You Be the VC

Take one part venture capital firm and one part American Idol; mix them together and get You Be the VC. You Be the VC is a groundbreaking competition showcasing top entrepreneurs from around the globe. Leveraging crowd-sourcing methodologies and expert advisors, the companies develop and advance, with the audience deciding which three will get funded. Will the next Google be born or the next Steve Jobs arise?

I am more interested in seeing who will be Simon Cowell equivalent here.

In plain terms what this means is having an Internet based platform which will allow many teachers to join together to teach as many students in a scale-free manner. Leveraging P2P architectural concepts it can be designed in such a way as to improve the platform as more and more students and teachers join the network.

More nodes, more efficiency in terms of volume, content and creative frictions.

Brin envisions a day when we as individuals can use the search engine to Google our Genes and find out more about our predisposition to various illnesses, potential reactions to mediciations, food alergies and more as we move into the age of personalized medicine. Brin also has a hunch, shared by some at NIH and the Department of Energy, that Google has the massive computing power and long-term perspective needed to discover new relationships at the intersection of genetics, technology and biology that may lead not only to a better understanding of what causes certain illnesses and abnormalities but also possibly help to foster discovery of cures.

Hats off to them for thinking so far ahead ! Not sure if I want to do any “advanced search” looking for my defective genes between “2001 and 2005″ and expecting powerpoint format in the result set but I am sure there will be lot of people out there whose life will change forever if this Kennedy style lets-go-to-moon statement becomes a reality.

Aristotle would begin by asking you how much time you’re willing to devote to this project and the level of detail you want. Then Aristotle would show you a map of what you need to learn. The tutor program does this by comparing what you know to what needs to be known to design fault-tolerant modules. It knows what needs to be known because this is a common problem faced by many engineers, and knowledgeable teachers have identified the key concepts many times. Aristotle knows what you know because it has worked with you for a long time. There may be some things you’re familiar with that Aristotle doesn’t know you know, but you can point these things out to Aristotle when it shows you the learning plan. Aristotle might take your word for what you know, but it is more likely to quiz you about some of the key concepts, just to make sure.

I added a new category in the archive list - Leapfrog. Thinking is that tools and techniques for knowledge acquisition are evolving rapidly, to such an extent that one can plot a leapfrogging strategy and structure their knowledge acquisition. It would be fun to capture all advances happening under search, semantic web, social interaction and innovation and eventually funnel all that in forming a parallel schooling system for kids. I haven’t given up on my dream of ideal schooling system.