Sal showed up at our weekly company picnic/lunch today and said something like, "All these sites are down cuz of SOPA, but everything I read is still so hard to understand," so he dove in and made this this morning. Pretty cool.
I find it really disappointing that the informational response to SOPA has been quantitative and not qualitative. Everyone and their dog have made (1) an infographic, (2) a video, and (3) a black-out or banner script.
This only serves to underscore what so many people don't get most of the time: the availability of information is not binary nor an issue necessarily aided by a proliferation of resources on the matter.
We see the same thing when we are teaching ourselves and others programming and git(!), and we would do well to see our failure to educate people on something so many intelligent and affluent people in technology oppose as a wake-up call in this issue and all other issues that depend on our ability to explain them and bring them to people's attention.
It's a perfect coincidence that we needed Sal Khan of all people to show us this - once again.
I am convinced that Sal Khan's contribution to education is so significant his work will be used in classrooms generations from now... though perhaps in the form of some kind of technological derivative.
So congrats! You just had lunch with the historical equivalent of Einstein.
Peace Prize? It could be argued that a better educated world is more likely to move towards peace. Allows people to be more critical thinking and thus not allow themselves to be fooled so easily by politicians.
The Peace Prize has been given for way crazier stuff than what Sal Khan is doing. If a banker can receive it for giving loans to people, why not Sal Khan for educating them?
The Nobel Prize has a famous chilling effect on actual productivity. It's good to give people recognition for their work but I would be wary of giving them too much.
Personally, I think this is exactly what is needed. My girlfriend and I are home from work today because of a snow storm, and she wanted to check out thechive.com, but they are down protesting SOPA. I was explaining to her what SOPA is, and why I think it is a bad idea. She didn't want to read pages of material or call someone since we don't live in the States. I could have just pointed her to the 10 minute video and let her see for herself.
