Life and Learning in the Electronic Village: The Importance of Localization for the Design of Environments to Support Learning

Abstract

It has been claimed that the world is moving inexorably towards a single global village, spurred by the dominance of television on our lives. Surely it is obvious that globalization can only be accelerated by the rapid spread of information and communications technology (ICT). After all, are we not all neighbours on the internet? Au contraire! It is my thesis that far from being a further stimulus for globalization, ICT will inevitably be mainly a force for localization. The very fact that everybody is a neighbour to everybody else on the internet will mandate that each person must restrict their interactions with almost everybody (or be overwhelmed). The very fact that an immense amount of information is readily accessible will mean that each person must be very selective in the information they actually access (or be inundated). The consequence will be that each of us will shield ourselves with largely impenetrable barriers to outside interaction, allowing access only to those people and that information that we choose, that synchronizes with our world view. In short there will be no universal global village. Instead, we will each live in our own personal electronic villages, each village different from every other village.

This talk draws on ideas from many research projects carried out in the ARIES Laboratory over the years. I would like to thank my many graduate students and colleagues for their insights and the Canadian TeleLearning Networks of Centres of Excellence and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada for their funding.