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Vision 2010 is a project devoted to imagining the effects of digital information technologies on scholarly communication during the coming decade. Digital information technologies are transforming academia, and we are just beginning to appreciate the depths of these changes. It is not merely that the university is being automated, that students are word-processing their theses, or that some journals are now available online. These are simply issues of efficiency. Something more profound is happening: these technologies are potentially changing the nature of knowledge and learning themselves.
Given that scholarly communication may be changing in revolutionary ways, the Vision 2010 goal is essentially this: we want to promote a level of discussion and study that befits an incipient revolution. Much of the information technology management done at universities today is of the fire-fighting sort: we have this problem, how can we solve it? Vision 2010's primary mission is to help universities create their futures rather than reacting to them. As stated in the project's original mission statement, the primary emphasis will be "What do we want to see created?" and not "How are we going to change?" The term "visionary" has been cheapened, but we haul it out here because it fits--we need visionary thinking about the digital revolution or we shall find ourselves its victims rather than its victors.
Toward this end, Vision 2010 brought together scholars and others interested in higher education to create a shared vision of research, learning, and teaching in the coming decade. We have created this Web site as a forum for disseminating the work done thus far by these Vision 2010 discussants and for opening the discussion to participation by the scholarly and library communities at large. We hope you will respond to the ideas and scenarios presented here and will add your voice to the discussion.
The project was initially funded by the Carnegie Foundation, overseen by the Commission on Preservation and Access, and managed by the University of Michigan's School of Information. Vision 2010 is administered by a small steering committee of individuals from the Commission on Preservation and Access and the University of Michigan. This steering committee has worked to involve as wide a range of particpants as possible in the Vision 2010 process. They initiated the project's first phase (now known as Phase 0) in October of 1994 by discussing Vision 2010's purpose and goals with an invited group of 20, a group that included presidents of institutions belonging to the American Association of Universities, a representative of the U.S. Office of Science and Technology, and the chief scientist of Xerox Corporation. They have cast as wide a net for participants in succeeding Vision 2010 seminars in New Orleans in January of 1995 (Phase 1) and in Chicago in May of 1995 (Phase 2). Around the seminar tables in these cities were university administrators, faculty, and a graduate student; computer and publishing executives; librarians; and a physician from a university medical center. The discussions and documents created at these seminars were presented in September 1995 to a group of provosts of institutions belonging to the American Association of Universities. Taken as a whole, the Vision 2010 participant list thus far includes many of those who will have primary responsibility for shepharding higher education through the coming decade.
To help imagine, in structured and rigorous fashion, the effects of information technology on higher education, the steering committee decided to employ the scenario-building process described by Peter Schwartz, President of Global Business Network (GBN), in his book The Art of the Long View. Scenarios are stories, stories that are the result of a deliberative process that aims to identify those forces that will have the most pronounced effect on the direction the future will take. The four scenarios we created plot out four possible futures. Please keep in mind that these scenarios are meant to be instructive and provocative rather than predictive.
What follows is a summarial description of the complex and highly deliberative process we followed in creating the Vision 2010 scenarios. This Web site also includes a more detailed description of our scenario-building process, a process we embarked on at a January 1995 seminar in New Orleans. The central question we considered was this: "How, by, and for whom will higher knowledge, information, and skills and values be produced, distributed, stored, discovered, evaluated, interpreted, protected, and financed in the year 2010?" The implicit subtext for this question could be tacked on as a final clause: ". . . given that digital information technologies are transforming the way we do scholarly work."
We arrived at a list of key factors that we believe will be instrumental in determining the answer to this question. After some lengthy debate and weighing of these factors, we clustered the most significant under two rubrics--Competition and New Literacy. By applying these two labels to the axes of a grid, we created a matrix to organize and differentiate four scenarios within four quadrants.
The y axis on this matrix, labeled "Competition," addresses the question of who will be educating tomorrow's young adults. At the lower end of the axis the university system has held solidly on to its role as the preparer of citizens for participation in our knowledge society. At this end of the axis the competition is similar to today's competition--it is competition among colleges and universities. At the top end of the y axis, though, the university system of today has been stripped of its central and revered role as the repository of public trust for educating the knowledge society. Competition is wide open, and new institutions have entered the fray. This new competition may come from unsuspected sources. As one participant succinctly put it: "It's no longer Yale versus Harvard; it's Yale versus Microsoft."
The x axis on our matrix, labeled "Digital Literacy," addresses the nature of literacy itself in the coming world. The question is largely one of the centrality of text: will text-based knowledge and scholarly communication continue to be the primary paradigm for higher education? "Literacy" itself was loosely defined as the set of core competencies all students should have. But "Digital Literacy" entails a set of competencies with a distinctly "multimedia" flavor. Examples of multimedia educational tools already abound; many can be readily linked to from this Web site. Will tomorrow's student have to be equally literate with text, image, and sound? And with the integrated presentation of all three? At issue is a possible revolution in the nature of the scholarly signal itself: will the multimedia digital signal replace the textual codex book signal as the primary means for the exchange of knowledge? As we move toward the right on the x axis the answer increasingly is "yes."
Two articles may make for instructive reading in comprehending all that is entailed by the two axes of this matrix. The first is "The Age of Social Transformation," by Peter Drucker, and the second is "The Implications of Electronic Information for the Sociology of Knowledge," by Richard Lanham. These articles--particularly the second--informed the thinking of seminar participants. Note that in addition to these two articles, you can also browse Vision 2010's extensive annotated bibliography.
After constructing our matrix using these axes, we fleshed out details for four scenarios, one belonging to each quadrant. These scenarios were critiqued at a second seminar in Chicago and were revised and made more expansive and narrative. The Chicago participants also identified some of the implications of each scenario and the early indicators that might clue us in that higher education seemed to be moving in one direction rather than another
These revised scenarios--four stories of the future, really--were presented in September to a group of provosts from the American Association of Universities. Their responses were varied, but there was wide agreement that the planning horizon of 2010 was too long. Many also doubted that digital information technologies would fundamentally change learning, teaching, and research. The provosts challenged us, as part of the task of envisioning higher education's future, to identify the core essence of the university, that which distinguishes it from other social institutions and which can not be changed without irreparably damaging higher education. Plans for responding to this challenge are underway.
In enumerating the products the Vision 2010 project has produced thus far, we must harken back to the statement of the Vision 2010 mission: we want to promote a level of discussion and study that befits an incipient revolution. That discussion has been initiated, and it must stand as the endeavor's paramount product. Much of the discussion thus far has been synthesized, parsed, and digested for presentation in this forum. But the discussion has barely begun. One of the focal product sets of the Vision 2010 project is the scenarios that so many participants have had a voice in. The true purpose of these scenarios is not to predict but to provoke, to provoke original thinking on and renewed attention to the digital rumblings heard in all fields of scholarly communication.
So please browse this Web site. In addition to the items highlighted above, you will find the following:
According to the Steering Committee's November 1995 report to the Carnegie Foundation, if we are to complete the work we have begun, we need to do the following:
Once again, we ask for your input on the most fruitful directions the Vision 2010 project can take. Which VisioN 2010 Stage II products and endeavors would be most helpful with information technology planning at your institution? Please post your thoughts and comments to our forum on the role of VisioN 2010, or send them via e-mail to vision-2010@umich.edu.
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