Bicycle for Learning

Alvin Toffler wrote: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Even if you do not enjoy reading dense papers, you could get by, most of the time, by watching YouTube videos, asking questions in Quora, following the right folks in Twitter and have interesting friends in Facebook.

But, if you were to do focused learning, there are tools that you search, gather and use, but there is no bicycle for learning

"I think one of the things that separates us from the high primates is that, we are tool builders. I read a study, that measured the efficiency of locomotion of various species on the Planet. The Condor uses the least energy to move a Kilometer. ...and humans came in with an unimpressive showing, with about third of the way, down the list. ....but the man on a bicycle blew the condor away, complete off the top of the charts...and that is what a computer is to me...a bicycle for our minds."

Such a Platform would construct a model of your understanding and adapt the content, based on your current state of comprehension.

Real-time fact-checking and the epidemic of Arrogance

These days, even the Dean of the School of Medicine, doesn't know a whole lot. Philip Baker had to copy portions of Dr. Atul Gawande's speech verbatim.

Dr.Baker didn't know a lot because he didn't anticipate that his students would catch him red-handed with a smart phone, while he was giving his speech. Duh!

While I am disinterested in the media sensation debate, my takeaway is this: 'In this decade, 'Real-time fact checking' is going to be disruptive, with the epidemic of Arrogance, within organizations."

Scott Berkun writes, "An arrogant person only feels smart if someone else feels stupid. Their sense of themselves depends on thinking less of someone else. They insist on correcting other people’s grammar or showing them their flaws, as it’s the only way they can feel an approximation of confidence."

While the benefits of this real-time 'fact checking' is obvious, its ugly side-effects is not at all obvious.

Consider this fictional conference call:

Asok: "I think my point is, Geography gave some, productive crops and animals, which enabled them to develop 3 forces of conquest: Guns, Germs and Computers."

Alice: "You are wrong. It is not Computers. It is Steel."

Asok: "What I meant was..."

Alice: "You are an idiot. Look at the Wikipedia article on the book."

Pointy Head: "Well done Alice. Asok, you are indeed an idiot."

Dilbert: "Asok is an idiot because, he didn't anticipate that you bozos, would not have heard of Jared Diamond, before googling the terms."