The Information Society

An International Journal

ISSN: 0197-2243 (Print) 1087-6537 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/utis20

Book Reviews

To cite this article: (1996) Book Reviews, The Information Society, 12:4, 451-453, DOI:
10.1080/019722496129422

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 Book Reviews

In Search of the Virtual Class: Education in an Information Society,

by J. Tiffin and L. Rajasingham, Routledge, New York, 1995, xviii + 204
pp., $17.95, ISBN 0-415-12483-2.
Reviewed by Debra Sprague
Graduate School of Education
George Mason University
Fairfax, Virginia, USA
This book argues that our present educational system is inadequately preparing students
for life in an information society. Few would disagree with this statement, often repeated
by many types of stakeholders in schooling. However, our nation has not yet developed a
shared vision of an educational system for the emerging information society, nor have we
determined ways to achieve such a vision.
What kind of system is needed to prepare people for life in an information society?
(p. 1). This is the question Tiffin and Rajasingham attempt to answer in their thought-pro-
voking book. By presupposing that schooling in an industrial age is based upon trans-
portation (in order to learn, people must travel to a central location), the authors build a
case for schooling based on telecommunications in which people can learn anywhere,
anytime: the virtual class.
For students to learn whatever they are interested in, at their own pace, from any
place in the world, from anybody, on demand is schooling based on mutual interests, not
geographical location. By incorporating technology such as telecommunications, audio-
and videoconferencing, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and expert systems, the au-
thors believe that such a virtual class can become standard educational practice. The au-
thors explain how each of these technologies can be used in the virtual class and their cu-
mulative impact on learning. This vision is then synthesized in a vignette of education in
the near future.
Tiffin and Rajasingham s book contains ten chapters: The Vision; Education is Com-
munication; In a Class of Its Own; The Writing on the Wall; Roads to the Virtual Class;
Telelearning in Cyberspace; Virtual Reality; The Virtual Class; Think Global; and Act
Local. The authors provide a summary of the traditional classroom that helps the reader
to understand why the education system needs to change. They do an excellent job of ex-
plaining how various technologies operate. The book also contains many graphics that
further clarify the interaction between the technology and the user(s). The concept of the
virtual class is expressed by demonstrating how these technologies can be used to provide
students with what they want to study, when they want to study, and how they want to
study. For example, in one particularly intriguing chapter, the authors explain the differ-
ence between virtual reality (books, pictures, daydreams, play, movies, etc.) and com-
puter-generated virtual reality (CGVR). As in dreams that come in sleep, internally gen-
erated VR can be involuntary and fully immersive in the sense that it can place us in a
total, credible, wrap-around, richly textured, high-definition, multi-sensory world that
does not exist, yet with which it is possible to interact (p. 129). In their definition, virtual
reality is anything human beings use to momentarily block out the real world. This defin-
ition influences their vision of the virtual class.

451
The Information Society, 12:451454, 1996
Copyright 1996 Taylor & Francis
0197-2243 /96 $12.00 + .00
452 Book Reviews

Although their argument that education needs to change and that technology can help
with this process is solid, Tiffin and Rajasingham seem to have forgotten the lessons
learned in past attempts to reconceptualize schooling: Simply adding technology to class-
rooms does not change the traditional ways many educators teach. What the authors call
for is a radical shift in the way in which teachers and learners interact, a new pedagogical
paradigm. However, they provide no vision of how to achieve this transformation of
practice, nor do they provide an adequate explanation as to how simply installing new
technology will change education when history indicates that access alone does not drive
pedagogical innovation.
I find Tiffin and Rajasingham s vignettes of the ideal future classroom disturbing.
By using various technologies, students can access information on any topic of inter-
est. Such access can be obtained through a datasuit and helmet. Expert machine-based
tutors are ready to respond to students inquiries. These expert tutors are assigned to
the student throughout the course of his or her life and provide encouragement and
support in academic areas and in life choices. They become teacher, parent, counselor,
etc. The virtual world that students interact with behind the helmet and data suit be-
comes more real to them than the real world. Trouble was when she had to lift her
HMD unit off to deal with the real world . . . . Real reality never seemed to fit vir-
tual reality (p. 153). Technology should not be used to replace the real world, but
rather should be used to augment people s experiences and to help them to make bet-
ter sense of the real world.
How society would afford such individualized systems of machine-based tutors and
technologies is never clarified. Technology is portrayed as a silver bullet for educa-
tion s problems: readily accepted, automatically transforming its users, self-funding. Tif-
fin and Rajasingham do state that they are not advocating the replacement of human
teachers, that virtual classrooms are more appropriate for colleges and universities due to
the need for custodial care at the elementary and secondary level, and that we will always
need to relate to the real world in the real world. However, such comments are easily lost
within their larger, technophilic vision of the future. A future in which we don datasuits
and helmets the same way we put on our clothes, a future in which we have very little in-
teraction with real human beings, a future in which the lines between virtual and reality
become so blurred we can no longer tell the difference is both undesirable and unrealistic,
given what we know about educational change.

