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prgibbons

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Education researcher, writer, co-founder of CareAbout.it a Vegas based startup.

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Is Technology A Zero-Sum Game? 14 years ago

My comment on a Techcrunch article awhile back sparks a new article and debate. Is technology really a zero sum game?

I still say no...but it seems we're mostly arguing semantics.

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Why I Chose New York 14 years ago

112F feels great.... in the pool.

That said, NY is really hot in the summer and really cold in the winter. I've been to SF and the weather seems too cold and gloomy (50 and overcast in August!!!!)

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Why I Chose New York 14 years ago

Try Vegas. You can get a luxury 1 bedroom high rise condo on the strip for $1,500/month. Off strip a great 1 bedroom is $800-900 and it comes with an attached garage. The entire Vegas valley is only about 20 miles in diameter so you are never far from anywhere. Commute times are short and off strip, traffic is not bad at all.

$65,000 in Vegas buys you the same quality of life as $100,000 in SF.

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60 minutes - Khan Academy: The future of education? 14 years ago

The near future. Korean students already get celebrity teachers (teachers who teach hundreds of thousands of students through video and software). This is new to the U.S only because competitive pressure between students isn't that great (we are pretty complacent even though ed quality in K-12 isn't great).

We can try to identify more of these celebrity teachers and put them in front of millions of students but in the long run we will probably have something a-la Matrix http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AOpomu9V6Q&feature=relat...

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Why you should choose an ambitious startup idea 14 years ago

The size of the market and obstacles in the way. For example, K-College education in the U.S. is about a $1 trillion a year economy. Government and self-interested trade organizations stands in the way of disruption (they don't want to be disrupted they want to keep their jobs at the expense of everyone else).

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Why you should choose an ambitious startup idea 14 years ago

1 strategy might be to buy an established university and get rid of the wasteful excess.

Another strategy would be to attract the brightest away via some sort of YC/Theil education combo (we provide an education for a cut in your future income and we put you in touch with the brightest minds). You'd then have to overcome all the problems with licensing associated with the alliance between higher ed and local/state government (you can't train engineers, doctors, lawyers without approval from certification schemes, ...software engineers don't require certification yet). You would do this by demonstrating your students are smarter and more capable than the certified students.

Once you've taken down the licensing and certification scheme you open the road to disrupt higher education for everyone else.

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