About the Future of Learning

Mary Pickford

"The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created--created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination." John Schaar

Below is some speculation as to what learning might develop into in the future. This essentially has to be approached through speculation about technology and social engineering in the future. However one cannot proceed without first trying to project into the future some form of utopian scenario. Such an example would enable us to illustrate the useful idea of what learner directed learning might evolve into in its ultimate form. John Holt in his book "Freedom and Beyond" suggests just such an illustration as follows.

"Imagine that I am traveling into the future in a time capsule, and that I come to rest five hundred years from now in an intelligent, humane and life-enhancing civilization. One of the people who lives there comes to meet me, to guide me, and to explain his society. At some point, after he has shown me where people live, work and play, I ask him,
'But where are your schools?'
'Schools? What are schools?' he replies.
' Schools are places where people go to learn things.
'I do not understand,' he says, 'People learn things everywhere in all places.'
'I know that,' I say, 'But a school is a special place where there are special people who teach you things, help you learn things.'
'I am sorry, but I still do not understand. Everyone helps other people learn things. Anyone who knows something or can do something can help someone else who wants to learn more about it. Why should there be special people to do this?'
And try as I will, I cannot make clear to him why we think that education should be, must be, separate from the rest of life."

We can and do learn everywhere and anytime in our lives. However, at the moment we are mostly confined to special places for learning called schools, where we learn what other people have decided we should learn. But what kind of future do we want for learning? Do we want to perpetuate the same patterns into the future, where others decide what, where, when and how we should learn? Do we want to continue learning material that is out of date and boring to us? Do we want others telling us we have to learn the same things as others of the same age? Or do we want to learn, what interests us, and do we want to learn it here and now?

Learning, the Internet and the fate of Knowledge. Some people think that learning is all about teaching people knowledge, but it's not. It is about people having access to knowledge. Historically knowledge has been accessed from libraries. It seems most probable that to most people, I believe, that the future of libraries will be on the world wide web. In his book "Free Culture" Lawrence Lessig informs us that work on constructing a super library on the internet has already far exceeded that of the library of congress and the great library of Alexandria. In his book Lessig tells the story of Brewster Kahle who founded the Internet archive. In the 1990s Kahle set out to make a copy of the whole internet and then continue copying the internet, at regular intervals, giving a history of the internet over time. The internet recordings became an archive where anyone could access the internet back through time, just as we can access old newspapers. Kahle could not record the entire internet but he collected and archived a large selection of the most often accessed pages. Kahle then went on to archive TV broadcasts in 2001. Working with Rick Prelinger, Kahle began to archive movies on the internet gradually building a huge library of movies available for free on line. All these projects Kahle and others initiated were all constricted by the laws concerning copying.

But what about books? They could also be put on line through a tedious process of scanning and special software that could read the scan. This software could reinterpret books back to movable type in a particular font, but this in turn would have to be checked by humans because the software could make mistakes. No doubt many people tried scanning books and putting them on the internet. One of these people is however of special note and here is what Lawrence Lessig had to say this man Eric Eldred in his book "Free Culture":

"Eric Eldred a retired Computer programmer living in New Hampshire, decided to put Hawthorne on the Web [for his daughter and other interested parties]. An electronic version, Eldred thought, with links to pictures and explanatory text, would make this nineteenth-century author's work come alive.

...It didn't work...[for his daughter] But Eldred's experiment gave birth to a hobby, and his hobby begat a cause: Eldred would build a library of public domain works by scanning these works and making them available for free.

Eldred's library was not simply a copy of certain public domain works, though even a copy would have been of great value to people across the world who can't get access to printed versions of these works. Instead Eldred was producing derivative works from these public domain works.

Eldred wanted to post [the New Hampshire collection of Robert Frost's poems that was slated to pass into the public domain] in his free public library. But congress got in the way. ...for the eleventh time in forty years, Congress extended the terms of existing copyrights - this time by twenty years. Eldred would not be be free to add any works more recent than 1923 to his collection until 2019. ...Indeed, no copyrighted work would pass into the public domain until that year (and not even then if Congress extends the term again). By contrast, in the same period, more than one million patents will pass into the public domain. This was the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act... After the Sonny Bono Act that term was ninety-five years.

Eldred decided to fight this law. But despite managing to take the case to the American Supreme Court with Lessig's help, the case was lost. 

Here's the thing: An opportunity has opened up called the Internet, that makes it possible for literally everyone in the world to have access to all humanity's knowledge.

Just imagine, all the books ever written, all the paintings ever painted, all the music ever written, all the music ever recorded, all the movies ever made, being digitized and put on the world wide web. Just imagine almost everyone having access to all of this. Imagine that even all that could be just the tip of the iceberg. Imagine all the culture of every nation being digitized and put on line. Imagine every person with a computer and a connection to the Internet, or who walks into an Internet Cafe having access to all this information instantly. Think what this could mean to the expansion of knowledge and art. Think of what it could mean for freedom and equality. Think what this could mean in enabling children or adults to learn. This is all possible right now. The technology is there and the people are there who are willing to give the time and effort freely to see this happen. We are on the verge of being able to gain the most miraculous gift in the history of humanity. Why then are we not seeing this happen? Well in some ways we are beginning to see this happen. However, the reason we are not seeing more is that the big companies are unwilling to relinquish their death grip on art, knowledge and culture. Art, knowledge and culture these days means money.   

