern-day students are digitally literate, i.e.
accustomed to operating in a digital environment for communication, information
gathering, and analysis. Even new terms are invented to describe generations that grew
up with the Web, such as: Millennials, Net Generation, NetGeners (Oblinger); or, N-
Gen, D-Gen, and Digital Natives (Prensky, 2001). These terms emphasize that youth
nowadays use various devices (e.g., cell phones, palm pilots, computers) equipped with
wireless technology and the Internet to access data and to communicate with each other,
both at school and at home.
We are aware that in the majority of cases such statements apply only to some
students in developed countries. However, it is difficult to discuss ubiquitous
technology without using general terms. Also, the present situation may rapidly change.
Wireless networks and a $100 laptop initiative (MIT project) promises to make
computers not only potentially but actually ubiquitous. It is incumbent upon educators
to know about these developments and adapt to new societal needs for citizens who are:
capable problem solvers and lateral thinkers; persistent and determined learners; open-
minded and progressive strategists; and, confident users of technology. From that
perspective, for true learning, formal teaching methods may be inadequate and even
damaging (Mason, 2004). Thus, through the interaction of humans with media (Borba &
Villarreal, 2005), particularly the Internet, many new educational opportunities emerge.
Globalization of a Social Space
Regardless of the standpoint one takes on the continuum between the idealist and
the realist view, one has to agree that the Internet is one of the most effective forces of
globalization (Ferdinand, 2000), and as such is changing what we teach and how we
teach (White, 2004). Ghosh (2004) explains this further by stating that the market has
led to the globalization of social space, renegotiation of cultural space and
reconceptualization of the way we think about learning and educational systems.
Idealists view globalization as the social convergence of humankind through the
development of a collective consciousness and sense of responsibility. The idealist
teacher, for example, can pull up the Web pages showing endangered species or
shrinking rainforests and glaciers, to raise students awareness of environmental issues.
The point would be that whatever we do here (wherever here is) has an impact there
(rainforests, glaciers).
Realists, on the other hand, in their interpretation of globalization see the tensions
due to international differentiations in regards to political power, social equality, and
economic justice (White, 2004). They see a tension between global convergence and
social divergence; worldwide homogenization and international heterogenization; and
the conflict between local needs and national, regional and international interests. The
realist teacher can, for example, raise an issue of outsourcing, sweatshops in India and
Bangladesh, and their true relation to the rich getting richer, while the poor are getting
poorer.
As pointed earlier, it is tempting to write about potentially ubiquitous practices
and technologies in general terms. But this often means looking at things from the First
World view and not taking globalization holistically. Economic globalization that we
witness nowadays is also about control of access to ideas and knowledge which
generate new products, ideas and new experiences (Bottery, 2006). As a consequence,
the new economy emerges, which is a knowledge economy, and the new capitalism,
which is a knowledge capitalism where intellectual capital is a currency. For these
and other reasons, there are increasing numbers of requests for treating access to
information as a fundamental human right (Mutume, 2004) but also for experimenting
with alternative approaches to education, one being an ecological approach (Resnick,
2003). It may feel strange to make a connection between computers and ecological
thinking. Consequently, people have grown to view computers as removed from nature.
However, the emergence of computer networks, i.e. the Internet, allows us to observe
phenomena that are otherwise seen only in nature. Computer networks can be created
ecologically, and the Internet can be looked at as an ecosystem.
Move Away From the Institutionalized
We agree with Bottery (2006) who sees educators at the crossroads, where the
direction they take reveals their commitment to, among other things, applying a greater
ecological and political awareness, supporting notions of public good, and embracing a
sophisticated accountability. From that perspective we intend to illustrate these three
new trends made possible through computer networks that induce further change in
the re-distribution of educational and political power, namely: a) open-source; b) open
access; and c) open education.
Open-source. Open-source software usually mentioned in relation to its most
famous example, the Linux operating system is often high quality software at little or
no cost. This is accomplished through a community (rather than an institutional) effort
to develop, test and disseminate the product. A necessary condition for this to happen
is that the source code of the software be made available to all, which is where the term
open-source comes from. Members of the open-source community/ies are
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D. Martinovic & J. Magliaro
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programmers with more or less a strong dedication to the idea that software should be
free.
Most radical members in this movement gather around Richard Stallman (founder
of the GNU project), emphasizing that their involvement is about liberty and human
rights (i.e., free as in free speech) rather than only about cost (i.e., free as in free
beer). Free software is a matter of the users right to run, study, copy, distribute
copies, change, improve and disseminate the software, which encompasses all four
levels of freedom as defined by the Free Software Foundation (http://www.fsf.org/).
