I had an interesting conversation with someone a few weeks ago about the role of education in the Internet age. My view is that education needs to be rethought. With the arrival of the Internet, there has been a vast transfer of wealth from educational institutions, such as schools and libraries, to the public. It used to be, if you wanted to learn about a particular topic — say, chemistry — you had to go to the library and check out some books (and, often, they were already checked out so you had to wait) or take a class. Now, reams of material on chemistry are available for free on the Internet. You can even see video lectures and classes on YouTube.

Basically, there is more educational material out there than there was 30 years ago. Now what happens when there’s more of something? It becomes devalued. Education, or at least educational materials, are simply worth less than they were in the past. (I freely concede that a lot of this is due to blatant violation of intellectual copyrights, but we are where we are.)

To give another example: about six months ago I got interested in writing a fugue — the fugue being a particular form of classical composition. Back in the day, I probably would’ve had to go to the library or scour used bookstores for some treatises on the subject. I also would’ve had to purchase numerous CDs for musical examples. However, I simply went online and found a number of written materials which diagnosed the structure of the fugue in great detail. They also referenced some notable examples of classic fugues, which I was easily able to listen to on YouTube.

One might offer one defense of education. You could say, “Sure, Wil, education might be devalued for people, such as yourself, who take the initiative to educate themselves. But what about the scores of common idiots who need to feel the lash on their back to better themselves?” Well, this is an interesting point. Perhaps we need to reconsider our entire society. We have heretofore been bound to arcane notions of egalitarianism — the notion that everyone should have the same opportunities as everyone else. Perhaps we should concede that some, perhaps most elements of society are inferior, and time should not be wasted trying to educate them. An elite class of individuals, such as myself, can utilize these common rabble as our slaves, employed to attend to our personal and sexual needs. Once we have tired of them, they can be dispensed with, perhaps by being ground into hamburger and fed to farm animals. And thus, society, no longer bound in attempts at educating the uneducatedable, could truly progress.

It’s certainly food for thought.