Greed and the fate of knowledge. Sadly, it is possible then, that this great gift is not going to eventuate. The Hollywood giants and the other big media companies see the potential copying ability of digital media on the Internet as a giant Balrog that is going to swallow them up. Likewise they see themselves as Gandalf unflinchingly determined not to let to let the Balrog pass. But the truth is that big companies are not the valiant defenders of creators. For the most part they are short sighted money making machines in a capitalist system that relies on human greed. These companies feed off the creators of the world most of who's work they own, and they, in pursuit of their own ends, may prevent the people of the world from gaining this incredible gift, the gift of having the world's knowledge, art and culture at our fingertips. Bill Ivey former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts in the Clinton administration had the following to say in his book "Arts Inc.":

"In the world of technology-dependent art forms, the creator generally does not end up controlling, and sometimes not even owning, the rights to his or her own work. Instead, anyone who wants to incorporate heritage art into something new must acquire the assent of the corporation where the rights to that creative work reside."

The infinite expansion of copyright. How may of these companies prevent this wonder eventuating? The answer is copyright. A book or movie that is currently copyrighted cannot be placed on line because it would allow access that people did not have to pay for. This would not be so bad if copyright period was just twenty or thirty years, but the Hollywood moguls have been busy extending the period of copyright, till in the USA it is now 95 years for corporations or a lifetime plus 70 years for individuals. Big businesses like Disney, in fact, lobby to extend copyright every time it looks like one of their intellectual properties is about to become common property. You may think, "Who cares about Mickey Mouse." But they are not asking for a special extension for Mickey. What they are asking for, is an extension of every item that is currently in copyright. Why have individual rights been increasingly extended if the corporations are central in the pushing for extending the copyright terms? The answer is simple. The thrust of the corporate argument is that they are asking for the extensions to help and encourage art and artists. They would truly expose themselves as greedy if they did not also ask for extensions for individuals also.

Curiously most countries in the world seem to be following USA's lead in this. Copyright is actually a relatively new thing that has crept into legal circles in response to technology making it easier and easier to copy artistic endeavors. Instead of embracing this miraculous ability to make knowledge instantly available to all, the corporations are trying to crush this new technology under foot. We are losing our freedom of access to the world's knowledge as the world's knowledge is increasingly copyrighted. Knowledge, art and culture, that should be the common property of all people, in this way may become private property.

Only if the rest of the world does not follow the USA in extending copyright this amount or the USA reforms their copyright laws can this calamity be avoided. This site would like to see copyright reduced to 25 years, and only extended if the copyright holder registers his copyright with some government body and only for a total of 50 years.

Optimizing Learning in the Future

In his book "Future Perfect" Stanley M. Davis looks at the trends for optimizing business in the future. These trends that Davis identified apply not only to business and organization but apply to everything. They are not a utopian vision but rather an inexorable pressure propelling us into a future which may be good or bad. This, it seems likely, is even true of knowledge itself, and Davis gives us a trend structure to understand where knowledge can and perhaps should go in the future. These trends are truly a force plowing the fields of reality, and have the potential to optimize all things. Knowledge itself has started to be affected by these trends. Still, it seems likely that almost everything else will be shaped by these trends before learning is changed by it. Yet, surely applying these trends to learning will be by far the most important for humanity, and will enable a giant advancement in human and social actualization.

Davis's trends apply to learning and knowing as follows:

1. Any Time Ultimately we want to know, what we want to know, when we want to know it. Bringing the time to access it takes to find out things closer and closer to zero, must be the most important future goal in learning.

2. Any Place Ultimately we want to know, what we want to know, where ever we are, when we want to know it. Bringing, the distance we have to travel in order to find things out, closer and closer to zero, must be the second most important future goal in learning.

3. Prosumption Ultimately we want what we want to learn to be in a form, that is easiest and most enjoyable for each of us to learn. In other words, we want any prepackaging of knowledge, to be in a form that is optimized for each of our unique individual minds to learn.  More than this it must be understood that each person will need to be considered part of the production process and thus adding value to the product. Bringing each learning experience closer and closer to exactly how each person wants it to be, must be the third most important future goal in learning.

4. Beforemath Ultimately learning can not be just about answers. Learning is mostly about questions. We can never be sure that the answer is right, but we can be sure that the question is worth asking. If we know, what we do not know, we can begin creating conjecture in an effort to find it out. But if we do not know, what we do not know, we may never begin to find it out. The true learner must never be happy with the answers or the questions. He must divert part of his energy into criticizing the questions and formulating new ones. Surely this the forth most important future goal in learning.

5. No-Matter In the new economy, knowledge is both the fuel that drives it and the principle product that it produces. Knowledge itself has no matter of course, but in order to store it in world 3 some matter is required. But its storage on the web or even on a computer requires little or no mass. Many new technologies will contribute to improvement of the media in which it is stored, and contribute to continuing to reduce the amount of matter involved. This must also be an important future goal in learning.

Learning has three distinct facets and to understand how to optimize it in terms of Davis's trends we must do so in terms of these three facets.

1. Loading the data. Firstly, 'loading the data', is the process of moving knowledge from Popper's world 3 to world 2. This might also be termed making external data available internally. Or we may say that we draw on the information that mankind has collectively amassed. Here knowledge is a commodity it can be bought and sold and shared. Here also knowledge is a discovery it can be lost or found, hidden or exposed.

2. Running the program. Secondly, 'running the program', is the process of forming information to match world 1 in world 2 and moving it from world 2 to world 3. This might also be termed the creation of knowledge. Except for our earliest years, this is never pure and is only accomplished with the loading of new data. Here knowledge is an invention it can be made.

3. Debugging the program. Thirdly, 'debugging the program', is the process of finding the discrepancies between world 2 knowledge and world 1 information and finding the discrepancies between world 3 knowledge and world 1 information. This might also be termed forming knowledge into hypotheses and testing them. Here knowledge is change, it can be improved, superseded and replaced.