Create Your Own Learning Experience

I recently finished reading Tyler Cowen's new book “Create your Own Economy.” The book explores many of the issues covered in this blog. It’s very constanteducationish. Actually, the book’s title can be misleading. It doesn’t refer to the creation of an economy as in “develop a new business” but to our modern capacity to build our own stories from different bits and sources. The author marvels at the mind-boggling amount of information available on Internet by way of studying autistics’ particular cognitive profiles. Cowen informs us that autistic people are extremely good at gathering and organizing information. Because Internet's demands so much from our capacity to gather information, we non-autistics should appreciate and learn from autistics’ cognitive strengths. Moreover, Cowen asserts that society’s neuro-diversity is an asset, not a disability. Certainly, we all have become more efficient at information collection and processing; we classify information faster and more coherently than any time in the history of human beings. In addition, our “daily self-assembly of synthetic experiences” creates a unique cultural stream that enriches our internal mental existence. Consider Constant Education as a partial description of your humble blogger’s internal cultural stream. In the end, Cowen recommends that we cherish the tools available on-line because they will make us both smarter and happier. Amen.