Very interesting read, though this is of course a fairly old idea at root. The idea that the greatest violinist who ever lived was probably born in 10,000 B.C. or is growing up in the Amazon rainforest and has never even seen a violin is fairly hard to argue with.

The thing that I do take issue with is the faith in technology to create a “human capital revolution”. MOOCs have not lived up to their potential thus far, with huge dropout and non-completion rates. Many e-learning offerings in the corporate world are nothing more than meaningless exercises in ass covering, as HR can say “we’re providing something for our staff!” while ignoring the fact that almost no one learns from them.

Learning still happens through doing, through interaction with other people, through prototyping and experimenting and through mentoring. Technology can enable these kinds of learning and make it more efficient, but it is not a panacea.

I would stick my neck out and say that the technologies that would truly create an educational revolution, like widely-available, easy to use and immersive VR, huge advances in AI, far better use of big data to drive adaptive learning systems and a society which recognizes and rewards life-long learning to a far higher degree than we currently do is unlikely to happen in the lifetimes of anyone alive today.