While the members of this movement discriminate between the terms free and open-
source, both are often used together as in free and open-source (Boulanger, 2005) or
just open-source. Currently, this movement is considered to be one of the most
powerful (Boulanger, p. 239) in the information technology field, and one key to the
understanding of future forms of organizations, information work and business
(Ljunberg, 2000, p. 208). What initially was an example of the hacker culture is
nowadays embraced by developing countries, fledgling businesses, higher learning
institutions, and programmers across the globe.
Open access. Open access refers to making scholarly work available to the general
public for free. This practice is made possible through articles and books becoming
available in electronic format and distributing them through personal or open access
journals Web sites. There are several factors that have prevented this form of
publishing from gaining momentum. The diversity of opinion and practice amongst
authors across different disciplines, countries, and ages was demonstrated in a survey of
nearly 4000 recent authors of research papers (Nicholas & Rowlands, 2005). For
example, authors in Australia, North America, and Western Europe strongly associated
open access with ephemeral publishing, poor archiving, and no career advantage, while
nearly one in three authors from South America published in open access journals and
ascribed positive attributes to open access. While not being happy with some aspects
of the current publishing industry, the authors who publish in open access journals
cherish the quality of the scientific material, are in favour of a solid review process, and
are concerned about reliability (in terms of being easily perishable) of the digital
journals.
Presently, as a consequence, out of about 24000 scholarly journals only 3-7% are
considered to be open access (Lorinc, 2006). A priority for academics may be to get
their work published, not circulated (Willinsky, 2005), which raises an issue well
formulated by Lorinc: Do publicly funded universities and granting bodies have a
democratic indeed a moral obligation to ensure that academic scholarship is available
on the Internet? (p. 13).
Furthermore, research that was in many disciplines considered to be a solitary
activity with results disseminated to a relatively small circle of individuals may now be
a thing of a past. Among the six basic principles designed to jumpstart the development
of a vibrant research community, listed in Scientific Research in Education (Carolan &
Natriello, 2005), is a call for replication and generalization across studies. It involves a
process that is inherently social, requiring individuals and groups with distinct ideas
and practices to interact for the purpose of developing common languages and measures,
data sharing, use of common methods of data analysis, and technological mechanisms
that support these activities.
It is up to educators to voice stronger support for these ideas. Those who benefit
from open access greatly outnumber its contributing authors. By maximizing access to
research, open access improves the research impact among developing nations,
students, and researchers alike.
Open education. The revolutionary idea of the MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW),
which is by Vest (2006) termed as an exercise in openness, a catalyst for change, and
an adventure (p. 13), is to make available on the Web, free of charge to teachers and
learners everywhere, the complete teaching materials from virtually all of the
approximately 2000 subjects taught at MIT. These materials have been cleared for
third-party intellectual property and are available under a creative commons license so
that they can be used, distributed, and modified for non-commercial purposes.
This idea seems counterintuitive to the concept of a market-driven world and
represents an exercise in intellectual generosity. Exemplifying globalization, as in global
higher education and in global meta-university, it expresses a belief that education can
be advanced around the world by opening access to information and by inspiring others
to participate. Presently, some universities in Spain (Universia network), China (CORE
network, i.e., China Open Resources for Education) and India (Rai University) are
involved in this initiative by providing their and MIT course materials in multiple
languages.
Another example of independence from institutionalized knowledge markets is
found among peer-to-peer online help sites. As communities, they have the same agenda
and focus on satisfying their members needs. Furthermore, they are transparent and
flexible as their members have options to belong to more than one such community, to
move between them according to their current interest, to take different roles in them
(i.e., a helper in one site can be a helpee in another) and to be at more than one place at
the same time. Peer-to-peer help sites on the Internet show that knowledge-sharing of a
large, diverse and diversely situated (in terms of time and place) group of people
motivated to help one another, can be considerable (Rheingold, 1998).
Openness as a State of Mind: Openness vs. Commercialism
What is common for open source, open access, and open education? First, they are
independent from typical societal barriers, such as institutionalized rules, classroom
walls, and temporal, spatial, and curricula dependence. Second, they conceptualize
knowledge as a communal process rather than as an individual product. In all three
movements rules exist, but are relaxed and agreed upon by the participants who have
more freedom to choose the format and the content than in institutionalized situations.
In them, we see true examples of communities: It is when persons find new
relationships worth cultivating, roles worth adopting, and selves worth becoming
through activation of those roles that we can speak of community (Cutler, 1995, p.
