Education!

Education is a funny business. Evolution gave us basic locomotion skills and the ability to make noises understandable to others. The rest is our own doing, and sadly we still have not figured out the correct business model. Abstractly, one's knowledge can be visualized as a  bar of the corresponding length carried on one's head, collectively all the bars making up a gigantic pyramid. New knowledge continuously rains on the pyramid, and societal forces continuously push to broaden the base and spread the new stuff more evenly. Now, after several thousand years the base of this pyramid covers nearly every human being and the minimal load keeps on increasing. While this pyramid is an abstract concept, the consequences of its untamed growth - the education tax  - are very real. The fact is that, at the moment,  acquiring knowledge is the second (after sleep)  most unproductive time in human life. This idleness takes a horrendous societal toll, a human being can spend a third of a lifetime in various classrooms and libraries turning slowly into a beer guzzling layabout.  A healthy ten-year old can be excused of all household chores under the pretense of studying Icelandic mythology, partial differential equations  or other such nonsense. Do I need to say more?


But as usual science comes to the rescue and leads the way out of this predicament. We can almost completely eliminate the education tax and  increase the overall education level tenfold. The scheme rests on three inventions: MOOC, googgles, and soon to be discovered Human Learning Algorithm (HLA).

My colleagues say that I am a blabber-mouth, but I can't resist to say a few words about the future, while hoping that these indiscretions will not hamper the discovery of HLA. HLA will be a crowning accomplishment in the area of mathematics known as Foundations. In spite of laying ground for digital computers, discovery of incompleteness phenomena, and in the near future HLA, Foundations' growth is marred by ignorance and prejudice among fellow mathematicians and officials in grant funding agencies.

HLA is several things at once: a knowledge sequencer, a knowledge packer, and an ingenious interface for the knowledge delivery. The knowledge sequencer is an algorithm that breaks down any logically consistent content  into tiny pieces that can be easily absorbed by the human brain, but when examined separately, look like gibberish. This gibberish, when fed back to the brain  is assembled back into knowledge in a way that is not completely understood. A good analogy, but in the other direction,  is  the human digestive system - we mind a great deal what goes in, but only a doctor wants to examine what comes out. In this light, the current educational system has it all wrong.  A traditional knowledge presentation  follows certain  logical structure: big picture, underlying ideas, all the way down to fine details in hope of recreating the leading  thought process in the recipients brain.   In the context  of HLA, this represents mistaking output for input, and in a hindsight, it  is responsible for most problems with education.   In other words the  current educational system resembles a poor fellow invited for a fancy dinner who ends up having a six-course meal with wine pairings shoved up his ass!

The knowledge packer delivers  pieces produced by sequencer to the brain, relying on its phenomenal abilities to reassemble the pulp into humanly communicable form. This process can be done in a straightforward fashion, but there are many legal obstacles. Brain is an organ, just like liver or kidneys, and accessing it directly bypasses its legal owner who unfortunately is often a blooming idiot who does not know what is good for him. For that reason, the interface puts the knowledge delivery in the grandfather-mode: a traditional teacher-student interaction with  the never-ending appeal to the brain's owner to keep things running.

Rather than speculating on how these discoveries can be utilized let's jump ahead to the future and hear directly from the eyewitnesses.


Graduation
April 20, 2023

I will soon be  graduating from  MOOC ONE - the largest university on Earth.  In these few paragraphs I want to  give you the brief history of my school and the development of the modern educational system, a result of the search for a proper business model that took over a millennium.


Mitt Romney

It all started in 2013 with our founding father's  failed bid for the US presidency. In the middle of that fateful year a small group of American businessmen headed by Romney realized that building the perfect educational system is within reach and, after the discovery of HLA,  all key elements were in place. At this point US educational system was completely dysfunctional - we had gender gap, accomplishment gap, racial gap, skill gap and  an infinite number of other maladies. Things could not have been worse.

Jobs and Education

Romney asked what are the main features that a perfect educational system ought to have - a list that at a time looked like a fantasy land. These were:

* education is available to everybody at a minimal cost,
* students are trained by the very best teachers,
* education comes with  an offer of an employment for students and graduates alike,
* acquiring knowledge should be a pleasure not a chore.

Founders understood that building new educational system has to start with the appropriate  legislation and these principles together with the accompanying  executive orders became cornerstone of The Right to Mooc Bill of 2013 - the first legislation that put Congress' approval rating on a path to double digits. At the same time, the legislation stipulated the elimination of  most of the educational tax by combining education with productive and fruitful life - a goal that suddenly became a possibility. At a time these initiatives were perfectly in line with the elimination of other forms of wasteful spending and frivolous taxation.

