At 09:11 PM 00/03/16, Robert Wasley wrote:
>Saylor's goal is to
> > build the university into "a cyber Library of Congress."
>
>Sasha Chislenko writes:
> > I find it interesting that this great social initiative is
> > coming not from the democratically elected government of this
> > wealthy nation, but from a private individual...
> >
>
> If I understand the slant of your remark it would be appropriate to
>respond by asking where the Library of Congress, as well all most of the libraries around the country come from?
The idea of a library is not exactly new; it could deserve the name
of Initiative in Alexandria, but now it's more of a rudimentary
- though undoubtedly useful - _service_.
The "cyber Library of Congress" metaphor definitely refers to
the scale of the undertaking rather than accurately describes
its nature.
All advanced projects on the Internet that I can think of have
been started by private individuals and companies; the role of
the government is limited to watching for old issues (can a child
see naked butts online?), providing general resources ($ for
thicker carrier cables), and general regulation of development
(such as patent laws).
Even if the government was doing more good than harm in any of these
areas, it would still mean that the visionary development is done by
private individuals, and the democratic governance is only able to
provide support for already established structures.
If they could at least provide support to good ideas, it would
be good - but I am not holding my breath. I've been trying to
throw good ideas to general consideration myself - it never worked;
now, it appears that implementing them as businesses is a lot more
practical...
Don't know if this may apply to the Cyber University.
If I had to build it, I'd build the infrastructure, and allow
private individuals to improve on it, offer better courses, etc.
Should I suggest this idea to the government? :-)
My prediction is that it will be done like this anyway.
Reality has its imperatives whether anybody realizes them
or not.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Sasha Chislenko <http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:05:34 MDT