This is absolutely brilliant. It is brilliant to the point that it excites me. Open source textbooks. Books that are open to everyone, and books that can be freely shared, modified, copied, reprinted etc etc etc. Brilliant.
As Richard Baraniuk says in his TED talk (please watch it below), this allows knowledge to be contextualized for the cultural and social regions it will be used in. That is not only brilliant but necessary. Not only that, but this allows knowledge to be customized and specialized per student. Ideas are good alone, but they are better when they are shared.
Textbooks should be free. But they will not be free if students keep paying absurd amounts for them. Knowledge should be free. Free to access, free to share, free to use. If students were to stop buying textbooks they could change the way universities do business. Hah, that won’t happen anytime soon. But in the meanwhile, we have the opportunity to spread the word and contribute.
This is why technologies like the Internet are so important. They allow for things like this to happen, the Internet makes this easier. And that is awesome.
But. How will the upper class continue to disenfranchise the have-nots by wielding complete power over the access to information? Oooooh. OK.
But. How will the upper class continue to disenfranchise the have-nots by wielding complete power over the access to information? Oooooh. OK.
=)
a key thing to note here is the sharing of knowledge by way of freedom of speech. yes, it is free as in you don’t have to pay for it, which is nice. but it is doubly important that it is free in the sense that it does not limit you (even if you paid for it), you can add to it, modify it, reconfigure it and share it (and you’re encouraged to share it).
the “upper class” will interfere by misusing copyright laws, they will do so by making it difficult to access free information (net neutrality), and by otherwise doing a multitude of silly things.