I was curious as to the reaction of this group to what I took to be the
main point of the article:
the global demand for learning and scholarship is not being met by the
contemporary publishing industry. It cannot be, not with the current
business models and the prices.
I personally agree with this.
I started thinking about this when I got a Kindle a few months ago, then
the new iPad. I had held off for a long time because I thought the
conflicting eBook formats too crippling. Then I found a program to
convert between the different eBook formats. That made eBooks a bit
more interesting to me.
But the current business model is very inconvenient -- even for me, a
relatively affluent consumer in one of the richest nations in the
world. The internet could -- and, I think should -- be used to make
knowledge widely accessible. The idea of putting courses and some books
on-line is perhaps a step in the right direction. But I think this does
not go far enough.
In any case, I think the pirate sites will drive the industry to a wider
dissemination of learning and information at a lower cost. I do not
know what model might be effective.
Since this group frequently indulges in speculative thinking, I thought
perhaps there would be some ideas already considered.
Joe
On 4/17/12 10:19 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
Is your interest is the piracy angle? If so, there are lots of free
and open ebooks for just about any topic you might care about! But on
the other hand, they may not be the best suited to the class being
taught.
Amazingly enough, many profs are migrating to open/free sets of notes
that are equivalent to a book. The best example I know of is the
brilliant Mathematics For Computer Science
http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.042/fall10/mcs-ftl.pdf
And here is a huge selection of free or very inexpensive math books:
http://www.e-booksdirectory.com/mathematics.php
In terms of torrents, I found a russian site that had 80,381 text
books that had been collected from world wide torrents and they had
packaged them for direct downloads. That's a lota books! Most were
an edition or two behind the latest, but still quite usable.
Apple is starting to work very hard on textbooks for ipads, even with
means for "renting" them. They haven't gotten off the ground yet, but
they hope to be working with universities world wide within the year.
I find that the "illegal" downloads I have done either leads me to
buying a version of the book (often a used edition, and an edition
behind) or deleting it.
I do believe we need to make education freely available. Clearly
Coursera and Udacity are headed in that direction, with MITX following
on their heels. Accreditation is a problem, but being worked on for
these digital classrooms.
-- Owen
On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 10:21 AM, Joseph Spinden <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I came across an article I found interesting. I was curious about
the reaction of the members of this group, if there is an interest.
Joe
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/2012227143813304790.html
--
"Sunlight is the best disinfectant."
-- Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1913.
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
--
"Sunlight is the best disinfectant."
-- Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1913.
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