The point is that Right to Mooc Bill was a reaction to the old educational system that violated every single of these principles. In the language of today the differences could not been greater: a  moocer does not buy the instruction time but the knowledge itself. In modern terms - a moocer aims for certain KA (knowledge acquisition) that is provided at a rate determined by his/her KAB (knowledge acquisition bandwidth). The price is only $100 a month (with no KA limits). Furthermore, moocing does not require undivided attention, so a moocer gets a job at one of the sponsoring businesses and works there at half pay while moocing, a major factor in economic growth of the country. Last but not least, gone are tests and exams, and a simple brain scans and neural  zapping verify that KA has occurred. A moocer with a wide KAB may need only minutes of moocing a day while one with a narrow KAB will take many hours, but in the end everybody ends in the same place at the same time.

How does it all work?

MOOC ONE is underwritten by Google, Apple, iMacDonalds's (after acquisition by Apple), Walmart, Facebook,  Angry Birds, and scads of smaller players. It is really a genius of Mitt Romney to get all these partners on board.

Google and Apple came up with moocing technology, while other partners employ moocers  and provide housing and subsistence for them.

Moocing rests on three technological breakthroughs. The first component is googgles - an extension of Project Glass. This is a knowledge delivery system that utilizes one eyeball, one ear and about half of neural connections in one's brain. This leaves a moocer with the ability to simultaneously perform simple tasks such as polishing iPad screens, flipping burgers or running a scanner at a cash register.

The second component is the MOOC itself. In spite of some setbacks the technology has tremendous potential and in the economic terms it is a reincarnation of the factory production line.

The third component is HLA (Human Learning Algorithm) - an algorithm that matches KA with KAB in a seamless manner. The  working of the software is a well guarded secret because of the potential risks. In a well publicized incident, a hacked version of HLA put in direct access mode allowed one sorry individual to learn Korean in a mere three hours. Unfortunately, he died soon after regaining consciousness and before uttering a single word in his newly acquired language.

The rise of  cyclops

Moocers are sometimes called cyclops because often they keep their moocing eye closed and resting when they take their googgles off. Now they represent the majority of any society and it is a pleasure to watch them discussing in six languages intricacies of the Langlands program while on a short break in the factory cafeteria. Even people of older generation do some moocing, and in particular micro-moocing is particularly appealing to them. My father mooced how to fix a bathtub and his friend from work mastered the art of making soufflés by using his son's googgles!


World of MOOC ONE

MOOC ONE has headquarters in Cayman Islands, a consequence of the horrific burden of the US taxation system. Our school got a tremendous shot in the arm when Harvard and MIT relocated to Europe and CalTech moved to Columbia and become CaliTech.

Today MOOC ONE and its main partners have capitalization of over trillion dollars, proving once and for all that education is a driver for profits and economic growth. US took the lead manufacturing countless gadgets that are churned up by Asian scientists day and night. Grim days of outsourcing are gone - call centers, packing facilities, and scads of simple jobs appropriate for knowledge hungry moocers are springing all over the country.

 Millioner Club

MOOC ONE instructors are paid one dollar for one moocer per year. Most mooc over hundred thousand students per year, but some are millionaires. Members of Millioner's Club include Socrates, Richard Feynman, J.K. Rowling, and many more. Sadly, many of them are deceased and some are characters from the movies - Mr. Holland and Mary Poppins to name a few. If you want the best teachers, looking among living just does not cut it.

Deceased faculty keep the costs down but sometimes cause  problems as well.  Consider the case of R.L. Moore, the inventor of  Moore method. Professor Moore mooced millions of students until someone discovered that the HLA resolved his moocing materials to a single frame saying "Mooc ahead!"  The brain scans indicated that KA took place but unfortunately these scans do not determine what has been mooced.  As usual nay-sayers call it mooc-fraud.

Science and Religion

MOOC ONE is all inclusive and under the guidance of our president, alternative view-points are well represented. I mooced "Six thousand years in six hundred minutes" - a concise history of Earth since the day of creation. Cool stuff! I particularly  liked the picture of Jesus Christ our Lord making his Atlantic crossing on a back of a triceratops.  I did not know that triceratops was such a good swimmer!

Graduation speech

Today is my graduation day, a day of happiness and pride. I was selected to text my graduation  speech to millions of other moocers. Here it is together with the link to MOOC ONE anthem:

My fellow moocers!

We hav nevr met bt we R strong & united by our comN XperENs. I fEl yor presence rownd & I share my prId w U. We hav Bin given a greatest gift of aL - an education & a job. d old dispute wethR education pays off hz Bin setLD 1ce & 4 all!

I luv moocing & I plan 2 mooc a lot mo. My job @ Walmart iz nIs & I lIk my dwelling n MOOC weld.
nw foLow DIS Lnk & pls stNd ^ 4 our skul song.