Luc Mertens
Openbare Bibliotheek Turnhout
Obturn@innet.be

Until recently, information technology and telematics have been used mainly for constructing data files and networks. That was work for technicians. Integrating these new knowledgebased and communications systems into daily human traffic is multidisciplinary work. It presumes the active participation of all operators who from of old have guided and supported the prevalent educational and socialisation processes for the individual: teachers, designers, employers and architects, amongst others.

The questions that everyone is asking these days are:

1. How should familiar operations and mental processes, how should individual and collective sensitivities and values be depicted in this environment in a trustworthy manner?

2. And how can this development be assisted by an organisational and physical (re)orientation of the educational and socio-cultural work field, amongst other things?

Learning and socialisation processes have of old been concerned with the determination of the recognition sites from which the individual can orient himself and move forward in the world. In the traditional educational and socio-cultural environment, these recognition sites and routes were clearly defined for the individual. They had the soundness of a city street plan or a road map. The user knew at any moment where he was and where he could get to. In such a representation of reality, a learning and growth process corresponded to a route on the map, and a depiction on the map corresponded, moreover, to a tangible object in the physical environment: a school, a library, the workplace, a museum... Compared with that, the construction of the new knowledge-based system still seems a formidable task.

The ABC of any sound navigation system presumes:

1. A map that faithfully represents the internal structure and dynamics of the knowledge-based system.

2. Signposting and instructions that correspond to the actual movements and actions that the user has to execute to complete the manoeuvre.

3. A physical environment that, in terms of layout, materially supports and confirms the processes that take place within that environment.

That the world-wide knowledge-based system has as yet been poorly integrated into everyday human traffic, has in the first place everything to do with the designers of user interfaces and navigation systems.

1. Their designs commonly take no account of the internal structure and dynamics of the knowledge-based system.

2. Up to now, they have been importing mainly navigational techniques from the traditional knowledge-based system into this new environment.

3. Thereby, indirectly substantiating the point of view that the layout of schools, museums, libraries etc. does not need to be adapted to fit the dynamics and structure of the new knowledge-based system, but that the opposite is in fact the case.

Meanwhile, three rather banal properties of the new knowledge-based environment are being systematically trampled on:

1. The radical inversion of information traffic.

2. The fact that the new knowledge-based system has no centre.

3. And finally, following on from that, the fact that supervision and control over the whole has been lost.

(1) In the traditional environment, it was the user who had to move, who navigated from the one recognition site to the next. In the new knowledge-based environment, by contrast, the user remains sitting in front of his screen. It is in fact the information that navigates in the direction of the user.

(2) The traditional knowledge-based environment had a centre, and convergence rules - ontologies - that geared production to distribution and vice versa. The new environment is by definition constantly out of balance. The knowledge that it contains cannot be depicted and distributed with old cartographic projection techniques.

(3) On the screen, the illusion is still always maintained that the user can succesfully navigate from one point to the next, while meantime there is no actual overview or control over the whole.

Finally. Up to now, designers have hidden their inability to give a realistic representation of the internal structure and dynamics of the knowledge-based system on the screen, behind an ingenious mask: the so-called virtuality of the medium. In other words, according to the discourse acceptable to date, the gap between the virtual and the real experience is not the result of incomplete work of man, but lies with the medium itself. In brief, a kind of higher agency - a god in the machinery - to which the user must but willingly subject himself. The time is nigh for the mist to be lifted.

Contemporary cosmology as a metaphor for the WWW.

In principle, every reliable map and navigation system is based on a cosmology of which the soundness (1) is accepted - cf. the world view that is presented by belief systems - or (2) has been scientifically proven. New cosmologies are the product of thebreakthrough of new belief systems or of scientific revolutions. Cosmologies define the structure of the universe, the powers and dynamics that control it and the place that man as physical and spiritual being occupies in it. In other words, the common street plans and road maps that we have used of old to get ourselves from A to B, that have helped us in the transaction of everyday affairs, link us unnoticed via a system of projection rules to a cosmologically based reference point.

The exact sciences and the belief systems traditionally deal with the macrocosmos. The humanities, the churches and the educational and socio-cultural field are involved with the living environment of the people - the microcosmos. After every significant change within the macrocosmos consequent upon the breakthrough of new belief systems or scientific revolutions, there has always been the need to bring the microcosmos back into line with the macrocosmos. Given the impact that the WWW has as a knowledge-based and communication system, it is clear that that translation linking micro and macro will occur via this medium.

Today, developers of software and navigation systems are busily searching for metaphors to signpost the knowledge-based system. The only metaphors that are really obvious are those that we can borrow from contemporary cosmology. Contemporary cosmology uses experimental findings to describe a universe without a centre, of which the dynamic - the teleological direction - is unclear. The only certainty that we have within this representation of the universe is, that consequent upon gravity in the vicinity of heavenly bodies, the dynamic time-space is restructured and stabilised to a condition of relative rest.

