Recently, I drove a small RV more than 4,000 miles through ten Midwestern and Southwestern states. When I asked for decaffeinated coffee or fat-free salad dressing at some of those roadside "Eat Here and Get Gas" kinds of places, people sometimes looked at me as though they thought I might be some sort of communist or something.

I think John Steinbeck had it right when he wandered about with his poodle nearly 45 years ago in order get a sense of the country with which he felt he had lost touch. My own trip reinforced some things I already knew: e.g., if you want to win elections, it's a mistake to focus too much on individual personalities, including prominent politicians.

Instead, travel the country and spend some time at truck stops and other popular locations to get a sense of where the heads of tens of millions of Americans are at during the early part of the 21st century. The attitudes of these people WILL be represented, if not by current political personalities, then by others who are ready to emerge when opportunities arise. During the Civil War, there were Americans in the North who actually believed that all their problems would be solved by either killing or capturing Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee, as if these men had been personally responsible for 250 years of North American slavery. It's important not to confuse cause and consequence now, at home as well as abroad.

With one daughter living in Portland, Oregon and the other with her husband and our only grandchild in Arizona, we have additional reasons for wanting to get out of Minnesota during the coldest parts of the winter once Robbie stops teaching.

Our plan has been to travel and live in a motor home for three or four months of the year. It might be the one we have--which, technically, qualifies as a "motor home," but is really more of a "camper"--or, if gas prices stay significantly below $3.00 per gallon, it could be one of those Class A units that seem to be about the size of St. Paul. Our Rialta with its Volkswagen chassis/power train and the Winnebago stuff piled on top is good for travelling or spending weekends in relative comfort, but it might not make a very suitable home for months on end.

We've been thinking that we could settle for several weeks at a time near but not in major metropolitan areas (e.g., Albuquerque, Tucson, San Diego, Portland) in order to have a major city's services available as well as give me access to major airports. However, I will need daily access to the Internet as well, and, until very recently, this has seemed to be an intractable puzzle. I've looked into the satellite systems for RVs (VERY expensive and not sufficiently reliable) as well as the cellular telephone hookups for laptops (slow, not reliable). Nothing seemed near to being satisfactory by the time we need it.

However, on this trip, I learned that I was able to continue doing NewWork News each day at rest stops, travel centers, and RV parks with only minor interruptions. Wi-Fi "hot spots" have been available in coffee shops, airports, and hotels for sometime. I believe British Airways has found a way of putting wireless Internet access on its planes as well. Texas has announced that it is installing Wi-Fi at all of its highway rest stops. Many college and university campuses now are Wi-Fi "hot zones," and Chaska, Minnesota is making wireless access available throughout the city for a modest monthly fee. Within a year or two, I believe that wireless Internet access will be available nearly anyplace we will want to stop or hang out with our laptops.

This has important implications for online education programs as well as publishing, I think. I'm often asked why I haven't done books, and I point out first that book sales are waaaay down, and, with tens of thousands of new titles each year, it's nearly as difficult to become visible in print publishing as on the Internet. The "dead tree media" are suffering in part because people like me can distribute our stuff worldwide instantly, do continuous updates, and keep full control of what we do, while still reaching audiences that rival those of many conventional print and electronic media. And, why on earth are college students still having to spend hundreds of dollars each term for excessively elaborate textbooks printed on paper that are outdated by the time they come off the press? Are textbook publishing companies run by people who still use rotary telephones and listen to 8-track systems in their Studebakers?

For a long time, it seemed to me that online higher education programs amounted to little more than "electronic page turning" or a re-do of the old correspondence school courses. As a few persons may recall, I spent quite a bit of time during the 1990s explaining why I didn't think that technology available at the time was capable of reproducing the in-person interpersonal experience, which seemed to be much richer and potentially more influential (But, is it always?). On the other hand, I used to tell students that there seemed to be no good reason why dozens of people should have to converge on the campus in dozens of cars in order to watch a video in a group setting. "Someday, you'll be able to dial up the one you want and watch it at home at your convenience," I told them. In fact, I was far too cautious. Soon, they'll be able to watch it nearly anywhere on their laptops.

However, I used to tell about how Bill Gates invited about 100 top corporate CEOs to his home near Seattle each year in order to chat about the future. Here's "Mr. Technology" himself apparently believing that there's something important about eye contact and the personal relationships that can be fostered by direct, personal interaction.

