New Technology for Empowering Virtual Communities

In an essay entitled, The Next Information Revolution, Peter Drucker (1997) compared the existing business environment to conditions in the sixteenth century within the emerging publishing industry. Up until the mid 1500s, the people who controlled the industry were skilled printer craftsmen. By the end of the century, a major shift had occurred as publishers replaced craftsmen as the industry leaders. What had happened, according to Drucker, was that the focus shifted from the “T” in IT to the “I.” Drawing an analogy to the present, Drucker suggested that the current information revolution will have a transformational effect on society only when new technology realizes its potential impact on the meaning of information. This article describes a hybrid social software and hypermedia authoring system, referred to as HyLighter, which may fit Drucker’s definition of transformational technology. Social software (also referred to as social networking software) is a broad category of Internet applications for connecting individuals and forming virtual communities using various forms of computer- mediated communication. Hypermedia refers to a computer environment in which multiple linkages enable users to navigate from one segment of audio, video, graphic, or textual data to another segment. Hy- Lighter builds on the affordances of these and related technologies to extend the capacity of the document as a medium for the social construction of meaning. In the process, HyLighter aims to improve individual and group performance in a wide range of domains and interdisciplinary problem areas, improve the quality of instruction, and develop proficient learners (i.e., strategic, self-regulated learners who know how, when, and where to apply appropriate learning activities across various content areas) (Hartman, 2001). This article also describes an advanced adaptation of HyLighter, referred to as Coalesce, which is currently under development. When fully realized, Coalesce will help users merge ideas together from many sources into a unified whole that expresses a new perspective. The process identifies important ideas in multiple texts and exposes a range of views on selected points among a group of users. It also coordinates group activities in organizing and elaborating on the ideas of authors and readers toward achieving a cohesive, meaningful whole. In sum, HyLighter emphasizes responding to a document and social analysis whereas Coalese empasizes the social construction of a new document through social analysis and synthesis. Such new and emerging technologies supports a type of knowledge-building process aimed at empowering virtual communities engaged in knowledge intensive enterprises in a world awash with information.