The Dynamics of Service: Reflections on the Changing Nature of Cus-

tomer/Provider Interactions, by Barbara A. Gutek, Jossey-Bass, San
Francisco, 1995, 286 pp., $24.00, ISBN 0-465-07891-5.
Reviewed by George Ritzer
Department of Sociology
University of Maryland, College Park
College Park, Maryland, USA
Barbara Gutek has brought the perspective of a social psychologist interested in business
and management to the analysis of the relationship between customers and providers in a
wide range of settings. The main organizing principle and contribution of this work lies
in the distinction between relationships and encounters. Relationships can be said to exist
when providers and customers have repeated interactions and get to know each other. En-
 Book Reviews 453

counters are found in situations where there is no expectation that the interaction will
occur again and, as a result, the participants do not get to know one another. These are
ideal types, and it is clear that many real interactions have elements of both a relationship
and an encounter (there are discussions of relationship-like encounters and encounter-like
relationships). Overall, Gutek sees a general trend away from relationships and toward
encounters. This is a mixed blessing as far as she is concerned. Customers (especially
those who are well-to-do) are likely to gain from the existence of both and from having
the ability to choose between them. However, from the point of view of providers, Gutek
is critical of the kinds of encounter-type jobs available today, with their disconnectedness
and disengagement from other people.
The bulk of the book is devoted to an exploration of the differences between encoun-
ters and relationships and the implications of those differences. Gutek begins by examin-
ing the characteristics of each. She is careful to outline both the advantages and disadvan-
tages of both types of interaction. Thus, this is not a one-sided argument for relationships
and against encounters; neither is depicted as inherently superior to the other. Relation-
ships and encounters are not seen as two ends of a continuum; rather, they are viewed as
qualitatively different types of interaction. The key difference is that relationships involve
an expectation of an indefinite number of future interactions, while encounters do not.
Because of this, providers and customers cooperate with one another in a relationship,
while in an encounter there is no need for such cooperation, making it necessary that ac-
tions be controlled by some central authority.
Gutek looks at relationships and encounters from both the provider s and the cus-
tomer s perspective. In relationships (e.g., family doctorpatient), it is essential that
providers have expertise, whereas in encounters (e.g., at McDonald s) what is central is
the provider s ability to handle contacts with customers. From the customer s perspec-
tive, a relationship works if one gets a lot of a provider s time and the provider has a
great deal of expertise and is able to tailor a solution to the customer s needs. In contrast,
an encounter works when the customer spends as little time as possible with the provider
and is able to get a product that is little different from that obtained by others. From the
employing organization s point of view, encounters require far more time and energy de-
voted to management than do relationships.
Interesting light is cast on two types of pseudorelationships. The first is information-
based pseudorelationships, in which efforts are made to make encounters more like rela-
tionships by drawing upon databases with personal information about customers. The
second is experience-based pseudorelationships, where organizations attempt to have cus-
tomers develop relationships directly with them through such things as the frequent-flyer
programs sponsored by the airlines. However, in the end, such pseudorelationships re-
main nothing more than enhanced encounters.
Gutek has developed an interesting and important distinction and explored that dis-
tinction very systematically. I see a number of problems in the book, but these perceived
problems are traceable in large part to the fact that the reviewer is a sociologist and the
author a social psychologist and professor of management. First, I found the analysis ab-
stract, even bloodless. Lots of examples are given, but they almost always involve gener-
alizations involving doctors or fast-food workers. There are few real people here; the
analysis calls out for some good ethnographic material. The abstract character of the dis-
cussion makes the book difficult to follow at times; there is little in which to embed the
abstractions. Interestingly, despite its focus on interaction, social psychologists are not
likely to be comfortable with this work for many of the same reasons, as well as because
it does not rely on and extend a body of social psychological research.
454 Book Reviews

Second, the book was insufficiently macroscopic, at least to suit the tastes of this so-
ciologist. Although she focuses, as she must, on interaction, Gutek does discuss the larger
organizational context and even at times the societal context of encounters and relation-
ships. However, I think much more could have been done with the societal context. After
all, the shift from relationships to encounters has broad implications for society as a
whole, and various changes at the societal level have, in turn, contributed to this change.
Third, Gutek was unable to connect her analysis with some broader theoretical devel-
opments. For example, her discussion of the increase in encounters in general, and
pseudorelationships in particular, would have profited greatly from an engagement with the
work of the postmodernists in general, and Jean Baudrillard in particular, on simulations.
Finally, this book was a little too balanced for my tastes. Gutek is careful to outline
pros and cons wherever she can. I have no argument with her discussion, for example, of
the pros of encounters. However, the effort to be balanced leads Gutek to miss the oppor-
tunity to offer a powerful critique not only of customerprovider interaction, but also of
society as a whole. The book ends with such a critique, at least from the point of view of
providers, but much of the power of that critique has been lost in all of the dispassionate
and analytical prose that leads up to it. Indeed, the passionate last page or so seems incon-
sistent with the book as a whole and appears tacked on to it.
Although there are many things a sociologist might have liked Gutek to do, the fact
is that she has created an important distinction between encounters and relationships and
systematically applied that distinction to relationships between providers and customers.
To her credit, those in practical fields like management and impractical disciplines like
social theory will find much of relevance in this book.