The Internet as the 21st century's printing press

Johannes Gutenberg - uiuc.edu

One of the greatest Paradigm Shift in education and learning took place in 1440 when a German goldsmith from Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg, used movable type printing to make efficient the mechanical printing press.

His printing press turned oral instructional delivery into tangible books that used the colloquial speech of the day (rather than the language of the super-literates). This made education and learning available to the masses, not just the elite few. The printing press is generally credited as one of the key factors in the European Renaissance, the period of great human enlightenment that followed in the 150 years after 1450.

Gutenberg Bible With the printing press invention, information and learning could for the first time be made portable, eliminating the need to receive instructional learning dispensed to a large extent by officers of the church, at the church. Gutenberg’s major work, the Gutenberg Bible which offered alternative learning options, gave masses of people direct access to the doctrines of Christianity, that were independent of the church's instructional approach. It is widely acknowledged that it was this action and the ensuing spread of new ideas that soon followed, that fuelling the 16th-century Protestant Reformation in Germany.

From that time until the beginning of the 21st century our education systems have been based predominantly on the text book paradigm created by Gutenberg some 700 years ago. However, the internet today, as books did in the 15th century, also makes information and learning readily available to the masses and is presented in the vernacular of the age (YouTube, MP3, interactive games, e-books). Like books, these products are portable, easier to use with information being dispenced at a greatly reduced cost.

As previously stated, the internet provides a new Paradigm in learning, catering to a self-directed ‘just-in-time’ needs based delivery, being completed at the place of our choosing, at a pace appropriate to our learning abilities and preference (visual, auditory, reading/writing or tactile) and according to our situation. These are the mounting anomalies of this age that are fast becoming the undeliverables of the traditional educational paradigm.

It is these community wide wants, not the messengers like myself, that are creating the crisis in education and learning. It is these anomalies that I believe will inevitably usher in the new learning paradigm with climactic affects for the old. Now, the 22% of the world's population that are currently connected to the internet (and reading this article) more than likely have the choice of online or face-to-face learning because they live in societies wealthy enough to afford both. However, the 78% that are still to log-on may not have such luxury of choice and will be forced to skip a whole educational age and adopt online learning in the same way that the African countries have adopted the mobile phone as their first telecommunications medium.

These emerging countries will go directly from postal letters to video/mobile phone while developed countries needed to progress through Morse Code, Telex, Fax, email just to get to the same point. This action will be to their extreme advantage if our education system does not do the same but remains locked-in-the-past with its outdated structures, methodologies and outlooks.

Even more startling for the first world educators to realise, is that these third world people may well receive their first learning experience via the highly advanced 1st world mobile phone technology leaving us with all the inefficiencies bound up in the centuries old text book learning approach.

Furthermore, the internet adds an even greater learning dimension to the metaphor of the printing press because it allows every person on the planet to own one. That is, to participate in framing humanity’s body of knowledge by sharing their specific, uncommon and unique knowledge with the world through the creative internet technologies of online social communities, Blogs, online forums and Wikipedia.

 The internet has the potential in 21st century to both usher in another golden age of enlightenment as well as make irrelevant the old educational Paradigms that by ignorance or inherent design fails to morph into the new. For example, by the time an institution based student has physically sourced a library text book (with information at least 2 years out-of-date), picked it up and found the information they need, the online learner has sourced, read and critically analysed 15 'specific to the topic' articles (some of which reflect dramatic changes of recent months i.e. global banking crisis) and has formed an opinion of 'truth' based on their own applied experience, their trusted and respected reference group, their learned critical analysis skills and their prior tested and proven discernment ability.

It is not clear who coined the quote “The Internet is a solution looking for a problem”, but I think we all understand the message. For, to a large extent the internet has been dominated (in terms of successful monitorization at least) by industries, products and schemers at the lower end of the food chain. However, I believe that the internet’s future purpose or raison d'être if you like, is of something far nobler -

"To deliver context specific, world-class, comprehensive and eminently affordable education to every person on the planet - anytime, anywhere, on topics relevant to their need and at a pace suitable to their learning preference, ability and start-point" PB 

This is the great global need that every available entrepreneur/entrepreneurial firm should be moving to exploit, particularly if the current market leaders (educational institutions) fail to see it, refuse to exploit it or can't respond to it due to their inherent design faults.

I believe that once released from the shackles of the current paradigm, open-online education will become an industry to rival any other on the planet. It is a product that everyone on the planet needs and they need it their whole life. From an entrepreneurial point of view, there can be no greater attributes for a commercial product.

Furthermore, our low previously inhibited start point will make it the fastest growth industry of the early 21st century. The potential market for online learning is reflected in the 700 million FaceBook members joining in the space of a few years. A community of similarly motivated online learners discovering information within their interest area could be equally as big in as short a time frame. Think about the 500 million english speaking Indians predicted to log on for the first time in the next few years (more than twice the number of current Americans). They too will be seeking learning, but to exploit it we will need to allow the spirit of self-motivated love of learning to thrive rather than impose a restricted, narrow and structured loathe of learning that is the prevailing affiction of this age.

"Learning is a way of life that needs to be learned" PB