UNIVERSITY AND INFORMATION:
Society and culture of information in academic institutions.
M. en I.S.I. Carlos Gabriel Rodríguez Camargo
The organic principle of the knowledge is the information that contains(1).
Nevertheless, in certain contexts of change, the knowledge of the tool
or the mnemotechnical tools that organize it, are more important that
information itself. This metainformation constituted by "the data
on data on data" (Millán. 2002. 1) is going to prevent that
any group make a game of cyber-parrot mindlessly, grouping lots of information
using an exercise of search and analysis that is reduced to press the
keys ctrl + c and ctrl + v.
Is worrisome to observe how this insufficiency of technical and methodological
knowledge affects an endless number of social activities, from the policy
and the news until the entertainment, but is really dangerous which it
happens in the classrooms, from the elemental school to the university.
Such situation is syndromatic: symptoms like the academic-administrative
disinformation, the low quality of the scientific production(2)
or the discretionary reserves of some information that are certainly of
public knowledge, constitute a scene that is darker while less diffusion
make the administrators of this information. The affected fields are almost
so varied as the information that carries: administrative, intellectual,
academic, ideological. Each particular field has its own procedures and
ethical rules, but they make an exegesis necessary of all of them to the
light of a conjuncture that forces to see the problem from the informational-communicational
field.
THE MANIPULATION OF INFORMATION ON INTERNET.
All knowledge and information have a technology that aid they to conserve
and diffuse themselves. The use of these technologies is, in first place,
an election and decision of the publisher of this information but, with
passing of the time, in later instances, such information most be include
in different archives, not being necessarily coincident with its genealogy
or its rightly inclusion in an index. We can consider this phenomenon
like a communicative distortion that affects the context and the mechanism
of communication; the particularity of such distortion is that it takes
place in the mnemotechnical mechanisms that were used to organize the
information and could present faults. The find engines can inform about
texts that belong to archives with ideological differences in a same category
of an specific index, because use simplified systems of organization and
nomenclature: clue words as 'revolution' or 'subversion' can produce as
results links to Web sites of the EZLN, IRA, FARC or AUC (3),
also can show links to documents about Internet where found the phrase
'revolution of information'. Without give more information about the ideological
character of the theoretical principles that involve the examples, is
already perceivable the possibility of mistake of the systems of indexing
without a responsible characterization and identification for each cibertext
by his publisher. But, farther, before the inevitable confusion of texts
on Internet, the websurfer need a testing toolbox, a file of ciber-ordeal
for the information, their mnemotechnical tools, their content, their
genealogy and their context. Withal, the information avalanche continues
and grows.
With all these uncertainties and imprecisions, we can say without doubts
that Internet is the 'system-network-of-systems' where the researcher
seek information today. Other big archives of useful information are constituted
by the off-line encyclopedic libraries, sometimes reduced to software
Encarta of Microsoft Corporation that is settled as bait of purchase in
the PCs with operating systems Windows or occasionally are illegally copied
for pedagogical use. Now is necessary to make the precision that we are
speaking of decodificables information by reading skills and its basic
strategies, we did not talk about more sophisticated languages like the
employees in the systems developing and informational hacking; this other
linguistic level manage procedures and tools, that are more restrictive,
elaborated and complex. In both cases, although we speak about the same
habitat (the electronic device of diffusion and exchange of information)
we must distinguish the methods like first element of analysis, scientific
precaution against communicative mythologies and "overreacting attitudes"
(Castells, 2001. 1)
The manipulation of information gains complexity with the intervention
of 'paratexts', estranges about the technological tools of the communicative
device: cultural, social or racial ambit, faith or ideology, even mental
health - illness. But the technological tools still being of publish knowledge
(Castells, 2001. 2) and with them and its knowledge, can be acquired the
ability of selection and reconstruction of information.
