Just one search engine controlling nearly 95% of the world’s internet searches and most of the internet users never go beyond the top 3 results. One encyclopedia has close to 100% market share, and ranks in top 3 in search results for practically any topic it has an article on. Access to information is more centralized than ever before. Some people never leave the social networks, and instead just consume the media that is posted on their “streams”. This is model is not too far off from the way our education system is laid out. Regardless of the possibilities digital technologies offer, improvements in early education have been limited at best.
Perhaps the most concerning aspect is how Instead of moving towards a more civil society as a result of a more closely knit global community, we have witnessed how internet is increasingly used to propagate extremism and drive division between people. Due to the high level of information centralization, it has never been easier to influence individuals and masses and change their behaviors. Instead of being used for educating people, internet has become the most significant factor in perpetuating people’s ignorance.
“A
really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude”
A political or corporate entity can easily drive their self-centered agenda simply by utilizing the centralized advertising powered internet as it is intended to be used; reach anyone or everyone instantly with any messages and have an army of gullible people amplifying it and authenticating it. In accord with Huxley’s prediction from 100 years ago (above quote), people of the world are not only volunteering for their role in perpetuating centralization, but actively compete against each other on the extent to which they can do it.
Regardless of the capabilities and potential provided by networked computing and digital technologies, children are still trained as “cannon fodder” using the exact same principles that were devised 2 centuries ago in Preuss, a nation that had spend its history in perpetual state of war. Instead of training able internet age citizens, children are forced towards the mean using mind-numbing curriculum and archaic methods. Few have said this as well as Mathematician Paul Lockhart.
“If I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.”
Decentralization Objective: People of all ages access information frictionlessly based on the relevance of the information to the individual, and the actual value it can add to their lives, to the lives of those close to them, and to the communities they are part of. Instead of being exhausted by information, people are inspired by it.