This is the second time this week that I've linked to a column by Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times, but hey, the guy has a lot of interesting and sensible stuff to say.

Most recently Mr. Friedman addressed the cutting edge topic of the Internet as an educational medium, citing Cisco Systems' John Chambers' contention that "Education over the Internet is going to be so big it is going to make e-mail usage look like a rounding error" (in terms of the Internet capacity it will consume).

Friedman notes that there are now 100 million adults online in the U.S., indicating that about half the population is using the Internet. He analogizes that the Internet revolution -- thus far signalized by email and e-commerce -- is comparable to the fall of the Berlin wall, and according to Mr. Chambers, its effects are just beginning to be felt.

As a concrete example, Mr. Friedman cites the phenomenon of Adolf Hitler's racist diatribe, Mein Kampf, which is banned in Germany, staking out turf on Amazon's top 10 best-seller list to German customers, with the German government being powerless to prevent it. This is the wavw of the future for better or worse -- a massive democratization of information, and a substantial weakening of the sovereign power of the nation-state, and other vested interests.

The significance to be grasped here is not that significant numbers of Germans are interested in becoming neo-Nazis, but that their government making a top-down decree about what they can or cannot read -- however commendable the motivation -- rankles, and when people get the opportunity to fight back with no risk and minimal cost, they will. Censorship of ideas, however repugnant they may be, is counterproductive -- as will be the inevitable attempts to censor the Internet, such as the sweeping laws passed by Australia's government last summer.

John Chambers prediction about the Internet education wave is that it will result in faster, more efficient learning, at lower costs, with more accountability. Friedman quotes him saying that schools and countries that try to ignore this "will suffer the same fate as big department stores that thought e-commerce was overrated."

Chambers predicts that if universities and schools don't move quickly to reinvent their curriculum content and delivery, students will simply "go to schools online," and the vested interests of centralized power like governments and unions will be powerless to stop that either.

To read Thomas L. Friedman's column, "The advent of the online academy," go here.

Charles W. Moore

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November 21, 2008