Bill Gates expects the web to be the best single source of education within 5 years
By Vlad Savov 
posted August 9th 2010 5:38AM
posted August 9th 2010 5:38AM
posted August 9th 2010 5:38AM
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Only for people with excellent discernment, for the rest stay in school for the next 20 years lol
@NeatOman expect Steve Jobs to say the same thing in 5 years, and he would've said it first.
@NeatOman
Amazing how Engadget has to sneak in that snark toward pen-based convertible tablet PCs. What they don't realize is that they're highly popular in the university, business, medical, and other markets.
I believe it though. The internet is already the largest repository of human knowledge ever. The important thing becomes learning to tell the truth from fiction(checking sources), since everyone on the net can create content.
@Mike10010100
Not that you need a choir, but "Amen".
@Mike10010100 Do you seriously fail to see the connection between the current topic -- a prediction -- and the man's prior forecasting record?
@NeatOman
Engadget watch your grammar!;)
Not "but lest you think" but lets you think! First sentence.And we are talking about education here lol
@Vlad Savov
Just pointing out that he needed to narrow his target market. Sure, not every consumer needs a pen-based input device, but pen-based input devices are far from dead in the industries I've listed.
This prediction is less difficult to see. It's pretty obvious that the Internet will eventually lead to this prediction. It's not some bold new idea, but an extension of what's happening now.
@Lucky Businessman
No. It's lest you think. As in, "I'll prove that I can write, lest you think I'm an idiot."
Google it.
@Lucky Businessman You should pick up a book on grammar! That sentence is correct....
@NeatOman
"The Internet? We are not interested in it"
- Bill Gates, 1993
Hahaha.
@canny Haha thats why NT had TCP/IP
@arash Actually he was interested in a Highway that he said internet still(1993) isn't there, but i'm probably sure the highway that he talked about is exactly the internet that we have today(not those text base web's in 1993), i think you read gizmodo a lot
@Mike10010100 i've been teaching myself using the internet since it exists, i barely have learned anything at university that i didn't lean before hand on the internet (mind you, i graduated in 2004 so that's 6 years ago already)
@Vlad Savov
Would that be this;
So according the Bill Gates previous prediction that tablet PCs with stylus would be the next wave, they are only performing well in high end business solutions and not every day consumer use. So thusly, his prediction will only come true to people wanting to make it into high-end business and all the stupid people who choose not to learn on the internet, most likely will not learn and school, and therefore kill each other in a gang shootout.
@canny
I wouldn't be interested in the internet in 1993 either.
@canny The "internet" in 1993 was NOT interesting. Even the use of the word internet didn't really become common until 1996, and it was in 1997 that I really felt it hit mainstream.
And even in 1996, when it really started taking off, this is what the internet was: https://www.msu.edu/~karjalae/internet96.htm
@quarleslt
Expect Apple to also have been the ones successful at it. You can predict the future all you want, but if you don't have the desirable products for said future, then you have no reason to complain.
@Ducman69 wow that was awesome. like a whole other era only 14 years ago. thanks for the link.
@Ducman69 Bullshit. If Gates was the visionary genius basement dwellers everywhere claim he is, the internet would have been first and foremost in his mind. The simple fact of the matter is that when it comes to technology. Gates never had a vision that extended any farther than forcing Windows into every single aspect of computing. He didn't care about the internet because his vision of a connected future was Windows boxes talking to other Windows boxes on Microsoft owned and controlled systems.
@Mike10010100 ...and I liked the Kanye reference :)
@His Shadow Gates didn't have any vision whatsoever. I remember a quote of him saying that 16 KB (or something like that) of memory is all you will ever need. Obviously he didn't even see 2 years into the future because they soon came out with bigger memory capacities.
Alright. Just as long as they can't tell what I have open in the other tab .>
No ways. There are only 40% of the people with access to the internet & these 40% of the people mostly use Facebook, Twitter & the greatest p0rn. (i think i am getting a downrank for this comment, not sure)
@shreyas I just checked how much data in the form of text is on the page (11.4KB), the banner picture alone uses 54.5KB.
Bandwidth and information are two different things.
If anything people really spend less then 1/4 of there time on porn.
