Information
infrastructures such as Internet, Compuserve, America Online and the new
administration's Nationwide Information Infrastructure (NII) are suddenly
exploding onto front page headlines. This course provides a chance to anticipate
the challenges that society faces as the global economy leaps headlong
into an information age, an age where property is increasingly composed
of bits instead of the atoms that commerce has been concerned with until
now.
Taming the Electronic Frontier establishes a dialog between producers and consumers of information age goods by exploiting distance learning technologies such as television in combination with web, email, ftp, gopher, wais and other groupware tools as they become available. These tools provide the basis for electronically mediated organizational learning exercises that challenge traditional power relationships between teachers and students, producers and consumers, universities and customers, broadcasters and listeners.
Technical specialists, such as those entering the computer science, software engineering, or telecommunications professions, will find the breadth of this course valuable for guarding against the criticism that technologists care more about technology than customers and for anticipating fundamental changes in the way information age workers earn their pay.
Others with non-technical interests will find the course a way of developing sufficient telecomputing skills for understanding the growing impact of telecomputing on the modern office. Both will learn techniques for acting as effective change agents for organizational learning as offices struggle to enter the information age.
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"The web is an absolutely wonderful way to distribute information about the course in every aspect from the syllabus to the examination. It allows the student to customize their schedule and course work. The fact that I had 24 hour access to the web was comforting in case I missed something or forgot something I could find it then and there without having to wait for a more 'convenient' hour of the day!" |
This course actually employs the tools of the Internet to deliver lessons and to build and submit Web based learning tasks and projects. The level of close personal contact between students and staff is maintained by dynamic interaction via the course's newsgroup, email, and online staff support. The skills learned in this course are used by the students to create their own electronic products and to build, as part of a team, a solution for vexing organizational learning problems encountered in real life.
Each student receives a portfolio area on the Web server hosting this course for task submittals, collaboration, and team project work. Final team projects will continue to be exhibited on the site as well as links to student created electonic goods for sale.
VS 592: Internet Literacy
The first five weeks will provide:
Computers are not the only, or even the primary, topic of this course. We'll soon reach the point where computers becomes just plumbing; disappearing into the woodwork to become a transparent window through which people communicate, cooperate, coordinate and compete as members of an advanced electronic community.
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"I will say though that I learned more in this class than probably any other class I have taken here at GMU. I was very interested in the subject matter and appreciated all of the tasks because they assured that I had the ideas down. Thanks for prepping me for the information age." |
VS 572: Taming the Electronic Frontier
The remaining ten weeks will:
VS 731: Digital Commerce, Objects as Property on the Electronic Frontier
The semester project involves working as a team via distributed development technologies (part of the course infrastructure), to design, build, and bring to market a digital product; something made entirely of bits that contains sufficient value that others will pay money to acquire it.
You will learn that tomorrow's worker must be able to quickly move from job to job as new opportunities develop. Those that stay current and can translate Internet innovations into business competitive advantages will be in demand.
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"I found the lectures and tools used in the lectures quite helpful; especially the ones which dealt with the philosophical-- those which gave us a broader perspective of what the WWW really means to our futures. I also liked the readings for this class." |
By learning to make the Internet respond to you as an individual rather than just a passive observer, by learning to keep abrest of technological innovations, by being able to translate the technolgical babble of the Internet to ordinary language that others can understand, and by increasing your ability to find and develop solutions for your company, you become a sought after professional. Your ability to command higher consulting fees or promotions is enhanced.
Several new companies have received their start from students working together on team projects in this course.
Several team projects created for Industry have landed their creators jobs with the client company after demonstrations of mastery using advanced Internet skills as taught in this course.
Many companies routinely post job openings to the course discussion list and networking with fellow team members and other course students can lead to new job opportunities.
The instructor is Dr. Brad Cox. His courses include Taming the Electronic Frontier, Internet Literacy, and Digital Commerce, Objects as Property on the Electronic Frontier which all involve extensive use of distance education technology. He is now developing a new course, Computational Modeling of Social Learning involving evolutionary agent simulations inspired by MIchael Rothchild's book, Bionomics, and work at the Santa Fe Institute and elsewhere.
He authored Object-oriented Programming, An Evolutionary Approach, a book that is generally credited with launching today's industry-wide enthusiasm for object technology. He has recently completed a second book, Superdistribution: Objects as Property on the Electronic Frontier, which proposes superdistribution as a technosocial solution to the problematics of buying, selling and owning property made of bits as distinct from the atoms from which goods have been composed since antiquity.
Dr. Cox founded the Coalition for Electronic Markets whose objective is to build and deploy a nationwide revenue collection infrastructure for commerce in electronic goods. He cofounded the Stepstone Corporation where he originated the Objective-C[TM] programming language and Software-IC[TM] libraries. At Schlumberger-Doll Research, he applied artificial intelligence, object-oriented, Unix, and workstation technologies to oil field wireline services. At the Programming Technology Center at ITT, he applied Unix and object-oriented technologies in support of the development of a large, highly distributed telephone switching system, System 1240.
He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago for theoretical and experimental work in neurophysiology in an area that has since become known as neural networks. His post-graduate experimental studies were at the National Institutes of Health and at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratories.
For prices, schedule and instructions on how to register, see this web form.