THE REVOLUTION OF I.C.T.(4)Y AND ITS PRESENCE IN CLASSROOMS
Without doubts, the big measure of information in Internet supposes an
equal increase in selection difficulty, troubling the access to a specific
content (Giannetti, 2000. 4) When common people suffer this complex, depends
to the university, like academic, investigative and administrative place,
to teach and to find competent tools to make a properly search and use
of information. Based in recent history of Internet (Castells, 2001) we
can suppose that appropriate and corrected use of computing sciences tools
by specialists in university, whom contemplate Internet phenomenon in
its real historic-social, ethical and technological magnitude, is going
to bring to the members of all community a highlight that allows them
to take control of the tool and able they to develop their own dynamics.
The interactive classroom becomes an opened classroom, a forum of discussion
made possible by the curricular structure and the pedagogical practice.
The multimedial classroom is the most appropriate tool to develop modern
pedagogical activity, nevertheless, multimedial classroom is not reduced
to the use of high technology or real time data bases or last generation
softwares, also related about sociocultural competitions that allow to
decode information inside and outside the academic atmosphere social application
of the knowledge through the use of the multimedial tools that go beyond
student commissions and preprofessional practices, that overcomes the
instruction and prohang by the development of the community in network
with the university.
In right application of the new technologies of information - in and from
the university - it must mediate a responsible analysis of the context
and their realities, of the social/economical necessities of the community,
independently of the public or private modality of the institutions, going
faraway to the investigation and generation of a serious theory that sees
beyond the existent organic divisions (technical, technological and professional
education) or the political commitments of the governmental administrations
(standard of quality and pairs accreditation) and the affairs of the global
market. The revalidation of communitarian values and codes in the informational
world can only be given from a serious reflection of technological conditions
like support of the learning and not only like an ephemeral goal.
INFORMATIONAL SOCIETIES AND CULTURES.
When we talk about societies and cultures of information, we goes inside
the sphere of the communitarian affairs like tool of constitution of the
groups. The informational society offers the traffic tools but it lacks
the spirit of participation and the informational culture that the technological
activeness supposes. If we assumed that "Internet is an instrument
that develops behaviors but does not change them, more than when the behaviors
take control of Internet and, therefore, they are amplified and growing
from which they are" (Castells, 2001. 10) the informational theory
is made eccentric to Internet and the I.C.T. to becomes and integral part
of social development of informational domain. The groups seize of the
technological tool to develop a reformulation of codes and to show their
identity frame of values, their cultural characteristics.
The university communities cannot admit a raising of the informative services
tools without an efficient development of the use of the own organic information.
We cannot suppose informational clarity in institutions that do not allow
free access to his protocols and public information. Academic and administrative
decisions or acts of university boards must be public and plentiful diffused.
The constitution of informational culture begins to assume the disagree
and the discussion like incentive of the constitution of the university.
The university is the generator and diffuser of cultural educative paradigms
of each community; on the quality and responsibility of each academic
group and faculty, it depends if they admit a paradigm spurious that it
betrays the necessities that its own community demands or, on the contrary,
to make an independent exercise that reflects the idiosyncrasy and the
identity, helped by the technological tools and the discussion that its
use causes.
UNIVERSITY IDENTITIES IN SOCIAL AFFAIRS AND INFORMATIONAL TRAFFIC.
Another perspective of manipulation of information, shows that can be
distinguished two types of university institutions in agreement with their
capacity of action and diffusion. The first type of institution is the
one that has a developed knowledge and a sufficient access to tools of
informational traffic: electronic mail, forums of discussion, data bases
and consultation online, protocols of informational traffic widely diffused
at academic as administrative levels, virtual campus; in short, institutions
that have sophisticated tools of information production that they are
evaluated permanently. The other type of institution does not have this
tools or it does not dominate the technology adapted for his use. By first
hand it seemed to exist a merely instrumental difference from the I.C.T.
that concerns to hardware and methodology of informatics technologies,
but if we seen on a bigger context around the university institutions
and their social function, we found an element that makes critic the situation:
the capacity of social/political action.
