Designing the Information Society of the Next Millennium:

A Cross-disciplinary , Graduate, Undergraduate Course

Fall Semester 1996

Department of Computer Science,
College of Architecture and Planning,
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design,
and The Institute of Cognitive Science

Gerhard Fischer (gerhard@cs.colorado.edu)
Ernesto Arias (ernie@spot.colorado.edu)
Alex Repenning (ralex@cs.colorado.edu)
Jim Ambach (ambach@cs.colorado.edu)
Corrina Perrone (corrina@cs.colorado.edu)

Course Numbers:
1. CS 4830 sec. 005 call# 84114 Computer Science Undergraduates
2. CS 7000 sec. 005 call# 84113 Computer Science Graduates
3. ENVD 4352 sec. 801 call# 84224 Boulder Campus Undergraduates
4. URP 6686 sec. 001 call # 74194 Denver Campus Graduates

Times: Tuesday, 4:00 - 6:30 PM

Locations:
Lectures: Experimental Smart Classroom (Stadium Classroom 350)
Experimental work: L3D Laboratory, CS 122, Engineering Center and SIMLab, ENVD 215, Environmental Design Building

Content and Global Objectives

What will the information society of the next millennium be like, and how will individuals and organizations behave? While it is clear that the future will be different from the past, at the present there is really no consensus as to how technological innovation in information and communications will affect the shape of our society in the next millennium:

"By the mid-twenty-first century, cars will be computers, buildings will be computers, entire cities will be computers, all wreaking profound changes on the form and functioning of our environment and the ways we will seek to understand and change it."
Michael Batty, Keynote Address
4th International Conference on Computers in Urban Planning and Management, 1995

"The mental processes of composing memos and documents, of making medical and business decisions, of negotiating and persuading, of formulating plans, and communicating ideas will not soon be captured and imprisoned in a machine ... How to do this has proved more difficult than technologists expected."
Tom Landauer, The Trouble with Computers, 1995, p. 142

The pursuit of these concerns is the objective of the course. Focusing on the concepts of learning and design and their integration with technological innovations, the course will frame and seek resolution to questions such as: What will the physical and information spaces defining communities be like? Can we design them? What role can education play in their design? How should we view learning and its role in the design and evolution of both technological change and societal outcomes? The course will investigate themes such as: design in physical spaces (e.g., cities) and in informational spaces (software) and the relationship between them; (virtual) communities of practice; and it will explore fundamental concepts such as: evolution, design and sustainability, descriptive and prescriptive elements in design, and the role of breakdowns and symmetry of ignorance.

Approach and Expectations

The course will represent an opportunity to rethink learning and the framing of problems through an approach that:

The approach will allow students to engage in authentic, self-directed learning activities, and embed learning and design activities in the context of real world activities. To account for the interdisciplinary nature of real world problems, students with different background knowledge, from a variety of disciplines and different educational backgrounds will be brought together to participate in cultivating the ?emergent community?. To this end, engagement in hands-on experiences will play a central role since it introduces reflection-in-action, and uses diverse background skills of class members in order to help each other learn. Different types of systems being researched at the Center for LifeLong Learning and Design (L3D) will be introduced to attain this hands-on experience such as:

Through this approach participants can expect to leave this course with the following capabilities:

  • an understanding of how to research, work, learn, and collaborate in designing solutions to their concerns in shaping the future
  • an awareness of learning on demand within communities of learners
  • an experience on how to ?master? new, personally meaningful technologies

    Prerequisites and Requirements / Grading / and Other Policies

    You do not have to be a computer expert to join. If you are interested in the role of technology in our society, and if you are a creative, critical and self-motivated graduate or undergraduate student who believes in interdisciplinary learning and is concerned with the shape and the shaping of our future society you should join us.

    Grades will be based on:

    1. a meaningful class participation,
    2. the quality of the contributions made to the overall learning enterprise such as the design, development and maintenance of the course?s information space,
    3. the quality of the process and outcomes of the semester project, and
    4. the contributions to any other course activity which leads to the attainment of an enriched learning experience in the course?s expectations, such as smaller assignments.

