An interview with William J. Mitchell on
new space for learning, education and creativity.

MIT, Cambridge, Fall 2003
Author: Federico Casalegno, Ph.D
casalegno@mit.edu
http://www.mit.edu/~fca

This interview has been done within the research project on
“creativity and learning”, fall 2003, Design and Fabrication Group @ MIT.

Group web site: http://architecture.mit.edu/projects/dfg
Prof. William J. Mitchell: http://sap.mit.edu/people/mitchell.html

William J. Mitchell is Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences, Academic Head of Media Arts and Sciences, and Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT. He teaches courses and conducts research in design theory, computer applications in architecture and urban design. He is author of the recent books City of Bits, E-topia and Me++, (MIT-Press). This trilogy explores the new forms and functions of cities in the digital electronic era, the impact of electronic media in societies, the implications of the digital tele- communications revolution and suggests design and planning directions for the future.

Federico Casalegno: New technologies and the overlapping of digital information and physical spaces are changing the learning environments and the learning communities in a considerable way. How can we define these new spaces? How can we understand these emerging learning communities?

William J. Mitchell: Well, the important thing, always. to understand about spaces for learning is that they’re social spaces. They’re spaces that support some sort of learning community. But the important thing is to support a community where there are intense interactions. Usually, the most interesting kinds of learning communities are communities where there are multi-way interactions. These days, certainly, the more multi-way, peer-to-peer kinds of communities engage <in> a lot of problem solving that allow unpredictable things to happen, that allow exploration of ideas. <These> are, I think, by far the most interesting sort of communities. Now, the interesting thing, the particularly interesting thing about them these days is that they can be a mixture in various different ways of physical space and electronic interconnections.

So you think of a whole spectrum of options, at one end of the spectrum are purely physical spaces like the old-fashioned one room schoolhouse, which brings people face-to-face in a single coherent space, and they all work together. On the other end of the spectrum, you can think of it <as a> completely geographically dispersed community supported by email and web connections, video conferencing and so on, with no physical coherent space whatsoever. And then all the way in between there are a whole lot of different options that are some sort of combination of these things. And I think the way you have to think about these spaces these days is to... what’s the optimal combination of physical space and electronic interconnections to support a particular learning community? And there’s no single answer, I mean different circumstances, different cultural contexts, different practical demands suggest a lot of different answers to that issue.

FC: At MIT you explore innovative ways in which the use of interactive communication can be more effective. What did you learn from these experiences, [especially] in using remote collaboration for education?

WJM: Well a couple of things... One of the things about remote collaboration, as we’ve done it in design at MIT, is <that> it reverses the usual model of remote interaction and education. Traditional way of thinking about remote interconnection and education is that you’re exporting educational resources from some kind of central point. So you might video-cast a lecture for example, or set up a web site where you pump out material to the world. We look at it in exactly the opposite way, we look at it as importing resources in order to enrich the face-to-face experience. So in design studios for example, we use electronic interconnection to import critics from a distance into the studio, to import collaborators, to import resources and so on. And this is something that has turned out to be enormously successful. It breaks down the limitations of the physical space, breaks down the walls of the studio, it retains all of the advantages of intense face-to-face interaction, the emotional intensity of the traditional studio experience, but it adds additional resources to that and that’s really what we’re trying to do.

FC: The way in which you integrate electronic technology into the physical space is really important and can make a huge difference in designing new space for learning. Could you develop this point in relation to the design studio?

WJM: In the early days of computer technology and telecommunications in the studio, there was a pattern of creating these specialized laboratories to do this kind of work. So they were separate from the everyday physical environment in which design was done. There was <a> special teleconferencing room, special computer lab or something like this. And this was actually terrible, really terrible. I mean, there was a practical reason for it; the equipment was expensive and all of these sorts of things. But it meant that the social fabric of the studio was disrupted, and the kind of experience of the studio was disrupted. You needed to go to a special place in order to use certain sorts of facilities. To underline how ridiculous that is, it’s kind of like going to a special place to use a pencil. Imagine every time you needed to use a pencil you go to the pencil lab, and use a pencil. Clearly that’s crazy. What you want is just a pencil in your hand and be able to use it when and where you need it.

So that was the first thing, then the second thing that happened was along came personal computers and networks, and so we were able to put personal computers on student desks in studios. Well that was a lot better, but it still meant that the activities had to be clustered around the computers. So if you wanted to videoconference, it had to be tied to that location. If you wanted to see a student’s web site, if you wanted to see their CAD files, you had to go to that particular location.