Despite CDs, MP3s, Internet distribution of songs at a buck or so a pop, and other tech-driven alternatives, there is a very big concert business. People who can hear a performer's best work for little or no money from recordings or radio are still willing to pay astonishing amounts of money to see the stars perform in person. The biggest concert acts will earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per performance or tens of millions per tour.

There's also a big lecture business in the United States. Large numbers of speakers are paid thousands, some of them tens of thousands of dollars per speech, and many of these are people whom the general public has never heard of. Of course, "stars" such as Washington Post Watergate sleuth Bob Woodward typically earn huge fees too, but, as in the case of commercial entertainment stars, part of the attraction is the fun of seeing famous and familiar images become flesh, and that's part of what he sells. His ideas are widely available in print for a few dollars or at no cost at all, but he still attracts large crowds and large fees for personal appearances, much like show-biz stars.

Interestingly, before Mr. Woodward spoke at an educators' convention in St. Paul recently, there were speeches by the head of Education Minnesota, Garrison Keillor, and Tom Keating, who is the new Minnesota Teacher of the Year. Tom was absolute dynamite--one of the best I have seen in years. He held the audience spellbound, made everybody laugh, including Woodward, and was greatly inspiring. When Bob was introduced, he joked, "I want to thank the organizers for scheduling me to follow Garrison and Tom up here."

Garrison is an historically important artist as well as a national celebrity, but he's a home-town guy, and can be seen on St. Paul streets walking his daughter to school most days. There were many empty seats while Garrison was speaking, although I think he might have sold out if the convention were held in some other city where he is not so familiar to locals. Tom's performance was the best of the three by far, but the place filled up to hear Bob Woodward because of his huge stature and long-term celebrity. Under some conditions, being live and in-person where one can have eye contact and "press the flesh" matters.

I still don't believe that the technology is capable of duplicating the in-person class experience, but I also believe that it has improved enormously with far greater improvements to come. I also believe that, under some conditions, at least, there's no reason we should TRY to duplicate face-to-face interaction, anymore than we would want to build a robot that would duplicate a human being, complete with toenails. That's not a suitable objective.

Instead, the goal should be to help people learn and acquire intellectual competence and also to have a more varied menu of tools from which to choose in order to meet the needs of a more diverse population of learners. The means by which these learning goals are achieved and the contexts in which these things happen aren't important--at all. If people learn what they need to know at Harvard, fine. If they learn it at a community college, fine. If they learn it in online courses or by independent study online or at the public library or in daily life situations, fine. There is no reason to try to make the new ways of teaching and learning the same as the old ones; instead, the goal should be to make them better and more appropriate to the needs of individuals.

I think direct personal relationships are very important for most students in K-12 education, and maybe many students at community colleges as well, but not for others, given the community college's highly diverse student population. Online courses seem perfectly suited for people who don't need to be led by the hand or nurtured and for whom that sort of thing might simply get in the way. They're perfect for many working adults who are able to work on their degrees or on upgrading their work skills on their own schedules and at their own locations. I think there are many adult community college learners who don't need to spend dozens of hours in a room with their teachers and other students either.

I've always felt that, with respect to knowledge and capability, the destination is far more important than the means of travel or the route traveled. As some may have heard me remark, the only things that the world asks in the long run are whether I really know anything and whether I can really do anything. If the answer to these questions is "yes," there aren't any other important questions. If the answer is "no," there aren't any other important questions either.

Actually, I go far beyond feeling that some people can learn a good deal through the use of the new technologies. In fact, I believe that academe--however it will be defined in the future--is in the process of undergoing fundamental transformation. We're living during a period when change occurs in a few years that used to require centuries or millennia. Even though the modern university institution is approximately one-thousand years old (much older, if you trace it back to Plato's Academy, but there was a very long interregnum), there is no good reason to expect that it will be recognizable within a few years.

A principal thrust of my NewWorld Trends project is that the synergistic interaction of the knowledge and tech revolutions has left virtually all of our traditional institutions far behind, including the academic.

It's fairly easy for a guy like me to say things like these, because, though I have a very deep commitment to learning and knowledge, I have virtually no commitment to traditional academic institutional arrangements, including the academic culture's symbols, rites, rituals, and native dances, and I don't identify with them. I believe that, if we allow others to define us, it's our problem, not theirs. It's why, when asked about my "credentials," I typically say that I successfully completed the eighth grade at Buchanan Public School in Buchanan, North Dakota at about the time the Korean War was ending. That's not the whole truth, but it is nothing but the truth.

