Those who toil for truth know that dedication to one's calling is central to discovery. Archeologists trek to far-off sites and labor for years moving mounds of earth to reveal a pot shard or two. Shaolin monks stare at walls without end to reach perfect understanding. Others simply struggle to find that damned elusive Waldo.
Of course, these days, too many years in the field or in an archive's dusty subbasement could prove hazardous. Our committed colleagues might return to the light, dusty tomes in hand, and find a world that bears only faint resemblance to the one they left behind.
The literati among us will recall that Rip Van Winkle was a henpecked husband who slept for 20 years and awakened as an old man to find his wife dead, his daughter happily married, and America an independent country. Today's Rips may find upon awakening that their spouses are still alive, their children married and divorced, and America a nation dependent on the digital technology spawned while our Rips yawned.
To these modern-day Rip Van Winkles we offer some assistance as they attempt to make the great leap forward from the analog to the digital worlds. We traverse the educational experience across a wide spectrum hoping that familiar icons and experiences from the analog past will have a link in the digital present.
The Unofficial Analog to Digital Cheat Sheet
WHAT WAS THEN - The trusty Smith Corona typewriter, which required a ribbon change every three years
IS NOW - The Pentium Pro 200MHz/32Mb/2Gig/12xCD, which now comes with a technical assistant who earns more than the instructor and is never available (to be replaced every six months)
WHAT WAS THEN - Bonding with colleagues over a smoke in the faculty lounge
IS NOW - Internet chat rooms (where a likely topic is how smoking has been banned everywhere)
WHAT WAS THEN - After school detention
IS NOW - Windows95
WHAT WAS THEN - Clubs, the quintessential gathering place, to explore ideas and socialize
IS NOW - Cyber-cafes where you e-mail that guy or girl across the bar and ask whether you can buy him or her a cappuccino
WHAT WAS THEN - That embarrassing and limited dress code
IS NOW - That embarrassing and limited HTML code
WHAT WAS THEN - The slow and marginally effectual student government (to whom you might complain about the dress code)
IS NOW - The W3 consortium, the slow and marginally effectual body in charge of the HTML specification
WHAT WAS THEN - The public address system by which Big Brother would announce school emergencies and World Series scores
IS NOW - RealAudio
WHAT WAS THEN - Saturday morning cartoons
IS NOW - Early morning Shockwave animations
WHAT WAS THEN - Bragging in the locker room about the previous night's exploits
IS NOW - Posting a revealing picture of your ex-companion to Usenet newsgroups
WHAT WAS THEN - The bulletin board where all announcements were posted
IS NOW - Lotus Notes where all announcements are replicated
WHAT WAS THEN - The indestructible ditto machine that made copies of syllabi and tests
IS NOW - Adobe Acrobat PDF files, but they don't smell as good
WHAT WAS THEN - Passing notes in class
IS NOW - Beaming notes from one Personal Digital Assistant to another
WHAT WAS THEN - Dorm resident advisors
IS NOW - Internet censors
WHAT WAS THEN - Department secretaries who actually made the institution run
IS NOW - Webmasters who are the only ones who really know how the system runs
WHAT WAS THEN - The Dean
IS NOW - Bill Gates.
David Andrew is a multimedia developer with The Revere Group in Northbook, Illinois. [email protected]
Jerry Goldman is a political scientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. [email protected]