And a third thing that’s come along is use of wireless laptop computers and highly portable telecommunications equipment and that allows the space to be used in a much more ad hoc, spontaneous kind of way where groupings, social groupings, can be made in the way that just makes sense at a particular moment where students who want to get together to work as a group can do it without losing contact with their electronic resources and so on. And this has been obviously much more successful - as we’ve seen - because it preserves the social fabric that’s very important in face-to-face interactions, and the way the dynamic of the studio works. But it adds something to it - it adds this electronic component to it.

FC: The MIT campus has a wireless connection everywhere. This change from a few fixed access points to ubiquitous computing is really important, and this changes not only the educational model but also the configuration of the learning space. How does it change it?

WJM: You really want the technology to be unobtrusive and flexible and gracefully available at any point where it might make sense to use it. And fortunately advances in technology has made that possible. You take something as simple as a telephone. It used to be that you had to go to a special place to make a telephone call - the telephone box on the wall or at <a> special room where they had a telephone. Now, of course, everyone has a telephone in their pocket, and so that happens anywhere. And same with laptop, you know wireless laptop computers. Now any place is a work place. And so what that means, instead of building spaces around the technology like old-fashioned computer labs, and telephone boxes and telephone booths, and videoconferencing rooms, and um you know Athena clusters, all of these kinds of things I think are very much in the past. You try and build a physical environment that’s very flexible, very responsive to basic human needs. Very simple things like natural light, open wall windows, operable windows, comfortable places to sit, places you can appropriate to form a group and just inject the technology into these kinds of very human-centered places - that’s very much the philosophy now that we’ve assumed.

FC: MIT students have wireless laptop computers and they use it during classes and seminars. How does it change the educational setting?

WJM: I find in a lot of my classes and seminars now, the students have their wireless laptop computers in the class. Well that enables them to take notes and so on just like a pad of paper might. So that’s one thing, but it does two other things that change the power structure and the hierarchy in the classroom in very interesting ways. The first one is that they can surf into the Web and pull down instantly on the fly information that’s pertinent to the topic at hand. So if you’re having a seminar and you raise some point, you'll find some student in the back of the room suddenly goes into a web site and generates a whole lot of information related to that point. Now that could be in some styles of teaching a very threatening kind of thing. It can threaten the superior knowledge and power of the professor and so on. But if you look at it another way, and this is certainly the way I like to look at it, it enriches the seminar experience absolutely, enormously. They <are> just raising the quality, raising the knowledge level, raising the groundedness of the seminar, and the data and the background that is needed and so on. So this is enormously exciting that students can do this.

The other thing they’ll do of course is send messages to each other within the class - that’s kind of like talking in class and passing notes, and again that could be regarded as extremely threatening and disrespectful and so on. But, again I look at it in a completely different way. It provides another level to the discussion and it enriches the discussion in some very, very interesting ways. So I think teaching styles have to adapt to these things, not only to tolerate them, but much more positively to recognize that they’re there, and recognize that they’re important and learn how to take advantage of them in teaching style.

FC: In this frame, there is no more specialized place for learning or for using a particular technology; it is more an ambiance or state of mind. The variety of learning spaces seems to be a very important characteristic of the new space for learning.

WJM: Right, I think the way to think about it is to say that, firstly, learning is unpredictable; you don’t know where it’s going to happen, you don’t know when it’s going to happen. So you need to provide for the possibility of happening anywhere in a completely unplanned way. That’s the first thing.

And the second thing is people need variety. Sometimes they want to work in a quiet place. Sometimes they want to work in a kind of sidewalk café sort of atmosphere where they’re, you know, related to a public place. But a little bit aside from a public place, sometimes they want to work in a very noisy, intense studio session. One size doesn’t fit all. Different people are... different. And also the same person at different moments wants to work in different kinds of ways. So it’s extremely important to provide this sort of variety of learning spaces.

FC: Your research investigates the combination between digital information, and social and physical spaces. Your trilogy of books City of Bits, E-topia and the forthcoming Me++ investigate these issues from a macro to micro-scale. If we think of the emerging configuration of new learning environments, how can you describe the evolution of this relationship between digital information and physical spaces?

