[quoting Hannafin, 21 May 99] ... In Ken Burns' Civil War epic (apologies to those outside the U.S. for this example), entire archives of historic photographs, letters, and government documents were woven together to tell a story of the American Civil War than none of the resource told/could tell individually. This, in a sense, is what individuals are increasingly being asked to do (or choosing to do)--take personal perspectives on problems and needs by angling differently at existing artifacts--digital and others. You'd need to be pretty fortunate to consistently have available the precise resources needed to address the enormous range of particularized needs that exist or will exist.
Yes. This is really a distinction between "learning" and "making." Making is a way of learning and it is usually more interesting and more "likely" than just learning for learning's sake. The objects I described can't really be used (directly) for making.
But the "films" that I mentioned one of my colleagues is working on are conceived of as a Very High Level programming medium. I don't really understand what he is doing, but clearly if these objects are programmable, you can use them to make things.
Sometimes our goals are mixed. Sometimes we use computers to make real things. I have just finished writing an interface that writes a PostScript program that controls a printer and produces little maps (actually Universal Plotting Sheets). I wanted paper maps. This object (if it knew about itself) could be part of my map ontology.