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Right back Edu

One flaw of the education system is that it assumes the simple child is 100GB thumbdrive. The other flaw of the education system is that it assumes that this harddrive will never crash.

But really, at the end of the day, there is only so much one can learn during their sixteen or more years of sentence, And this is where some interesting points start to rise out of the ground after all three magical jewels have been placed at their respective goddess statues.

Suppose there was a kid that possessed the maximum learning ability of his generation. (I'm afraid that due to privacy reasons I cannot give you Darr- whoops, said too much) Now suppose that his entire life was dedicated to the pursuit of new knowledge, and that all his income comes straight from an unlimited source. His entire life is spent searching for new breakthroughs and so on and so forth. (Except for his PS3 sessions and bus pilgrimages on weekends.) After he dies (shattering the faith of many female high school juniors around the world), he leaves behind all the knowledge, wisdom, and torrents he had discovered. The next generation in turn has its own Darryl work on this knowledge.

So the question is (after many paragraphs of blithering) is this: how long can this cycle go on? And while I could turn you to the Tour de France what I really should be telling you is that the possibility of a point where the amount of knowledge learnt in one's lifetime is no longer dependant on how much there currently is, but the amount of knowledge learnt in one's lifetime is dependant on... well, one's lifetime. Will there be a time period where one's lifespan is no longer enough time to learn what has been discovered over the past years before one finally gets all the answers anyway? In more other words, when will it be that the human brain cannot accumulate all learnt knowledge before it dies?

So where is this all going? (And while I am tempted to ask for a minute or two and get back to you later, it looks like I'm going to have to do some impromptu) What this might mean is that there might be a point in the future where no more scientific advancements can be made because no one can learn all the knowledge necessary to make those advances before they die (and even Walt Disney won't help us then). Throw in the fact that lifespans have been dropping ever since Adam got his craving for deliciously evil fruits and there really is a reason to fill the basement with dried rations. But there might be a solution.

Using previously accumulated knowledge, if we could somehow extend our own lifespan, more advances could be made. And this is where topics like transhumanism (and the Florida Bar) start popping in.

So while we're all hurrying down to the grocery store to buy the necessary food and ammo, let's just give this topic a little thought.

Tagboard, anyone?