Cutting-Edge Online Learning Is The 80s Indie Rock of Education
The transition from 1979 to 1980 saw The Clash releasing London Calling, and then following it up with Sandinista. David Bowie left The Berlin Trilogy behind and gave us “Fashion.” From The Talking Heads came “Once In A Lifetime.” On the far edge of punk, 1980 gave us The Dead Kennedys throttling us all with “Holiday In Cambodia.” Meanwhile, Blondie was leaving the last vestiges of punk behind, for the pastures of “Rapture” and “The Tide is High.” The world in 1980 was either as innocent as The Police’s “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da” or as corrupt as Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” But either way, something had changed, and nothing would be the same.
Wait, really?
Seriously, if you look at all that music, really analyze it, what do you find? Verses, choruses, bridges. Most if not all the songs are in 4/4 time. Virtually all the lyrics rhyme. With very few exceptions, the instrumentations across the board are rooted in a standard drums-bass-guitar-keyboard-vocal construct. In short, this ground-breaking, generation-defining, culturally upending socio-psychological/politico-emotional aesthetic revolution was built from the very same bricks that have been building music for decades upon decades.
So what was so different?
Mindset.
The artists behind this music THOUGHT differently. They BELIEVED differently. They aspired to build something that would FEEL different, SOUND different, LOOK different, BE different. And the sheer force of their conviction MADE SOMETHING DIFFERENT happen. And the ripple effect was incredible, the experience contagious, the changes unprecedented.
Today, we are still battling over issues of gender and sexual identity. Amazing then, to think that Culture Club, with Boy George front and center, were formed in … 1981!
Today, we are still battling over issues of racial identity. This is a time when conflicts over the phrase “Black Lives Matter” can be seen on our screens every hour. Amazing then, to remember that Bad Brains — an all-black punk band! — released their debut in … 1982!
These are the achievements mindset gave us back then.
And this is why cutting-edge online learning is the 80s indie rock of education. Because the bricks are the same, but the mindset is different. We still have “courses.” We still have “instructors.” We still follow a “syllabus.” We still learn within a “classroom.” But the mindset is different. In this new world, we are thinking differently, and we believe differently. We aspire to build something that will feel different, sound different, look different, be different. And the sheer force of our conviction will make something different happen. And the ripple effect will be incredible, and the experience contagious, and the changes unprecedented.
As it was in 1979, when Gary Numan’s The Pleasure Principle introduced “Cars” to the world, so it is in 2016, as Udacity introduces the Self-Driving Car Nanodegree program to the world.
“And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?”
~
(lyric excerpt taken from “Once In A Lifetime” by The Talking Heads)
~
(This post was written by Christopher Watkins, Senior Writer, Udacity)
