Internet Learning Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 2015 | Page 83

Internet Learning Journal – Volume 4, Issue 1 – Spring 2015
As we mentioned, online universities are capable of having more students with less
money. This is likely to increase the monetary capacity of a university, and there are
practical advantages to a university on having easily available funds. Money is useful in
improving universities when it is applied so as to increase people’s productivity, rather than
their sense of comfort. In societies with a very strong work ethic, meaning that people feel
uncomfortable when they are not producing, and those feelings are reinforced by their
environment, comfort is not a danger. But when societies are tolerant about lack of
production, then feeling comfortable about not producing can become a stable living
condition; and when that occurs, then the lack of production will tend to increase with time
rather than decrease. The act of producing something innovative always implies an effort,
conflict with the status quo, and the risk of becoming ostracized. For a behavior that
comports so many risks to occur, it is necessary that the incentives to produce innovations
are clear, strong, and non-extensible to those that do not innovate.
The major incentive most people look for is to climb up on the social hierarchy.
Revolutions are always about a change in the way the social hierarchy is built and/or
accessed; and the purpose of the revolution is to change that order into one that the
revolutionaries believe is better. Because they believe it to be better, they call it more just,
but often revolutions imply changing the judicial system so as to make sure that what the
revolutionaries feel is better is what is postulated to be more just. If the sense of what is just
was universal, then all political parties would promote the same sense of justice. But what
happens in practice is that differences about what is just not only variable across people, but
they can even vary for the same person across time. Until recently, the ideal of social justice
would be one where the social hierarchy was based on each person’s capacity to produce
knowledge (meaning useful information), and thus the importance of learning knowledge in
the universities as a mean for creating societal improvements. But the recent development of
technologies capable of giving almost-instantaneous access to huge amounts of knowledge
at almost any place by almost anyone implies that knowledge is no longer a social
differentiator. To some people this is the dawn of an equalitarian future, but we think it is
wise to curb that enthusiasm, as we expect that the more likely outcome is a new form of
social hierarchy that is not based on knowledge. Rather, that hierarchy will be built on the
person’s capacity to reconstruct knowledge in new and different ways, the capacity to
innovate based on what is available on the web.
Make no mistake that these methods are not about innovation by imitation; however,
it is not the creation of new innovations either. The innovation referred to consists of
creating something new by the integration of what is available, and that others want to have,
accompanied by making this product available (not necessarily free of charge). The Internet
brings the geographic borders down, flattens the mountains some would say (Freedman,
2005), but it also creates a new type of border/mountain which is the huge amount of
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