      All assignments are due at the beginning of class on the deadline date. Late assignments will not be accepted. Members of the course should be aware of university and department rules governing student behavior as related to originality of work.

      Projects

      In addition to the active participation in the sessions, students are expected to work on two types of projects: (1) a semester project and (2) a set of two or three short projects. These projects will frame the topics of the course by using the world-wide-web. A handout will be provided and disscussed during the second session (September 3rd).

      Notes

      Schedule of Sessions

      August 27
      Topic: Introduction / Designing the Complex System
      Presentation: Abuja - A Case Study
      Roundtable discussions on presentations / readings
      Readings: E.G. Arias, Designing in a Design Community: Insights and Challenges, in Proceedings of DIS?95, Symposium on Designing Interactive Systems (Ann Arbor, MI), New York, pp. 259-263.
      G. Fischer: "Making Learning a Part of Life"
      Other Activities:
      Class business Introductions
      Course Overview and Objectives
      Questionnaire about the student?s background
      Hands-on Exploring Simcity, Scurk, GMSimulator, Simtower
      Website http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/courses/InfoSoc-96/

      September 3
      Topic: Visions of the Future
      Guest Presentations: Gimme - Capturing group communication (S Lindstaedt)
      EWIS - extensible structures (J Ostwald)
      Videotapes: Knowledge Navigators, Starfire
      Roundtable discussions on presentations / readings
      Readings Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think"
      G. Fischer et al, "From Domain Modeling to Collaborative Domain Construction"
      Other Activities:
      Class business Student Project introduction
      Hands-on Being a Surfer on the Web (Corrina)
      Field visit Child?s Play Workshop at L3D
      Website http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ralex/childs-play.html

      September 10
      Topic Learning Webs and Communities of Practice
      Guest Presentations Webquest (C Perrone)
      Microagensheets - Java and the WWW (J Ambach)
      Roundtable discussions on presentations / readings
      Readings Illich?s article on Learning Webs;
      Manuel Castells, "The reconstruction of social meaning in the space of flows"
      Other Activities
      Hands-on Making your own waves on the Web
      ---> creating home pages, use of Pagespinner (Corrina)
      Class business Discuss Student Project Write
      Website http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~corrina/mud/"

      September 17
      Topic Distributed Cognition and Joint Human-Computer Systems
      Presentation
      Videotape: Computers in Context
      Roundtable discussions on presentations / readings
      Readings section in D.A. Norman, Things That Make Us Smart, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, MA
      Other Activities:
      Class business Student Project Write-up due
      Hands-on to be announced
      Website
      Student case study
      Field visit

      September 24
      Topic Distributed Constructionism
      Presentation Design as Communication - A New Look at Educational Media and Teacher/student roles (Repenning/Arias)
      or
      Agentsheets and Visual Agent Talk (A. Repenning)
      Roundtable discussions on presentations / readings
      Readings M. Resnick, Distributed Constructionism, International Conference on the Learning Sciences 1996, pp. 280-284.
      Repenning, A. and J. Ambach, "Tactile Programming: A Unified Manipulation Paradigm Supporting Program Comprehension, Composition and Sharing," Visual Languages 1996, Boulder, CO, 1996
      Other Activities:
      Hands-on Lemmigs, Fishtank and LegoSheets
      Website http://www.designlab.ukans.edu/~ambler/legochallenge.html
      Student case study
      Student Project
      Field visit

      October 1
      Topic Seeding, Evolutionary Growth and Reseeding
      Presentation to be announced
      Roundtable discussions on presentations / readings
      Readings G. Fischer et al., Seeding, Evolutionary Growth and Reseeding: Supporting Incremental Development of Design Environments, Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI?94, pp. 292-298
      Activities:
      Hands-on Redesigning the Web - from an Information Dissemination Medium to a Collaboration Medium
      Website
      Student case study
      Student Project
      Field visit