@shreyas Sorry, recalled it wrong. For some reason i thought u said that people spent 40% of there time on porn :)
@shreyas Well those porn's are really educational, i mean ask from the girls that i have been with, without internet how should i get those educations? go to collage and watch the professor explaining G spot to me? and yeah i dropped out in 17, and the only thing that i missed from collage was parties, which Gates said it to, other that that my collage going friends are like monkey's too me, i mean i know i'm nothing cause anything i know is just a click away but with going to universities i wouldn't be a greater human being
@arash Sorry for my misspells, internetical education did't teach me any grammar shit
@shreyas
@Ethan
I think when Gates says source of education will be the Internet, he means to compare the infrastructure of the schools with the Internet. Internet education doesn't necessarily mean textual reads or pre-recorded videos. Internet education could easily incorporate LIVE video conferencing sessions with professors. LIVE exams on video. It could be almost as good as regular classroom sessions. I can see that. Now, whether I personally would like that over the traditional approach..no. But I can easily see it happening.
He's an asshole.
Nothing can beat the interaction between the teacher and a student.
Gates just seems to be baiting the next generation for his own f****g ends.
@pspitts I'm guessing you're a teacher? At UT engineering school, the professor was often lecturing to a class of hundred. Why can't a teacher and aides interact online?
Do you really gain that much more from face to face interaction than a video conference? And isn't even a simple phone call sufficient for most interaction?
The internet is the largest library and communication tool that has ever existed, it is essentially free and democratic, and the only people I can see being fearful of this change are unionized teachers that realize that the efficiency of this tool can allow far fewer teachers, located anywhere in the world, to do a better job. Job security = out the window.
@pspitts Really? I didn't know that helping education in countries that barely have any education to speak of, donating billions of dollars and fighting against Malaria and other diseases was "being an asshole" these days. If he's an asshole, what are you?
@Xylias
An engadget commenter >_>
I might have to agree on some extents. For instance I learned simple grammar and punctuation way before they taught it in school.
@Godik7
And when did you unlearn it?
@Godik7 Go back to school!!!
Five times less important, huh? Are you sure it isn't four times or six times Bill?
Colleges are like the music industry pre-Napster. 100 bucks for a textbook I barely used. How about a decent education without needing to get $5000 in debt you bastards.
@Son Goku
And how about not again charging $100+ for a "new" revision every other year that amounts to nothing more than a reorganization of the old book so that new sales can increase.
Without the concern over on-campus housing and with digital copies of books and online lectures, there is no reason that any motivated individual couldn't get a real quality education for pennies on the dollar, and it would eliminate geographic concerns.
Hands-on labs and testing facilities will still be needed, but it would still help immensely.
@Son Goku
There is increasing discussion about the impending popping of the "educational bubble" (like the mortgage and credit bubbles more recently). The price of education has gone up and up, far outpacing inflation. Kids out of med or law school are graduating with mortgage-sized debts. That sort of thing is not sustainable. Already, there's a movement away from the traditional 4-year institution to community colleges and lesser, but more practical, degrees and certifications (instead of a "liberal arts" degree with which you can't get a job much better than you could've out of high school).
Professors can be stores of endless specialist knowledge, and more importantly explanation and interpretation, and the internet can't give you that. However the professor usually doesn't give you the time of day.
@Ethan
Well I'm guessing from your nick that you're not a hot chick.
-> professors will ignore you.
@HKCally this is an engadget article about bill gates. you're guessing he's not a hot chick?
@Ethan For the big hundred people in a lecture hall type classes, it wouldn't really matter if you were live or remote. On the other hand, those classes are the very first thing I would eliminate if I was trying to remake higher education, because they vary between "tedious" for rote memorization classes, and "completely useless" for anything that requires you to learn how to actually do something. Really, they're obstacles put in the way of your education by universities that don't want to have to provide expensive facilities for majors like science and engineering.
@J Acheson I couldn't imagine doing my pulmonary and cardiology pharmacy lectures remotely, we regularly stopped and interacted with the lecturer to make sure that the everything about the process was understood and this is a year of 150 pharmacy students.
On top of that my lecturers have always been willing to talk to any number of people to help them understand be it directly after the lecture or by visiting them at their office.
Ask yourself this question: Have you ever completed a research assignment without Google?
@Xylias
Sadly yes...and it sucked so badly (the process and not my project).
@Xylias Yes, there are so many intricate details in the medical and scientific field which are not available via Google.
The best place to get the information I need is via the subscriptions my University has to digital versions of medical, pharmacy and scientific journals online.
On top of that I regularly find my self having to visit the university library to try and get copies of textbooks which are essential to make certain subjects that much easier to understand.
@ Bill Gates expects the web to be the best single source of education within 5 years
It already is, I'm learning so much about the human body :)
The same Gates who believed that 640kb of RAM is big enough and who do not understand the internet in 1995 and do not put explorer in first version of Windows 95 and who block it's improvement from 2000 to 2007 without development of any new IE? Then i trully believes in his prophecies, he is like Cassandra