26). Being there because they want to be there (they share common interests and
mutual advantages), and not because they have to be there, empowers people to
establish different levels of social presence (Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, & Archer,
2001). As communities, such networks have strong social capital in terms of common
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D. Martinovic & J. Magliaro
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knowledge, shared values, collective identity, and roles and norms that are strong enough
to help overcome dilemmas of collective action (people getting a free-ride or not
participating actively out of fear that others may not follow) (Schuler, 2002).
In otherwise highly market-driven domains of software production, publication,
and education, it is possible and advantageous to have communities of volunteers whose
impact may be potentially comparable to that of big corporations. Yet, this economy is
gift-based rather than market-based. Both free/open source and free online help work as
gift economies, where participants are obliged to give, to receive and to make a return
for gifts received (Ljungberg, 2000). Here a gift (in terms of knowledge, expertise, or
skill) stays in possession of the giver and is given to the community rather than an
individual. In fact, the discourse here is between one and many, rather than one and one.
One gains a reputation through participation, but one is protected partially by virtual
identity and the possibility of starting anew.
Open access academic research bears a resemblance to the gift economy, but one
gives knowledge not because one wants to do good deeds but because that is the way to
make progress within this community. In all three collective movements some format of
peer review exists that is more-or-less organized and explicit. In open-source, for
example, it is a form of social mechanics where the core members of the community
maintain control over new knowledge of the field (Ljungberg, 2000). Online peer-to-peer
help communities also implement some sort of quality control, but can give a false
impression that what was publicly stated but not publicly refuted is publicly accepted
and true (Martinovic, 2005).
Future Smart Networks
Although present computer networks (i.e., the Internet) already appear as
environments fertile with interesting activities and ideas, efforts are constantly made in
order to make them truly responsive to existing and emerging human needs. The future
smart computer networks will consist of databases of global knowledge and global
human potential equipped with faster and more reliable (semantic) search engines. In
such an environment it will be possible to connect contextualized meanings,
communicate common understandings of different domains, and share opinions and
recommendations about resources (Kearsley, 2004). In addition, Zadeh (2004) believes
that it is necessary for search engines to evolve into question-answering systems in
order for the Web to become truly intelligent.
Despite the capacity and promise of the Semantic Web, a debate continues
regarding the capacity, efficacy and even desirability of using such technologies in
educational contexts (Anderson & Whitelock, 2004). It seems that their greatest impact
will be in making more content available to any combination of human and computer
processing, and allowing new means of collaboration between and across disciplines
(Clark, Parsia, & Hendler, 2004).
Conclusion: Education in the New Context
How will the gift economies coupled with smart computer networks affect
education in the future? At this point we muse over Whites (2004) proposal to
conceive realism and idealism in a dialectical state, instead of conceptualizing them as
existing in a form of irreconcilable tension. It may be up to educators to realize the full
potential of increasingly networked societies and to stand at the forefront of a
movement that will shape our future. Like Strauss (2002), we envision future schools
which unify space inside the classrooms with the space outside them so that
collaboration and interactivity will no longer be limited by the constraints of the
classroom size or the location of the students and faculty. Powerful network tools will
track online peoples skills and availability to help in order to automatically connect
those willing to collaborate or seek assistance. There will be more opportunities, like in
open-source, open access and open education, for a capable peer to become a scaffold
on which the whole community can prosper.
For this paradigm shift to succeed it is necessary that the idea of openness gains
more followers. We believe that it is the responsibility of educators to ensure that we
do not enter the era of information without knowledge, privacy without intimacy and
networks without community (Noveck, 2000, p. 34). Yet, it is difficult to predict what
future educational practices will look like. Certainly, globalization and connectivity will
result in internationalizing curricula (Ghosh, 2004) and developing pedagogical
strategies and learning experiences around life-world issues (White, 2004). Students will
have to develop skills to understand and operate in different cultures. Ideally, the future
of education will provide a realistic understanding of responsibilities for various aspects
of globalization in addition to idealistic notions of globalization as a natural process of
social and conscious evolution.
We couple an ecological view on computer networks with the view of
indigenousness. The concept of indigenousness that we borrow from Sefa Dei (2000)
provides local peoples with avenues for creativity and resourcefulness. It builds on an
African sense of compassion, hospitality, generosity, the wholeness of relations, and
communal solidarity. In such societies the co-operative individual is enriched by the
community. African cultural knowledge is rooted in local cultural traditions, values, and
belief systems. It is a world view that shapes the communitys relationships with its
environments. It is a knowledge base that is crucial for group and community survival.
In the examples provided in this article, we see connections with some of these
deeply rooted African beliefs. Appealing to the poor and unselfish of the world, the idea
of openness will certainly spread across various segments of life. It has to be supported
by educators and technologists alike as an element of Web ecology in which
indigenousness remains in dialectic equilibrium with globalization.
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