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Is the "global village" a myth?
by Barba Buell
The information superhighway has been hailed as a fast track to unlimited data, a path to new discoveries, and an avenue to the solution of ever more complex problems of science and society. But is it really so?
Not necessarily. The Internet is a rich resource, but working it requires time and specialization, which inevitably steals attention from other people and subjects. Erik Brynjolfsson, a visiting associate professor of operations, information, and technology at the GSB, warns that while the benefits of the Internet may be enormous, the Internet also has the paradoxical potential to balkanize science, which can lead to insular thinking and a slower rate of new discovery.
Brynjolfsson finds that balkanization can in-crease as technology improves the ability to search for information, filter it, and collaborate long-distance. By analyzing factors such as the number of topics on the Internet, the number of community members aware of those topics, and the number of scholars who have access to them, Brynjolfsson and Marshall Van Alstyne of MIT's Sloan School of Management have developed a mathematical model showing that while the Internet can dissolve geographic barriers, it can simultaneously create new, equally insular communities centered around topics or research disciplines.
As a result, the same technology that brings distant colleagues into focus can inadvertently produce tunnel vision. For example, if an algebraic topologist in North America spends more time interacting with like-minded scholars in Europe, Asia, or Africa, interactions with the computer scientist, the biologist, or the graduate student down the hall may suffer. "As quickly as information technology collapses barriers based on geography, it forces us to build new ones based on interest or time," Brynjolfsson recently wrote in Science. "Ironically, global communications networks can leave intact or even promote partitions based on specialty, politics, or perceived rank -- divisions that can matter far more than geography."
Because the Internet makes it easier to find more interesting contacts, those who are seemingly less relevant may be abandoned. In other words, unless scientists actively seek diversity, global access might narrow interactions. Stratification is also a danger. To preserve the caliber of interaction, many prominent scientists retreat to small, private e-mail lists and invited discussion groups. The recently announced Platform for Internet Content Selection, for example, not only enables the quality labeling of material in online journals, but can also be set up to automatically screen out messages from those with poor reputations.
The online information explosion makes searching and filtering information not only possible but necessary. Automated browsers and search engines scan the Web for preset preferences and topics by hunting through hundreds of thousands of user profiles to make strikingly accurate suggestions on items of potential interest. As a result, overspecialization can erect virtual walls between scholarly disciplines. If intradisciplinary interactions substitute for interdisciplinary ones, then the intellectual cross-pollination of ideas will suffer. For example, the BlackScholes equation for pricing financial options was derived from an arbitrage model related to heat transfer equations. Without a dialogue between the disciplines of thermodynamics and finance, the options markets might have developed more slowly. Similarly, Francis Crick's training in physics and James Watson's background in zoology helped them discover the structure of DNA and launch an explosion of research in genetics. In general, says Brynjolfsson, the insularity of specialties slows the speed at which new ideas percolate through an entire population.
Right now, incentives for scholars to use the Internet are powerful. Scientists who use information technology appear to be more productive -- they reportedly write more papers, earn greater peer recognition, and know more colleagues. So-called "collaboratories" provide new ways to coordinate large-scale research projects and to access remote data and research specialists from around the world.
But science, concludes Brynjolfsson, advances not just from publication or access to data but from dialogue, apprenticeship, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Incentives are necessary to encourage creation, distribution, and use. Happily, balkanization can be avoided, he says. After all, a scientist may use information to select diverse contacts as easily as specialized ones. Scholars must balance the pressure to publish at the frontier of their own disciplines with time to share findings with other fields. At this early stage in the development of the Internet, scientists should consider what they value as they shape the nature of their networks -- with no guarantees that the technology alone will inexorably create a greater sense of community.
"Wider Access and Narrower Focus: Could the Internet Balkanize Science?" by Marshall Van Alstyne and Erik Brynjolfsson (Science, 274/5291, November 29, 1996)
"Electronic Communities: Global Village or Cyberbalkanization?" by Marshall Van Alstyne and Erik Brynjolfsson (Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems, 1996, Cleveland, Ohio)
"Communications Networks and the Rise of an Information Elite -- Do Computers Help the Rich Get Richer?" by Marshall Van Alstyne and Erik Brynjolfsson (Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems, 1995, Amsterdam)
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