Week 9: Elective Reading Synopses- David’s recommended books:
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (Benkler)
Coase’s Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm (Benkler)
The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (Easterly)
An overview of the book
Chapter with the title “Educated for What?” (…wanted to learn more)
Education level is constantly presented as one of the principal determinants of economic growth, yet Easterly finds little empirical evidence for this correlation.
The author shows that in Africa, education level of the 90’s are much higher than those in the 70’s, yet efforts to achieve economic growth in this region of the world have failed in the majority of the cases.
One of the reasons Easterly puts forth is that advances in education must be accompanied by adequate productive capital and the capacity to absorbe new technologies. The author points out that the supply of knowledge is higher than the demand and cannot be absorbed.
The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (Easterly)
The World Is Flat (Updated and Expanded): A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (Friedman)
A summary of the book
My points: I was rather impressed by the fact that Friedman identifies three broad categories of workers who will have job security in the flat world. Synthesizers, explainers, versatilists and explores the “right stuff”that the educational requirements need to survive in the flattened world. He recommends building right-brain skills, or those that cannot be duplicated by a computer. Friedman believes that globalization serves more to enrich and preserve culture than to destroy it, as each person is given their own voice and vehicle of expression through podcasts, websites and so on.
Enough food for thought…
Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (Lessig)
Free Culture (Lessig)
Lessig’s PowerPoint Presentation of the book
Lessig-Valenti debate (mp3)
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Prahalad)
An overview of the book
The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time (Sachs)
Development as Freedom (Sen)
Add other recommended books here:
Wikinomics (Tapscott, Williams)
Beyond the classroom
SIe-L30marzo 2007: a national Workshop
QUESTIONS: What can the open education movement learn from the book you chose to read? Elaborate on at least three points. Which of the ideas presented in the book did you find hardest to believe or agree with? Why?
My three points from Free Culture come along with Lessig’s refrain:
1. Creativity and innovation always builts on the past
2. The past always tries to control the creativity that builts on it
3. Free societies enable the future by limiting the power of the past
Estabilished companies have an interest in excluding future competitors and claim for extentions of copyright from copying copies to derivate works mainly because of technology.
How about education?
No one can do to Disney what Walt Disney did to the Brothers Grimm.
Even this derivative work, from the famous Cinderella, created by school-teachers couldn’t be uploaded on line and shared.
eroperability Meeting