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 , is a director of information
technology at Duke University and one of six
principal architects of the Croquet Project
(along with Alan Kay, David P. Reed, Andreas
Raab, David A. Smith, and Mark McCahill). He is a
computer scientist known for his work in user
interface design and in the design of computer
systems that support collaboration between large
numbers of users. He began developing
computer-supported collaboration systems
involving self-optimizing massively multi-user
online 3D environments in the mid-1990s.
What is your
greatest fear for the future of networked
technologies? I would say the fear is
that the ease of forming social groups online can
lead to essentially a closing in of the world
rather than an expansion of the world. That is,
people may be interested in only being associated
with people who think the way they do or only
accessing resources that don't challenge
their world view. As a result, the world to those
people becomes much narrower and their view
becomes much narrower and more parochial and that
has an erosive quality on democracy. When the
populace is not educated in a broad sense, then
democracy does not work very well.
What is your most
fervent hope for the future of networked
technologies? I tend to be quite an
idealist, and I'm working in the context of
higher education. I believe a networked world
provides information resources to people, allows
social groups to function and reinforce
themselves, allows the social dynamics to create
value for people in those spaces. The sum total
of those social interactions and access to
information resources leads to an education, an
enlightenment, if you will, of people, which
leads to a democracy being much stronger.
What technology
will have the greatest impact on our everyday
lives the next 10 years? It's the
ability to connect to information anytime
anywhere. And more than that, to connect to
social context – to other people. You will
never need to be alone. You will always have the
access to a broad group of people, no matter
where you are.
Looking out more
than 10 years, what development will have the
greatest impact on society? I think what
we're in the middle of here is a real change
in the way we use information technology. The
devices that we've had and have been using,
the computers, the desktop computers and even our
laptop computers, have primarily been about
carrying around calculation devices. The name
"computer" means it's computing
something, right? We're at the end of an era
where computers are actually used for computing
and at the beginning of an era where computers
are used as media devices, as ways of
communicating with each other. The early notion
of the computer has been this solitary calculator
that wasn't network-connected. You know, you
bought your computer, put it on your desk, and
then the idea of connecting it to the network is
something relatively new – that capability
has only been around for 160 months. Now
we're moving into a time when computers are
in our hands. I have right here a little computer
and I carry it around with me. It's like a
little laptop computer, and this is with me all
the time, and it's not just a computer,
it's a TV camera, and I am wirelessly and
ubiquitously connected to a network so I can
actually create media and pass that media to
other people and publish that media, I could
consume media that other people are creating.
This is more than a calculator. This is a little
communication device and it really represents a
very early stage in the capabilities that are on
their way here. I think the whole nature of
computing and conductivity is really poised to
change. That's one of the things we're
exploring – especially in my work at Duke
University – is how can we take advantage
of the fact that people are carrying these very
powerful devices around with them – how can
we use those to extend the value of the
educational experience.
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