      October 8
      Topic The Reasoning Behind Design
      Presentation The Lunar Habitat Information System (R. McCall)
      Roundtable discussions on presentations / readings
      Readings H.A. Simon, "Sciences of the Artificial" chapter six: "Designing the Evolving Artifact"
      Other Activities:
      Hands-on Activities to be announced
      Website
      Student case study
      Student Project
      Field visit

      October 15
      Topic Beyond the Gift Wrapping Approach of Technology
      Presentation Sketching- Solving the Problem is the Problem (M. Gross)
      or
      The Communications Initiative - communication as design and design as communication at CU (M. Dubin et al)
      Roundtable discussions on presentations / readings
      Readings
      Other Activities:
      Hands-on Linking the physical to the virtual
      Student Project Progress reports by teams and discussions - I
      Website http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/presentations/gf-wlf/
      Field visit

      October 22
      Topic Learning on Demand and Critiquing
      Presentation What learning should be - A conversation with Nora Sabelli of the National Science Foundation
      and
      Designing Systems to Support LOD (M. Eisenberg /G. Fischer)
      Roundtable discussions on presentations / readings
      Readings G. Fischer, Supporting Learning on Demand with Design Environments, International Conference on the Learning Sciences 1991, pp. 165-172.
      G. Fischer et al., The Role of Critiquing in Cooperative Problem Solving, in ACM Transactions on Information Systems, pp. 123-151
      Other Activities:
      Hands-on Hypergami
      Website http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/systems/hypergami/
      Student Project Progress reports by teams and discussions - II
      Field visit

      October 29
      Topic Domain-Oriented Design Environments
      Presentation Designing Useful and Usable Systems (The UU Group)
      Roundtable discussions on presentations / readings
      Readings G. Fischer, Domain-Oriented Design Environments, in Automated Software Engineering, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, MA, pp. 177-203
      Other Activities:
      Hands-on to be announced
      Website
      Student case study
      Student Project
      Field visit

      November 5
      Topic Creating Shared Understanding
      Presentation Playing to support collaborative design: the role of participatory tools (E.G. Arias / H. Eden)
      Roundtable discussions on presentations / readings
      Readings E. Arias, "Bottom-Up Neighborhood Revitalization: A common language for participatory decision support"
      Wilson, "Planning Games"
      Snow "The Two Cultures",
      HCI Journal: "Context in Design", and
      GEE, "The Process of Choice" -- select one of four sections
      Other Activities:
      Hands-on Designing and playing games (SIMLab)
      Website
      Student case study
      Student Project
      Field visit

      November 12
      Topic Organizational Learning and Organizational Memories
      Presentation Can Organizations Learn? Conversations with NYNEX
      Roundtable discussions on presentations / readings
      Readings Senge "The Fifth Discipline"
      Steven Whitehead: "Auto-FAQ: an experiment in cyberspace leveraging"
      Other Activities:
      Hands-on to be announced
      Website http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~ostwald/symposium (Website of L3D May-96 Workshop)
      Student case study
      Student Project
      Field visit

      November 19
      Topic Agents
      Presentation to be announced
      Roundtable discussions on presentations / readings
      Readings Christoph Thomas, Gerhard Fischer:"Using Agents to Personalize the Web"
      Social Filtering ? People Helping One Another Know Stuff (People Helping One Another Know Stuff (PHOAKS)
      Other Activities:
      Hands-on
      Website http://www.atg.apple.com/personal/Tom_Erickson/Agents.html
      http://weblab.research.att.com/phoaks/
      Student case study
      Student Project
      Field visit

      November 26
      Topic The Next Generation of Things that Make Us Smart
      Presentation to be announced
      Roundtable discussions on presentations / readings
      Readings Don Norman, ?Things That Makes Us Smart?
      Other Activities:
      Hands-on to be announced
      Website
      Student case study
      Student Project
      Field visit