For the time being, the world-wide knowledge-based system reproduces, in an allegorical manner, only the internal structure - the absence of a centre - and the internal dynamics of contemporary cosmology. In brief, what the knowledge-based system as yet lacks, are gravitational centres that have sufficient gravitational power to provide this rudderless whole with some stability. Since August 1997, co-NEXUS has been developing such a gravitation centre. It is the intention that with the input of filtering systems and agent technology, it will have sufficient gravity to introduce a stability layer on to the WWW, into which the Turnhout community can nestle.

Most user interfaces and navigation systems that have been developed to date have been produced by laboratories. They have rarely been developed and tested interactively in a real life context. In addition, the designers of these navigation systems have so far been forced to limit themselves to signposting the screen. They do indeed perhaps have social pretensions, but usually do not have suitable development and test environments to effect the flow of the new knowledge-based system through to the wider public.

Co-NEXUS is a bottom-up project. From the very start, it has involved all the operators - teachers, trainers, librarians, cultural initiators etc. and the end users in the research and development of a user-friendly access to the worldwide knowledge-based system. It wants:

1. to construct intelligent search, communication and production environments;

2. and at the same time to start and further guide the reorganisation and physical reorientation of the local educational and socio-cultural work field.

In short, co-NEXUS is looking at the re-mapping of the local education and socio-cultural work field. Or in other words: it wants to tailor the physical layout and management of the work field to the knowledge-based representation on the screen.

To date, libraries, training institutions, cultural centres etc., have aimed mainly to be prominent as institutions on the Internet. The question that now needs to be posed, put bluntly, is whether such a fragmented presence of the work field still contributes to the flow of knowledge. Within the traditional knowledge-based environment, it was necessary that all the segments of the educational and socio-cultural work field be strongly and clearly profiled. They functioned as recognition sites. Within that environment, it was after all the user who was guided onto the path. If, after completing a task, he looked up from the map towards the horizon, he had to be able to clearly see the institution that he wanted to reach. Ever since, consequent upon telematics, the knowledge-based flow has been drastically changing direction, the user has been leaving his easy chair in front of the screen increasingly less frequently and the knowledge has been navigating in his direction rather than the other way round.

The existing layout of the educational and socio-cultural work field is still the result of (1) an old fashioned production system and (2) the rule-guided communication and distribution systems linked to that. The development of a common carrier for sound, picture and text has, meanwhile, put the future of the disciplinary allotment at risk. The individualisation of the learning process, finally, has overturned all the rules that up to now have predetermined, well in advance, what the individual needed in the way of content and duration in order to lay down a particular learning or socialising trajectory.

In the new knowledge-based environment, the user has simultaneous access to picture, text and sound. He can, moreover, manipulate and process them at will. The question of identity, and social and cultural attention, that to a significant extent determine in advance the content and duration of the learning process, are now defined by the user himself. It is this new user-driven educational, social and cultural participation paradigm that nowadays has to determine the layout of the work field.

In conformity with the new knowledge-based production and reproduction systems, and taking user feedback into account, the educational, social and cultural work field must now, collectively, set up a correspondent distribution system. Instead of, as used to be the case, mainly being committed to the profile of their institution, librarians, trainers, cultural initiators will from now on have to be committed, in particular off screen in a multidisciplinary way, to the strengthening of the position of the individual user within the new knowledge-based environment. In short, their task will consist in particular of effecting cross-discipline control of knowledge and information in the direction of the user. The private appearance de visu, by contrast, of the different operators, is only necessary in this knowledge-based environment if the user expressly requests it.

Since October 1996, librarians and educationists have been contemplating within the context of the Socrates project: The Public and the Library, on how such a cross-discipline distribution system can be effected for educational work, libraries and the cultural sector. The starting points of the participants in this project: Danes, Flemings, Catalans, and Italians, are diverse. The northerners have comparatively good penetration of the Internet and a good educational, social and cultural physical network. The partners implement the user-driven participation paradigm differently, according to their different stances.

In the north, and particularly in Flanders, the emphasis currently lies in the development of sound access to the WWW. The southerners, with the Italians at the head, who for decades now have unfortunately been lacking an educational, social and cultural infrastructure, are, by contrast, beginning the construction of a physical infrastructure that should facilitate the knowledge-based distribution of the entire educational, social and cultural work field, cf. La dessiminazione stellare in Isolotto/Florence. The northerners hope that the existing distribution system will gradually adapt itself to the order of the new participation paradigm. The southerners can spare themselves this painful transformation process. They will soon be ready with a physical infrastructure that slots in perfectly with the new user-controlled participation paradigm.

© 1998,1999,2000 i3net	-- Search i3net --	About the i3net web pages
Revised: 17 April, 1998.		Mail to webmaster@i3net.org