Without trying to make an evaluation of the quality of action of university
institutions, it is possible to see that a huge handling of information
and mnemotechnical informatics tools, combined with a low capacity of
social/political action inside the near community because the nature of
curricular programs (a graduate studies in international management or
M.B. programs focused to global economy) in certain social economical
or political characteristics ("expensive education" for multinational
markets) or in the kind of institutional member (military or religious
universities) will cause that a great depth of knowledge has a minimum
rank of direct application in the community or promote in society an imaginary
of alienation. On the other situation, where a big field of social and
political action is mixed with a bare formation in informational theory
and mnemotechnical methodology of the I.C.T., conflicts arose in curricular
objectives (replication of programs, disorganization of professional profiles,
unawareness of the objectives of the market) socioeconomic constitution
(public, private or mixed organizations lost of its university knowledge
commitment with the community) political ideological thinking (public
'marxists' universities versus private 'capitalist' universities, secular
versus religious institutions, popular versus elitist education) investigation
methodology and scientific discipline (technological investigation of
engineering erroneously based on model design instead technological adaptation,
or professional investigation of engineering indecisiveness between technical
or technological application of new knowledge). These conflicts can be
localised inside informational culture, without leaving the context that
an informational society proposes. Such situation causes distortions in
objects and aims of a desirable education that uses informatics tools
for a global competitive development that increase identity of a community.
FEEDBACK
As a conclusion University - as a knowledge institution - must then develop
independent strategies that keep safe the correct use of information without
any distinction that this information are provided by new technologies
or old information systems. Without these strategies, communitarian institutional
evaluative or observe tools will be obsolete or easily annulled.
The challenge that institutions has now is to make be worth its autonomy
by use of a correct informational administration, to receive the endorsement
of the community and to allow him that summons and communicates his decisions,
otherwise this institutions take the risk of seeming needed a governmental
local or international intervention to correct errors that can easily
be saved. The extended contemporary use of terms like "cibercriminality"
(Jospin, 1997. 11) shows how the international policies can justify an
indiscriminate governmental intervention inside informational environments
of a lot of kinds of institutions and their members.
Necessities and exigencies of educative institutions just can be regulated
by independent interests that their own community projects for them.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CASTELLS, Manuel. Internet y la sociedad red. [on line] La Factoría
no. 14-15 [Barcelona, Spain]: February - September 2001 [cited December
10th 2001] Available in Internet: URL: http://www.lafactoriaweb.com/articulos/castells15.htm
ISSN 1139-5699
GIANNETTI, Claudia. La Cultura On-Line. [on line] La Factoría
no. 12 [Barcelona, Spain]: June - September 2000 [cited January 23rd 2003]
Available in Internet: URL:: http://www.lafactoriaweb.com/articulos/giannetti12.htm
ISSN 1139-5699
JOSPIN, Lionel. Preparar nuestra entrada en la sociedad de la información.
[on line] La Factoría no. 4 [Barcelona, Spain]: October 1997 [cited
February 14th 2002] Available in Internet: URL:: http://www.lafactoriaweb.com/articulos/millan19.htm
ISSN 1139-5699
MILLÁN, José Antonio. La lectura y la sociedad del conocimiento.
[on line] La Factoría no. 19 [Barcelona, Spain]: October - January
2003 [cited January 23rd 2003] Available in Internet: URL:: http://www.lafactoriaweb.com/articulos/millan19.htm
ISSN 1139-5699
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1. We talked about the modern knowledge;
the one that is negotiated at sociocultural environments, based on a file
compiled through continuous revisions and concerted procedures.
2. Scientific intellectual production cannot be considered
only like publication of articles, dissertations and thesis or participation
in congresses and seminaries, it consists of effort of file properly and
to promote the feedback between pairs, more than only evaluation of organizations.
3. EZLN (Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional)
= Zapatist Army of National Liberation. IRA (Ireland Revolution Army).
FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) = Revolution Army Forces
of Colombia. AUC (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia) = United Selfdefences
of Colombia. All of those groups represents illegal forces in there own
countries, but ideological principles of each one are absolutely different.
4. New Information and Communication Technologies, specially
referred to Internet and Electronic Data Bases, also make reference to
alternative ways of communication and information diffusion, that going
from Rap Music and New Rock - with their exclusive TV channels - through
media performances, digitalized animation, urban legends, informative
flies and TV infommercials, till electronic music communities, mp3 and
their suppose legal and illegal exchange.
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