On Dec 5, 2014 10:07 PM, "Nathan" <nawr...@gmail.com> wrote: > It also helps that Uber is a $40 billion dollar for-profit company with the > sole objective of a financial return for its owners. The comparison seems > inapt.
That's valid structural point, as well. However, there are some comparable consequences and we can't escape from them. While I am quite happy to see powerless members of former powerful guilds, which obstructed progress, there are some seriously negative consequences of our global influence and the influence of other contemporary free access organizations, for profit or not. Market logic says that if traditional education is becoming irrelevant, there will be lower demand. If there is lower demand for formal education, professors will have smaller salaries, which would lead to smaller number of professors. And Silicon Valley didn't yet figured out how to transplant education directly into the brain. And there are many basics which has to be learned by a competent teacher. Which means that our net contribution could easily become negative, that the end of what we started would be more dumb population than it was before us. I am not saying that we are the witnesses of the final stages. But we can already see young scientists all over the developed world who are living on the edge of the dignified life or, in many cases, below that line. We are not capable to reverse some trends immediately, but it's our responsibility to try to make positive contribution. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
