ABSTRACT
Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory. (Baudrillard 1983:2)
TRACKS TO SUPERHIGHWAYS
The 1990s is the decade of telecommunications. Strictly speaking, ‘telecommunications’ means communicating at a distance with or without wires. Until recently the term conjured up images of the plain old telephone system (POTS) and its attendant telegraph system, the interconnecting network of cables and wires supplemented by satellite and microwave links that span the world. This network is changing from narrowband to broadband, from analogue to digital and from dumb to intelligent. The transition in telecommunications is to the information revolution, what the change from horse and sail to steam-driven transport was to the industrial revolution. In this chapter we look at the attempts being made to apply telecommunications to instruction while the changes are taking place. It is unlikely that the technologies being used for telelearning in the 1990s will be around in the next millennium any more than the current generation of personal computers. The current applications of telecommunications to instruction are like the first attempts at educational television in the days before tape-recording and colour television. They are makeshift and succeed because of the enthusiasm of brave innovators. But do they represent yet another step along the road towards the virtual class or the point at which the journey stops and the foundations are laid? First we need to overview the transformations in telecommunications and the emerging forms that telelearning is taking.