      December 3
      Topic Sustainability and Evolution
      Presentation The Boulder county Healthy Communities Initiative (C. Schmidt et al)
      and
      The Ecological Footprint (Wm. Rees)
      Roundtable discussions on presentations / readings
      Readings Robert Fishman, "Beyond Suburbia: the rise of technoburb"
      Constantin Doxiadis, "Ecumenopolis, world city of tomorrow"
      Christopher Alexander, "A city is not a tree"
      Other Activities:
      Hands-on Playing sustainability games --- The Eco Footprint, Tax the Farmer, and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, Simearth
      Website
      Student case study
      Student Project
      Field visit

      December 10
      Topic The Future has to be Designed and Invented
      Presentation The Revenge of the Nerds (Video)
      Roundtable The course and its future
      Readings Postman "Technolopy"
      Drucker: "The Age of Social Transformation"
      E.M. Noam, Electronics and the Dim Future of the University, Science, Vol. 270, No. pp. 247-249
      Other Activities:
      Hands-on
      Website find and explore web sites relevant to this theme
      Student case study
      Student Project Date, place and time for final presentations to be announced


      Dec 11: last day of classes

      Readings

      One fundamental activity during the semester is the evolution of a bibliographic resource to be placed in the information space we will create for the course. To seed this idea an initial list of references is provided as a point of departure for the projects and as complements for the various topics to be discussed during the sessions.

      On Learning

      • *Illich, "Deschooling Society" ---> specifically about "Learning Webs"
      • Noam, ?The Dim Futures of the University?

      On Design and Planning

      • *Simon, "Sciences of the Artificial" (characterizes design as ubiquitous activity) ---> especially chapter 6: "Designing the Evolving Artifact"
      • articles from our L3D work: SER Model
      • HCI journal: Special Issues on Context in Design
      • Schon, "The Reflective Practicioner"
      • Harris, "The limits of science and humanism in planning"
      • Brolin, "Chandigarh was planned by experts but somenthing has gone wrong"
      • Lindblom, "the science of muddling through"
      • Nake, "OSLO REMARKS" "Analysis, Synthesis, Design: On the dialectical nature of design," "On Dasgupta?s book - Design Theory and computer science," "On Schon?s book - The reflective practicioner," and "After Discussing Schon?s book"

      On Technology

      • *Kalil, "Leveraging Cyberspace" ---> use this as a seed article and extend it over the time of the course
      • Landauer, "The Trouble with Computers"
      • Mandelbaum, "The design of the designing community"
      • Nake, "OSLO REMARKS -- What are we doing on line?"

      On Information Spaces (evolved by communities of practices and interest)

      • Stefik, "The Next Knowledge Medium"
      • Postman, "Technopoly"
      • Selections from LeGates and Stout (eds.) "City Reader"
        • Robert Fishman, "Beyond Suburbia: the rise of technoburb"
        • Manuel Castells, "The reconstruction of social meaning in the space of flows"
        • Manuel Castells and Peter Hall, "Technopoles: Mines and foundries of the informational economy"

      On Sustainability

      • Aegis article in Lee "The Days the Phones Stopped"
      • Jacobs, "The Death and Life of Great american Cities"
      • Selections from LeGates and Stout (eds.) "City Reader"
        • Kingsley Davis, "The urbanization of the human population"
        • Paul and Percival Goodman, "A city of efficient consumption"

      On Evolution

    5. Drucker, "The Age of Social Transformation"
    6. Alexander, "The Oregon Experiment" and "Notes on the Synthesis of Form"
    7. Selections from LeGates and Stout (eds.) "City Reader"
      • Constantin Doxiadis, "Ecumenopolis, world city of tomorrow"
      • Christopher Alexander, "A city is not a tree"
    8. Lynch, "A Theory of Good City Form"
    9. Banfield, "The Unheavenly City Revisited" -- The logic of metropolitan growth
    10. Kuhn, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"

      On Organization

      • Senge, "The Fifth Discipline"
      • Steven Whitehead, "Auto-FAQ: an experiment in cyberspace leveraging"
      • Gittell, "Limits of Citizen Participation: The decline of community organization"
      • Hirschman, "Exit, Voice and Loyalty"
      • Mintzberg, "Power and organization life cycles"
      • H.A. Simon, "Administrative Behavior"