I gave an introduction in Technology and Activism the other day to the Creative Commons. In that introduction, we (briefly) explored two thought problems:
[ music ] How long until you can own every song ever written? My first question had to do with music. If $60 buys a 500GB hard drive, you can put one year of non-repeating music on it. (I’m using the song Seasons of Love from the musical Rent to drive my calculation regarding the number of minutes in a year.) How long until hard drives can casually/affordably hold all music ever recorded? I put it to the students that they will likely see that day come within the next 10 years, at which point the way we consume music will certainly change.
The second though problem is much more interesting to me, however.
[ textbooks ] How much do you spend per semester on books? A quick poll of the class showed that the majority of the students spend between $250 and $300 per semester. Lets look at this picture:
A publisher gives me a book for free. I like it. I assign it to all of my students. They then buy it, sometimes paying $120 or more for a single text (Physics, Math, Psychology, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science… we all have runaway textbook prices that are crushing our students.) They send $300 every semester to the publishers. It is simple to see why publishers want DRM: they don’t want kill the cow that lays geese that lay golden eggs.
At a college of 2000 students, that means students are spending
$1,200,000
per semester on books. The college has no direct control over this cost, and there is no incentive for faculty to keep costs low for the students. I managed to offer both of my courses this semester using only Creative Commons licensed texts… but there aren’t a lot of those I can choose from.
The thought game became this: why haven’t small colleges come together and established a free press? They could hire an editor or two, some typesetters and indexers, and then commission books and short monographs and release them into the Creative Commons. Authors taking part could be rewarded better than any publisher could ever pay for this kind of material, and the impact on the educational world would be huge.
the ipad arrives
The iPad isn’t a revolutionary game-changer, but no doubt Apple did some things right with its design. It does web and video well, and it is possible to pay on a month-by-month basis for connectivity to 3G networks. (Nice if you’re going on a trip and just want roaming wireless for a month.) And while $500 sounds expensive, think about it this way:
$500 is $50/semester for device and insurance.
If an institution commits to ebooks—meaning, all the faculty agree that they will commit to finding electronic texts to teach their subjects—we can slash student book fees drastically. We raise the floor, meaning they have a mandatory $50/semester technology fee. However, we then have 2000 students with a wireless slate that can display video, play audio, surf the web (campus WiFi), display PDF, Google Docs, read email… the list goes on and on. To me, it seems like a very compelling vision.
In terms of the device, I don’t really care if it is the Apple iPad or not. If Steve wants to send me one to use and evaluate, he’s welcome to. I’m a Mac owner, have a Touch, and think this could be an excellent device. But I also know that Mary Lou Jensen has developed some incredible technology at Pixel Qi, and an Android- or Linux-based device could do everything I’m suggesting just as well. So, put simply, it is currently an exciting time for devices that are bridging the gap from laptop to slate.
