I watched a very interesting show on TV recently with Englishman Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) discussing the invention of the printing press and it's impact upon culture and knowledge. Throughout the program I was struck by the parallels between the impact of the printing press and the impact the internet is having upon culture and knowledge today!
With the invention of the printing press knowledge held by a few became available to the many. Learning existed, but in universities only for the elite. Increased availability of printed books however, led to a flourishing of knowledge, no longer could knowledge be held by the few. It became more difficult to tell people how to think, as they were now able to read books themselves and interpret text as they saw it. A direct result of this was the renaissance, the religious reformation and the industrial revolution.
After a period of time others saw a need to organise the world's expanding body of knowledge and leading to dictionaries and the first encyclopedias. Once knowledge had been organised (in a rudimentary sort of way) the platform had been set for education of the masses, beginning in the late 19th century.
So it may be said that the invention of the printing press led to the education and learning systems in use around the world follow today.
But things have changed! The rise of the internet knowledge is making knowledge even more accessible to everyone. You don't need access to books, all the world's knowledge will be available to you. In fact Google's famous mission is to:
"organise the world's knowledge and make it universally accessible and useful"
Google has certainly done a great job so far at making knowledge universally accessible, however, to me at least, there is still work to be done on making the world's information useful (the education part).
After the printing press, dictionaries and encyclopedias arose to organise this knowledge, education came after this. Everything moves far faster today than when the printing press was invented, however perhaps the same pattern is being followed today. Organisation of information comes before use, ie before education and learning.
Where are we now? Without a doubt the world has changed! Barriers to knowledge and learning are being torn down apace, BUT the education system is lagging behind, continuing to follow the old way. Certainly there are many people chipping away at the edges of the education system to re-invent the system. From this most eLearning systems have arisen. It is worth considering however that perhaps most of these attempts to 'modernise' learning are really only shuffling around what already exists. A full redesign is needed.
A real and fundamental shift within all this has has been the move from a 'Read Only' (see my earlier post) system of learning to a 'Read Write' world where anyone can create (think of the world of blogs, youtube and so on).
Everywhere is the name of this post, I called it this because this is the future of knowledge. Everywhere will change education and learning in ways that aren't even obvious even now. Everywhere will also lead to changes beyond learning, it will no doubt change the world in ways even greater than the invention of the printing press did years ago.
I don't have a real conclusion here! As far as education and learning are concerned we are still searching for what Matt May would describe as an 'elegant solution'. My point is that we are in the middle of change, we could just shuffle around existing ideas on learning OR we could design new way forward