So much information at your fingertips from a myriad of devices. So much potential for self-growth through video tutorials and classes. You can learn how to change a tire. Power your iPod with an onion. Or get your MBA in five days without even setting foot in Phoenix. It’s truly a magnificent opportunity. A magnificent, awesome, wasted opportunity.
All that same crap has been available to you humans since the advent of moveable type. But have you taken advantage of it? No. Why? Because you’re lazy, and because learning is boring. All learning. It doesn’t matter if it’s being delivered by a thick textbook, a tenured professor, or an expertvillage douchebag. If you know you’re supposed to be learning something, your brain goes into vacation mode. Just like it did when your Health teacher taught you how to administer CPR. Perform the Heimlich. Or put on a condom. Your odds of remembering how to do any of those things today are a million to one. Again, scientific fact.
Obviously the only way to teach our 21st Century brains anything is to trick them into thinking they’re not learning. And that’s where 21st Century media has taken over for books, classrooms, and basic human interaction.
Let’s be honest. Nobody’s going to take an actual cooking class. But you’ll accidentally learn how to make a red sauce before throwing it on the floor by watching Top Chef. You won’t ever crack a book on human anatomy. But you’ll subconsciously know how to sever the carotid artery by simply watching NCIS: Los Angeles. And while it’s statistically impossible to graduate with a degree in anthropology, you’ll still know how smart young girls evolve into slutty media whores just by watching the Disney Channel.
New media works on the same principle. And that’s where Big Fat Brain comes in. We know nobody is going to waste one second of their lives trying to learn Photoshop through an online tutorial series. But they might inadvertently, if it’s buried beneath the crust of adultery, murder and a low semen count.
This isn’t just the future of education. It’s the future of human kind. Boom. Science.