This will do wonders for the home-schoolers and allow kids to have flexible school hours. You could also have all of the students in one big location and only the teachers move as students need them, except for situations that require specialized locations. ie gym, band, art, lunch.
I actually believe that this will be our future. Imagine having your kids grow up in a world where you're learning with children around the world with the best education possible. The cost of this school would be very low or even free.
The cost of tuition and the continuation of the deterioration of the American school system should raise giant red flags for anyone who's concerned about our future as a society. Anyone with kids should be concerned. Luckily the internet is not all about social networks. There's still an amazing repository of information up for the grabs.
This is already happening informally with wikipedia and other wikis out there. As a developer (after basic comp sci courses) a large portion of my education is through online forums. If I can hold on to a steady job with information found on the net, then something is indeed working.
I'm actually developing an art education site (www.artjutsu.com) and would love to see how far it goes. I'm considering submitting to ycombinator, but I'm the only one on this project. I see that they don't really like to fund a project with only one member.
I had said the same for bringing high quality education to rural/3rd world places like africa via KA and was voted down because people were balking at the idea that they would have the ability to get quality inet access to consume this education.
I still think this is the future.
I already have my 7 year old doing Kahn Academy classes - and my 8 month old will have her first experience with Maths via KA.
Probably for the same reasons that programmers don't - for all but the simplest of procedures there may be unforseen complications, particularly since they mostly deal with legacy "applications"
Of course there can be unforeseen complications, but those are the exception rather than the rule. You can also have complications when you bring your car to the mechanic. Still we want to know what a typical oil refill is going to cost, and if it's going to be more expensive than expected we'd like to know what the damage is going to be so we can make an informed decision.
I don't buy that we can't handle the truth and need to be shielded from the pricing and costs structure of medical procedures. Especially because most medical procedures are purely routine matters and the hospital can just publish the average cost of those procedures. You'll then at least get a rough impression of what the price is going to be and you'll be able to compare hospitals based on that.
Should we[1] be shopping around for doctors? Hire a doctor like you would a Web Developer, what are your prices, experience, show me some of the stuff you've done before, etc. This is typically done with cosmetic surgery but should be we doing it with required but not emergency situations?
[1] when i say "we" i mean you Americans, i'm in the UK and have the NHS
* Her cardiologist. He did a _great_ job of heart surgery after her heart attack, but she wasn't thrilled about the way he ran his clinic on her follow-up visits. So she got another guy. That this guy was closer to the house is an unexpected bonus.
* Her orthopedic surgeon. Visited several guys when it came time to replace her knees. Picked one she liked who is also uber-competent.
Digression: Ten years ago when this guy was a middle-aged doctor knee replacements were a hand-crafted affair. Now the doctor runs the operation but a kind of CNC machine does the actual cutting, uses lasers to measure things and customize the new knees.
CNC machines cutting new knees: it's an awesome century so far.
I'm not sure most businesses are required by law to post prices. There may be some that are, but by and large a business in the US is not required to post prices anywhere.
Do you have any examples of that? As far as I know while .com/.net/.org are under US jurisdiction, it isn't the case of other TLDs managed by Verisign.
He said "term limits" not "remove all power from elected officials." We already have what you call a "permanent bureaucracy" - it's called the civil service. It executes orders from elected officials - the President, cabinet officers, and every civil servant's paycheck is dependent on the good will of Congress.
Limiting the influence of lobbyist's campaign contributions will empower ordinary citizens since elected officials will be more dependent on pleasing us to get elected rather than pleasing large donors so they can use large donor money to run media campaigns to get elected. Reducing the influence of large campaign donors will not give the civil service any more power than it has now.
The civil service is corrupt along with staffers and legislators themselves.
The problem is the revolving door between industry and government... the promise of being able to sacrifice yourself politically translating directly into a cushy job in industry that's gained billions by the malfeasance... high profile examples are legion: Dick Cheney, Dick Gephardt, Pat Toomey, and (more timely) Chris Dodd.
I don't know the best solution but an airgap of related employment (say, 2 years) would probably slow this process down.
And up is down and black is white. The MPAA and RIAA are the poster children for maintaining the status quo. They have no need to innovate as long as they can continue to line the pockets of corrupt politicians.