As it happens, I'm a compulsive "studier." I think it's fair to say that, before long, I will have been through more new material since I stopped teaching college courses than during all those years of grad school--certainly more material that is relevant to my most fundamental interests and commitments. Moreover, no one will give me a certificate or title as a consequence, and I could not possibly care less.

I wrote a piece recently that used the following example: The ideas relating to quantum mechanics in modern physics are among the most important during the entire 60,000-year history of modern humans, and it's probably not an exaggeration to say that 99.999999 percent of the human beings who have ever lived on the planet haven't understood a single thing about quantum mechanics.

Therefore, if I can achieve an understanding of these ideas by whatever means in whatever context, it's hard to imagine that anything else could possibly add value to my understanding. Certainly not a piece of paper that I can frame and hang on the wall, and certainly not a laying on of hands from university professors who are mostly concerned with academic politics and their own careers. The knowledge itself is at least 10,000 times more significant than all of that put together. In fact, compared to the knowledge itself, these things may not really be worth anything at all. It's likely that the fundamental ideas and relationships of quantum theory will be important ten thousand years from now, while current academic institutions, symbols, and cultural patterns will be entirely forgotten except by a few archeologists.

So, am I enthusiastic about current online higher ed? As it happens, I am ambivalent. Some of these programs are far better than others, and we have better reason to trust our instruction to some organizations and individuals than to others, but that's always been true of traditional classroom instruction too.

For instance, I don't know anything about the University of Phoenix, except that I have heard that it now has the largest enrollment of any higher education organization in the United States and that it is a for-profit operation. Would I be more likely to recommend one of their online programs to a friend or relative than one from, say, Georgetown University in Washington, D. C.? Well, no, but that would be a decision based, not on knowledge of the University of Phoenix, but on the long-earned reputation of Georgetown University combined with complete ignorance of the University of Phoenix. Many people, including myself, have come to trust the folks at Georgetown University as well as many other established institutions, either famous or unknown to the national public, and also trust however they may choose to instruct precious individuals.

However, the bottom-line has to do with consequences. If people learn something of importance, I don't care how they do it or where they do it, and I don't really care if they receive recognition or symbols, traditional or otherwise, for having done it, so long as individuals and society benefit from current knowledge and the civilizing influence of the arts.

I believe that we have much more reason to be concerned about the influence of for-profit or online higher education programs, as well as the relatively low barriers to entry, on the conditions required for conducting quality scholarship and supporting free inquiry than about the instruction of undergraduates and some post-graduate students. These issues require examination that could easily be book-length.

One thing seems sure: Online programs are becoming an increasingly important part of American higher education. There is good reason to believe that a great proportion of currently operating higher education institutions will go dark within the next fifteen or twenty years or so. With rapidly rising costs, there simply has to be some sort of solution to the growing crisis in higher education, and online offerings are likely to be an important and necessary part of it. Higher education WILL become less labor-intensive, and not simply by stuffing more students into larger lecture halls. Whether we like it or not, I think online higher education will be playing an increasingly important role in this solution. Conventional institutions either have to climb on board or watch the train leave without them.

Incidentally, I think it's fair to say that Dr. William Raynor of the State University of New York and I lit the match a couple of years ago that caused the explosion of media and political interest in the outsourcing of high-value jobs to Bangalore and other regions. Various searches found that little was being written about the issues, but almost immediately after I published Bill's first of three articles on the subject on BNWW, we received inquiries from major national media and corporations, and he was invited to appear on a CBS News program. I told him to get his boots on, because there was going to be a flood, given how journalists watch each other and how the national media often amount to an echo chamber. That's what happened. Soon, every print and electronic media outlet had stories about it, and soon, the politicians were unable to ignore the issue, particularly during a presidential election year.

At any rate, American academics had better watch out as online higher education programs develop within a context of rapidly rising college costs in the U.S. Currently, if you call a help line or customer service rep for assistance, you may very well be talking to a bright, educated person in India who has never been to the United States but who has learned to speak English with an American accent. Soon, universities, including for-profit institutions such as the University of Phoenix, may be faced with choosing to use Harvard Ph.D.s in the United States to run their online programs or Harvard Ph.D.s in India or China who are willing to work for one-tenth the amount that U.S. academics expect to earn. What do you think their choice will be?

Gary G. Johnson
October 29, 2004