The Ekalavya Effect: A Parable for Internet Learning
“In the forest, Ekalavya diligently treated his clay image of Drona as his teacher and practiced the yoga of the bow, observing strict discipline. United with great faith and superlative discipline, he acquired a superb deftness at fixing arrow to bowstring, aiming, and releasing.” Mahabharata 1.123:13–14
The Ekalavya episode in the Mahabharata is laced with jealous pupils (Arjuna) and harsh taskmasters (Drona). But for our purpose Ekalavya’s autodidactic strivings are central - unable to secure direct tutelage under Drona, Ekalavya creates a clay image of his chosen teacher which inspires his daily practice and enables him to achieve inspiring feats of marksmanship.
I define the Ekalavya Effect as the global phenomena in which learners of any persuasion set themselves up to become experts on a specific topic via an iterative process of remote learning.
If you are one in a million, then there are 3671 of you on the internet.
YouTube is the new Google search and “how to” is trending skyhigh. People search for and find teachers for any imaginable topic on the internet, self-organizing into student communities. The periphery has become the center, learning is distributed and the experts might just be closer to you than you think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtlaxaZNMlw
We are all Ekalavyas now. And the Dronas of the world are fiddling their thumbs.
