Why Content Must Be Online And Accessible: Intellectual Usability

I caught a link to Online schools clicking with students [CNN] off of the NetGold mailing list, and it fits right in with issues related to the Digital Divide.

Consider that some children have this advantage and others don't. With the amount of information available on the internet, I know that I personally have learned a lot since the early days of cyberspace - when the web, as it were, was virginal as far as the DotComBoom. In the last 3 years, I have learned an astounding amount by using this computer in front of me. It's out there, I can research almost anything I am interested in - and I can not only read about it, I can discuss it. Forgive me, but isn't that a classroom of sorts?

When we consider what a classroom is, we think of a board where information is shared. We think of a proctor, or teacher, or professor - up there, guiding the discussion. In modern times, there generally isn't as much discussion in the classroom as there could be. Students who challenge teachers in the wrong way shake the status quo, and this causes teachers to take a harder line and have less participation in the classroom. It is not the fault of the teacher, necessarily - some students simply need a bit more of polite society made inherent in them - but also, some teachers do not help matters by not knowing material and not admitting their own weaknesses to themselves, much less the students that they stand in front of.

But the internet as a blackboard. The discussion on mailing lists and websites... This, indeed, is a classroom. We can be both student and teacher at the same time, we can even leave a trail of our knowledge through archives such that some unsuspecting soul 5 years later may be able to answer the same question that was being discussed now.

It's a 3d blackboard. Time, the fourth dimension, is still there as things clamor for more space. But it is not as immediately an effect - whereas books from 10 years ago are now out of print, there is information on the internet which exceeds this. Economically, it makes sense - it doesn't cost much to have a website. It's indexed regularly.

And some children will grow up without access to this. Had I had this sort of information at my fingertips when I was in my teens, there's no telling what I could have accomplished by now. There's no telling what children now will be able to do either.

To rob children of such an asset is worse than piracy - it's privateering. Where licenses serve only as a letter of marque.

Information itself should be available to mankind, not bottled away for some short term financial gain. Profit can be made from the information in this way as well... but profiting off of the intellectual sweatshops created by such division in technology and application creates a divide, a serious divide.

We're moving from the 'haves and have-nots' to the 'knows and know-nots' at the speed of Moore's Law.