WJM: Well, if you take a very long perspective, to think about libraries is a good way to think about this. Really, the origin of the university... one story of the origin of the university - of course, you can construct this story in many different ways - but one good way to construct this is to think of the great library of Alexandria as being the origin of the idea of the university. And of course the center of the library of Alexandria was a collection of unique manuscripts... So this collection of manuscripts at a particular physical location attracted scholars from all over the world. And then because it created this concentration of scholars, then all sorts of interactions began to happen among the scholars. The interactions happened among the scholars. And so there was a scholarly community structured by this unique resource. And so universities, traditionally, actually have been structured around their libraries. This is a Medieval tradition through the 19th century and into the 20th century. Then it became, in the 20th century particularly, libraries very often became lending libraries - circulating libraries - so that the libraries as the center became spatially less important because you take the book out of the library and go work somewhere else. Students work in their dorm rooms and so on.

So a different spatial system emerged. Now with the Web, the access to information is no longer a centralizing influence. So that kind of factors out of the equation. It used to be... It’s like water. It used to be villages were organized around the village well, and you have to come to <the well>. But now everybody has piped water supply, so water is no longer a centralizing influence. So in thinking about the spatial organization of campuses, and other learning environments, you still need things that are attractions - that bring people to a center. But a library mostly is not going to be that. But food, for example, you know, cafes are going to be this kind of thing. Studio space provides a kind of gathering place, and work place, and a place to physically keep work. Laboratories provide that kind of function because there’s unique equipment and so on. So it’s a different kind of spatial ordering that’s developing.

FC: How important is the physical representation of digital information in the creative learning process, especially for designers and architects?

WJM: What really is interesting and important is the critical way to put the digital and physical together. So in design for example, it’s often very important to get your hands on a physical model; tactile experience at working with a physical model is really important. The business of being able to structure a discussion around a physical model is really important <and> different from structuring it around a computer screen. So one of the things that’s extremely important is finding ways to translate between digital and physica. And so in design studios now we have 3-D rapid prototyping devices, for example, that can take a digital file that represents some design and convert it into physical model that you can then use in a different kind of way. Or, conversely, we have 3-D scanners that enable you to take a physical thing and convert it into digital representation. So these processes of translating back and forth between digital and physical are really, really critical - really crucial things, I think.

FC: I’d like to focus on the creativity process. You know well the Greek philosophy and culture. And for Plato, creativity was an ineffable attribute of certain mystery, like the gift of the gods. In designing new space for learning, you’re probably doing the opposite in the sense that you’re trying to set the best condition to improve creativity.

WJM: Well, I think... I mean, obviously I don’t believe it’s a mysterious gift of the gods. I think what you can do very effectively is create conditions create necessary conditions, for creativity and remove impediments to creativity. Now, that definition of creativity is that unpredictable thing. If you could predict it, it wouldn’t be creative, right? So that’s a kind of paradox; you can never define sufficient conditions for creativity, <from> which you can create necessary conditions. So creating a knowledge-rich environment is one part of it. Creating the possibility of making unexpected connections by allowing people to bump into each other, by allowing knowledge to be put together in different sorts of ways; this is important. Creating a cultural atmosphere that’s not authoritarian but allows and values speculation and encourages people to develop crazy ideas cause they might lead somewhere; these are important things. Valuing innovation, you know setting sort of expectations as an important thing.

So creating the right kind of community, ambiance so that people can bump into each other. I mean a lot of my best ideas have come from unexpected encounters with somebody somewhere where some discussion is started that neither one of us would have expected. That’s an important part of it. Creating solution intensity, one of the things about a campus like MIT, which I think is a very creative place, is it just concentrates a lot of talent and creates an expectation that important things are going to happen. It creates a kind of emotional intensity that puts... raises people to their best level and it simply creates a higher probability that you’re going to bump into interesting people and something may come out of that. I think these things are actually not mysterious <and> doesn’t guarantee that creativity will happen, but it greatly increases the probability, I think.

FC: How can information technology act as a powerful amplifier of creativity?

WJM: One of the things this is so obvious as to almost be a cliché, but it’s actually very important, one of the things that computer technology can do is to allow you to generate and evaluate ideas much faster. So for designers, for example, exploring the geometry of a building - potential geometric options for a building - you can do it by hand with physical models and pencil and paper and so on. I mean you can get a... obviously you can do it very effectively that way, with the right sort of computer software, right sort of CAD software and the right sort of automated generative software. You can explore orders of magnitude, many more alternatives, and you can also evaluate these alternatives. You can run, you know, structural evaluations, and you can run all sorts of evaluations this way. So it’s a very simple part of it, but the most fundamental mechanism of creativity is trial and error, simply generating ideas and trying them out. So if you can increase the cycle, the trial and error cycle, you’re going to get further. I think scientists understand this, designers understand this. Trial and error is very important and information technology can speed it up enormously.

FC: Thank you very much.