Giving Power to the People
In addition to the behemoth companies, you hammer big media and big government as out of sync, given the emergence of nimble technology. What about big education? Will there be a shift in power in formal schooling, or will longtime institutions adapt to the pressure of all the "Davids"?
Yes, there will be a change. I have that chapter on video games and computer games. I think those will play an increasingly important educational role. I don't think just commercial entertainment games but also stuff that's custom made for it. In fact, the [U.S.] Army is ahead of the curve on this. So when it comes to teaching skills, I think they're terrific. When it comes to teaching other stuff, I don't know. Yet traditional teachers like myself are not necessarily that efficient at teaching. Things like the University of Phoenix [which teaches through distance learning] don't really fit into my Army of Davids, but they might have an effect.
Toward the end of your book, you talk about privately funded space exploration. When will we inhabit Mars?
Not soon enough, probably. You know, the funny thing about privately funded space stuff is that if you read science fiction before 1960, they all assume that's the way we're going to get there, like aviation in the '20s. The [government-funded] Apollo program sort of jump-started it.
You generally come down on the side of the optimists in looking at new technology. What are the drawbacks?
The obvious drawback is that when you empower individuals, you empower the good ones and the bad ones. And of course, terrorism is different today. Back in the days when you had to swing a sword to kill someone, one person couldn't do that much damage. Now, one person can. We will have to worry more about that in the future. There's a blindness in thinking that good things can be done only by bigger organizations. There's a kind of blindness that dangers only come from big organizations. I don't think that's true either.
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