Page:A Review of the Open Educational Resources Movement.pdf/61



Historical infrastructures—the automobile, gasoline, and roadway system; electrical grids; railways; telephony; and most recently the Internet—become ubiquitous, accessible, reliable, and transparent as they mature. The initial stage in infrastructure formation is system-building, characterized by the deliberate design of technology-based services. Next, technology transfer across domains and locations results in variations on the original design, as well as the emergence of competing systems.

Infrastructures typically form only when these various systems merge, in a process of consolidation characterized by gateways that allow dissimilar systems to be linked into networks. In this phase, standardization and inter-organizational communication techniques are critical. As multiple systems assemble into networks, and networks into webs or “internetworks,” early choices constrain the options available, creating what historical economists call “path dependence.”

Transparent, reliable infrastructural services create vast benefits, but there are always losers and winners in infrastructure formation. Questions of ownership, management, control, and access are always present. For example:
 * Who decides on rules and conventions for sharing, storing, and preserving resources?
 * Local variation vs. global standards: how do we resolve frictions between localized routines and cultures that stand in the way of effective interoperability and collaboration?
 * How can national cyberinfrastructure development move forward without compromising possibilities for international or even global infrastructure formation?

These and other tensions inherent to infrastructure growth present imperatives to develop navigation strategies that recognize the likelihood of unforeseen (and potentially negative) path dependence and/or institutional or cultural barriers. The proposed OPLI seeks to enable a decentralized learning environment that: (1) permits distributed participatory learning; (2) provides incentives for participation (provisioning of open resources, creating specific learning environments, evaluation) at all levels; and (3) encourages cross-boundary and cross cultural learning.

Because all three of these goals are simultaneously social and organizational in nature and central to the technical base, designing effective navigation strategies