
Ask HN: Future of Education: Which SciFi setting resonates? - jelliclesfarm
1. Fast Times at Fairmont High, Vernor Vinge<p>Or<p>2. Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson<p>Any others?
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Memosyne
I think education is going to evolve in this fashion:

1\. Education boards will realize that technology needs to be better embraced
so they increase tech funding and begin enhancing classrooms with AI.

2\. One particular AI software outperforms the rest and becomes the de facto
education tool.

3\. The software becomes advanced enough that human teachers become
supplementary. Most educators are laid off but the best of them start careers
as tutors for wealthy children.

4\. The company who developed the software receives permission to begin
rapidly constructing "campuses" \-- circular smart-cities that provide
everything necessary to nurture the next generation of academics. Using the
metrics their software has provided, they pick the most capable students and
offer them permanent residency. For students below a certain age, the campuses
censor communication with the outside world, fearing that they might be
negatively influenced.

5\. The campuses become the fastest innovators of the modern world by hoarding
all the talent. They become so powerful that each campus houses its own
military unit composed of a robotics and cyber intelligence division.

6\. Governments around the world become puppet states as the campuses continue
expanding. The campuses are officially recognized as the most powerful
political entities.

7\. Eventually, we're either wiped out by some genius psychopath who exploits
a security flaw in a system, or we start enhancing our bodies
biologically/technologically until we're no longer human.

Anyone know of a book that describes the above?

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jelliclesfarm
I recently saw a studio ghibli spin-off movie on Netflix called Mary and the
witch’s flower(based on 70s, my little broomstick by Mary Stewart)...it’s
about a girls accidental discovery of a magic school. Anyways..one of the
founders is Dr.Dee(Elizabethan mathematician/alchemist/magician)...and I
thought it would be pretty cool to have a school where holographic
representations of various historical characters or scientists or animals can
teach classes and concepts.

Gamification of education won’t be a bad idea. I mean..we could do that,
right? And it’s scalable.

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ai_ia
Primer is more likely to become than the interconnected mind scenario.

Although Neural link by Elon Musk may be modified to create such
interconnection.

Still the idea behind primer is doable. Disclaimer: I am building primer.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
Sounds interesting. Can you explain Primer?

~~~
ai_ia
I am on mobile so pasting an earlier answer.

I am working on Primer. Basically a bot that makes it much easier to learn
"difficult things" on your own. Here is a screenshot :
[https://imgur.com/a/E5Kw54P](https://imgur.com/a/E5Kw54P) The screenshot has
changed a lot by now though.

I have been working on this, alone, for last almost two year. I have iterated
more than 15 times. One time, I was trying to do non-linear twine[0] based
interface. Was pretty complicated. Right now, this is the version I am most
satisfied and excited for. Also, it took some while to create a CMS from
scratch for this one.

Here is why it is cool.

0\. Primer teaches you in a conversational way. I understand video based MOOCs
are new norms, but conversational way makes user better focused towards
learning. It also makes it easier to revise, recall and resume from where you
last left.

1\. Primer will provide you notes in form of Tufte-Latex Books[1]. The way it
works is that there is already a template for each course and when the user
completes the course, his/her response accounts generates tex Code along with
the previous templates and results in personalized books. The books authors
name is the username.

2\. Primer enforces spaced repetition. Not only it teaches you something, it
also reminds you to revise after certain intervals. Although Anki export is a
desirable feature, I did not have the energy to look into it now, but it is
definitely in the roadmap. Primer takes responsibility of your learning.

3\. Primer tracks time spent on your courses. Good tool for homeschoolers.

4\. Primer courses are versioned. Primer courses improve based on feedback. If
you get stuck at a course, it is improved so that, next time it feels easier
to understand. And often times, we will screw up, so it is there for that too.
But importantly, courses should have pretty iteration times. This is a major
advantage of text based courses.

5\. Primer based courses take a fraction of time to complete than Video-based
courses.

6\. Last, my favorite. It makes difficult things easier to learn. Although,
achieving this feature to a practical extent will take another year or so, but
still feels good to have the potential. Suppose, you want to learn how to
build a spaceship. There is a ton of things you need to learn before you can
even begin to learn about spaceships and rockets. Primer ensures that you have
understood the prerequisites before you start doing something. All these
courses are present on Primer itself.

I am not good with deadlines. But I can assure that I am pretty close to
completion.

These are the initial courses to be offered by Mid 2019.

Tentative Tracks: Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Reinforcement Learning,
Fantastic ML Papers and how to implement them, Teach yourself Computer
Science, Fantastic CS Papers and how to understand them, Computer Vision and
Natural Language Processing.

To follow updates:
[https://tinyletter.com/primerlabs/](https://tinyletter.com/primerlabs/)

[0]: [http://twinery.org/](http://twinery.org/) [1]:
[https://github.com/Tufte-LaTeX/tufte-latex](https://github.com/Tufte-
LaTeX/tufte-latex)

~~~
jelliclesfarm
Is this like the Feynman Technique or like..how you say..formalized education?

~~~
ai_ia
I have incorporated Feyman technique also. At the end of each topic, you will
have to summarise what you think you understand.

This is inclined more towards Socratic method of learning by questions and
answering.

I had to figure out somewhere in the middle where the questions seems relevant
and to the topic.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
Thanks! I will check for updates. The topics of learning seem ambitious and
relevant to our times. I wish you the very best!

~~~
ai_ia
Thank you.

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k9s9
Self organized learning classrooms -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upg8LlJZtas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upg8LlJZtas)

