Thomas Mamajama Mallon at 12:21pm June 10

And where is the money going to come from to fund FAB labs? I doubt actual tuition will decrease. Also, not all students want to study at MIT. Some people want to be artists, some people want to be politicians, some people want to be nurses. Without traditional college, who’s going to read Plato or Joyce or T.S. Eliot? College perpetuates western culture and history. If a sprawling network of blogs, shallow five paragraph musings on a cornocopia of differant subjects slaving before their reader’s attention spans replaces the sub-total of mankind’s intellectual evolution, then ideas WILL become a limited resource.

Joseph P Jackson at 12:44pm June 10

The rough estimates that Gershenfeld did were based on MIT’s recent expansion plans costing $100 million vs the FAB lab network program which only needed $1 million to set up new nodes. So the cost savings are at least 100:1. This is not shocking at all given the massive waste inherent in University overhead and administration. As for “saving the liberal arts,” it is a lost cause. The same kind of arguments were made when the oral tradition was displaced by the written word. I’m sure the poets and orators worried our working memory would be reduced and nobody would be able to recite the Odyssey from memory anymore. Indeed this has happened, but its not the end of the world–we continually outsource functions into our environment. The best thing to do to encourage western culture is to digitize all the great works–yet the publishing cartel has fought this at every turn. Don’t blame the blogosphere for the inertia and obsolescence of the liberal arts education.

Max Marmer at 12:47pm June 10

Though arguably crowdsourced sites like Slashdot still don’t beat out human curated things like Boing Boing, The UK Independent and Nature, yet. But they will. I think the crowdsourced stuff does a great job of initial filtering, but a human curator is still the better option. The things at the top of crowdsourced systems are very susceptible to SEO and link bait.

I think it’s because our current methods are fundamentally quantitative and until we build up the complexity to where the underlying technology can be qualitative it will be susceptible to a lot of errors.

Max Marmer at 1:01pm June 10

Tom: I don’t think funding fab labs will be that big of a problem. There’s value there, there will be a way to fund it.

Who said all student want to study at MIT?

If you need an artificial support structure to “force” people to read Plato and Joyce then it’s not that valuable for most people and will either find another way to survive or it won’t. I don’t think everybody needs to read the works, and the new educational models will find a way to suggest/recommend/nudge/pressure those who should and could benefit from reading those works.Culture perpetuates without college.

Also, to address your point about a sprawling networks and tons of short bites sized bits of information, this is okay if you understand principles like the Long Tail and Pareto’s principle. 80% of the quality will come from the top 20% of blogs. Which will actually be as good if not better than traditional magazines and books for a number of reasons we could go into later.

Max Marmer at 1:01pm June 10

Also recognize that information overload isn’t a new problem. It has existed since the library of alexandria. Now there’s way more information but we have better tools for filtering now, and will increasingly develop better tools. Clay Shirky said, “There is no such thing as information overload, only filter failure”

Don’t worry, ideas are expanding exponentially, both quality and quantity. If you don’t think so, it’s because you’re either looking in the wrong places, or that some narrow areas can have a temporary decline during a paradigm shift.

Thomas Mamajama Mallon at 1:03pm June 10

The Odyssey was always a written work, but that’s not important. You said 1 million to set up new nodes…what does that mean exactly. One node? Two nodes? Enough nodes for all 3.3 million high-school graduates in a given year? I’d take a closer look at the actual costs.

The act of memorization and the act of having read are very different. It seems that by “outsourcing to the environment’ what you actually mean is ‘ignoring.’ What we’re going to have is a crop of ‘credentialed’ people, very bright perhaps, accomplished perhaps, who don’t know anything. No culture. No history. So they’ll make stupid descisions. No matter how smart you are, without grounding in culture and history you’ll do things like limit free speech, justify totalitarianism, and curb the very institutions that allowed you to flourish. Because in the end these people are humans with families and fears who are as easily controlled as anyone else. Go read Lewis Lampham’s essay on Liberal Arts.

Thomas Mamajama Mallon at 1:14pm June 10

yeah, you might be right Max, overall. It’ll probably go down like you say. But please. Blogs are incredibly stupid. I have yet to read a single blog post that I thought more than moderately stimulating. Seriously. I read these famous bloggers and there’s so much hype around them, but when it comes down to it they’re only popular because they’re free. Once the current system changes all these ‘blogger’ people will be out of work because the system will integrate all the people with real talent, i.e. those currently engaged in traditional paying roles.

Joseph P Jackson at 1:42pm June 10

I will look at Lampham’s essay–see now through the magic of social media I have received a recommendation and will read something I might otherwise not have–you have undermined part of your own position! To reciprocate, I point you to the book the Wisdom of Crowds. There is also a large and growing literature on collective intelligence, which is not a new idea (goes back to Aristotle) Vernor Vinge is the main proponent of intelligence amplification by embodying accumulated human knowledge/skills in technology. He argues this is what our species does. Think of it like using a forklift. Nobody would try to do this by manpower now that we invented construction tools. The same applies with calculators, Google, now Wolphram Alpha, and so on, with ever more powerful knowledge engines to come. We do not need to memorize countries and capitals for 21st century geography. We need to know how to do search and retrieval and integrate information from multiple data sources.

Björn-Lasse Herrmann at 12:09pm June 10

what is it with havard/stanford? how are their resources special or different from other great universities around the world? how does a university (brand) fit into an “unschooling structure”?

Max Marmer at 12:18pm June 10

I don’t know that much about Universities outside the U.S. I’m sure there are comparable universities in Europe too. But those two have the most resources, strongest brand in America. I could indulge more into the ‘etc’ if it’s important. Now onto your last question.

Max Marmer at 12:32pm June 10

Bjorn: I think some brand is always going to be important, it’s way of quickly signaling credibility. (Degrees try to do that, but ineffectively these days I think.) I’m more saying that you want to be able to attract quality young people, quality mentors, attention and resources. Stanford does all that, but I don’t think how they spend their time with the class model and within closed walls is the most effective. I also think the top universities are only average at assessing talent. Think of all the resources Stanford has, as a kind of paste that you’re going to spread on a completely different paradigm and substrate for how learning takes place.

(more to come…)