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 What do you know? Though I am humble about many things, I have tremendous confidence when it comes to matters of the mind. A superficial analysis of my education suggests that I was some sort of scholastic underachiever. However, my perspective on the past attributes my lack of effort to an anti-social tendency rather than a disinterest in learning itself. During nine semesters of college, I took a wide variety of advanced courses from many disciplines including philosophy, political science, history, computer science, and communications. Though I experienced the usual pressures to earn a degree, I did not bother to take various easy exams for credit in several required low level courses. However, I did take the GRE and LSAT board exams. The results assured me that my intellectual abilities were beyond reproach. After landing a job as a Web designer, I abandoned my studies. After all, with credible test results implying that I could excel at virtually anything, I saw no need to acquire another bit of documentation verifying that I was capable of functioning in one or two specific disciplines. Also, when I saw my university issue a diploma to an illterate man (not a blind man or even a college athlete, but simply a dimwit who had schmoozed and bluffed his way to a B.S.) I became outraged at the entire system. I sincerely hope that the nation's most elite universities continue to insist that all their graduates are truly educated people. However, I regard most instituions of higher learning as corrupt enclaves of hedonism which are more interested in generating revenue than maintaining any sort academic integrity.While I have antipathy for organized education, I retain a love of learning. I suspected there were problems at my former university long before I left it behind, but these pitfalls could be bypassed. I actively sought out the few courses that offered real opportunities to acquire expertise on subjects that intrigued me. My last three semesters were primarily dedicated to philosophy, which continues to be my favorite subject. As the years pass, I find myself reading major books less frequently, but I still tackle a volume of considerable profundity every few months. Also I spend most of my waking hours online, where I am pleased to find the occasional exchange of important ideas lurking somewhere out in this ocean of babble. My ambitions of a career in law and politics are now long dead. For this I am grateful, since the realities of government are nothing like the noble process I imagined in my childhood. Now my long term goal is to undermine the institutions responsible for humanity's social stagnation. I intend to produce a coherent body of writing that indicts the status quo and lays the foundation for constructive alternatives. Progress in such an endeavor demands that I continue to expand the frontiers of my knowledge and keep an eye out for innovative ideas produced by the great minds of today. For this, the Internet is an invaluable resource. |
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How has the Web transformed learning?Doubtlessly many other authors have taken credit for the idea, and it is unlikely that I was the first to have the following insight. In 1994, when I was first introduced to the Web, I realized it was analogous in historical importance to the development of the printing press. What made the birth of publishing of tremendous significance was the fact that knowledge was no longer confined to the time in which it was originally available. Prior to the invention of mass printing techniques, the vast majority of information was exchanged through the spoken word. When a significant scholar or a gifted artist died, that person's knowledge was often lost forever. Even in cases where information was preserved by hand, it was only available to a privileged few. The practical challenges of producing and preserving handwritten books were many, especially in an age when literacy was scarce. Though a respectable body of ancient knowledge survives today, such long-lived writings are the exception rather than the rule.The printing press changed all that. As important books were duplicated thousands of times, tremendous new opportunities emerged in fields like government, history, and education. Previously, access to knowledge of long dead thinkers was so rare it must have seemed downright magical. Printed books demystified the experience of study while making it much easier to distribute consistent content. Even the best scribes sometimes introduced subtle variations while duplicating handwritten works, and actually translating a book to a different language almost always involved real changes in the meaning of important statements. Printing insured that every copy of a particular edition was an identical sequence of symbols. Also, the mass production of books inspired modern editorial processes, helping to reduce the level of ambiguity in the written word. In the past, especially outside the field of theology, any definitive treatise on a subject was likely to be read only by a few dozen or a few hundred people. With access to a printing press, it was possible to write "the book" on a subject, and influence the entire experts in a given field.Before writing, the only way to share knowledge was to converse with someone who already possessed that knowledge. Manual inscription was a huge step forward, but it is hard to overstate the importance of mechanical printing techniques. Printed books spread undistorted information to distant lands. Knowledge that might have otherwise been lost to the past was now widely distributed, often with immediate and profound consequences. Future generations would find that mass printings greatly simplified the task of authenticating books with historical implications. Also, the fraction of important thought preserved from the time before printing was finally liberated from elite monopolies. Great works of science and philosophy became accessible to any collection with moderate funding, and