crucial spaces
John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid (2000) foresaw a future in which students who can afford to take up residence on traditional campuses will continue to do so, benefiting from both face-to-face and virtual encounters with their peers. Disadvantaged students, however, will become the “new commuter class”; their only access to educational opportunities will be exclusively virtual.
Extrapolating more immediate concerns from this rather bleak portrait of the future, it is not difficult to see how distributing computing via portable technologies across campus could jeopardize the more social aspects of learning with technologies. Students computing together in places designated for this purpose are prone to roll over in their wheeled chairs and help each other untangle personal, technological, and professional dilemmas.
With the emergence of 802.II wireless networks came the mobilization of writing that has previously been tied to fixed locations. Students compute in the student union, in nearby coffee shops, at the library, appropriating these diverse sites. But they do not all write in these places at the same time, and elaborate social constraints likely keep many from making potentially inappropriate requests of random strangers who may or may not be affiliated with a university. In addition, a crowded Starbucks is not necessarily suited to handle even small-scale informal collaborations among students with limited budgets. Luring students away from computing with promises of exotic coffee could endanger spontaneous but essential support structures.
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