recreational reading created a new market for works of fiction. On the surface, printing seemed like nothing more than an innovation in the distribution of information. However, it also transformed how humanity preserves knowledge and process of learning itself.Writing made it possible for knowledge to persist beyond the lifetime of the individual who possessed it. Publishing dramatically enhanced this ability while also making it much easier for the same information to simultaneously exist in thousands of different places. The Web takes this to the ultimate level by enabling knowledge to be simultaneously available in every part of the world. A person must actually be in the same place as a book in order to absord its content, but readers who connect to the Web from anywhere gain instant access to all of its content, without regard to where copies are physically stored. Furthermore, the effort involved in putting a document online is, at most, a challenge no greater than the production of a single printed volume. Writing started to seperate knowledge from time. Printing enhanced that seperation and also began the process of seperating knowledge from location. However, as long as the Web persists, all its data transcends the limitations of both time and space. It can be hard to see the full scope of this marvel, especially now that it has become so debased by archaic economic competition. However, a small measure of its significance is already evident to most observers. Right now, it is possible to find answers to just about any general question humanity has ever answered simply by doing research on the Web. Unfortunately, locating specific information is sometimes a great challenge, and determining the veracity of online data poses a new set of problems. Given decades of continued refinement, the Internet will be much easier to search, and the academic establishment will have found meaningful ways to distinguish credible instructional materials from less authoratative writings. Also, the interactive nature of the Web makes it possible to do much more than simply present users with symbols and imagery. It seems almost inevitable that a system of automated education, complete with standardized examinations and dynamically generated review materials, will minimize the need for human intermediaries in the teaching process. Some disciplines require high level dialogue in order for students to achieve comprehension. However, even advanced training such as is required of physicians and lawyers is predominantly concerned with the conveyance of unambiguous factual data. Instructors will always have a role in education, but they will soon become more involved with encouraging students and providing context for new material, rather than serving as a relay for textbook content.In every sense, the Web is about interconnectivity. Another thing that distiguishes online literature from the printed word is that everything is essentially bound up in a single volume. Great innovations are often the byproduct of one thinker coming up with a new way to assimilate a collection of facts already well-established. Gifted specialists enhance their own disciplines, but new fields of study and fundamentally new inventions tend to emerge from the minds of well-rounded thinkers. The unified nature of the Web is perfectly suited to the needs of these generalists. In a future where a vast array of automated learning courses are freely available to any Internet user, low levels of expertise may be acquired on a whim. The lifelong acquisition of non-trivial new skills will become the norm rather than the exception. The random events that lead to historically significant connections will become much more common, simply because there will be much greater interaction between all of the bits of knowledge on record. As a result, an explosion of new discoveries will redefine the human experience. To be sure, the Web is not the end of the evolution of learning. Perhaps advances in mind-machine interfaces will make it possible to upload knowledge directly into the human brain, bypassing the senses altogether. Perhaps thinking machines will evolve to the point where original ideas emerge from articial minds. Perhaps a method of faster than light communicatioin will enable humanity to link with other intelligences in order to join an interstellar Internet. These things sound like the stuff of science fiction, but this is only natural for speculation about the distant future of technology. What we do know is that we are only just beginning to realize the potential of a public global information network. The original printing presses did not pass unnoticed in their time, but the bulk of their impact on civilization was not evident during the first decade of publishing. The next few generations can expect radical changes, perhaps even social upheavals, as a result of the way the Web will inform and elevate countless individuals.Those who pioneer this revolutionary new medium have a moral obligation to be sensitive to its earthshaking potential. New ways of learning and new ways of living are inevitable. We can only hope that major advances blend with the status quo in a series of peaceful transitions. The desire for stability has its place, but stasis for its own sake only creates tension and the potential for unneccessarily destructive conflicts. So long as ideologies and traditions clash on the intellectual plane, the only casualties of war will be outmoded ways of thinking. We must embrace the future, and boldly lead others into this nexus of unimaginable possibilities. Be it unfamiliar, uncomfortable, or even downright frightening, we must embrace the fruits of enlightenment. Denial may be reassuring at times, but it never actually negates truth. The stresses and strains imposed on future generations will derive in part from those we defer in the present. Humanity is on the threshold of an entirely new era -- an age of ideas. However, it remains to be seen if the lessons of the past are enough to prepare us for the revelations of the future. |