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1<meta name="next-size-adjust" content=""/><title>“Living textbooks” help envision an era of educational abundance — Matthew Rascoff</title><meta name="description" content="“Living textbooks” help envision an era of educational abundance. Originally published in New Lines, 2024."/><meta name="author" content="Matthew Rascoff"/><link rel="canonical" href="https://mzrascoff.com/writing/living-textbooks"/><meta property="og:title" content="“Living textbooks” help envision an era of educational abundance"/><meta property="og:description" content="Originally published in New Lines, 2024."/><meta property="og:type" content="article"/><meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/><meta name="twitter:creator" content="@mzrascoff"/><meta name="twitter:title" content="“Living textbooks” help envision an era of educational abundance"/><meta name="twitter:description" content="Originally published in New Lines, 2024."/><meta name="twitter:image" content="https://mzrascoff.com/twitter-image?1de2661a8bf35528"/><meta name="twitter:image:alt" content="Matthew Rascoff — Writing on Education, Technology &amp; Opportunity"/><meta name="twitter:image:type" content="image/png"/><meta name="twitter:image:width" content="1200"/><meta name="twitter:image:height" content="630"/><link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico?favicon.23nh2lqpj-bi2.ico?dpl=dpl_9yvCRmy5tELh7ENiQUQE49KhoUko" sizes="48x48" type="image/x-icon"/><link rel="icon" href="/icon.svg?icon.3v5mq9whvto-j.svg?dpl=dpl_9yvCRmy5tELh7ENiQUQE49KhoUko" sizes="any" type="image/svg+xml"/><link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/apple-icon.png?apple-icon.2xtmg58r25v4j.png?dpl=dpl_9yvCRmy5tELh7ENiQUQE49KhoUko" sizes="180x180" type="image/png"/>
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1<noscript><style>.reveal{opacity:1 !important;transform:none !important}</style></noscript><a href="#main-content" class="skip-link">Skip to content</a><header class="sticky top-0 z-50 border-b border-line bg-paper/85 backdrop-blur-md"><div class="mx-auto flex max-w-3xl items-center justify-between px-6 py-4"><a class="font-display text-[1.05rem] font-medium tracking-tight text-ink" href="/">Matthew Rascoff</a><div class="flex items-center gap-4"><a class="font-sans text-[0.82rem] tracking-wide text-muted transition-colors hover:text-accent" href="/#writing">← All writing</a><button type="button" class="-m-2 flex min-h-[44px] items-center p-2 text-muted transition-colors hover:text-accent "><span class="theme-icon-moon sr-only">Switch to dark theme</span><span class="theme-icon-sun sr-only">Switch to light theme</span><svg class="theme-icon-moon shrink-0" width="17" height="17" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="1.6" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" aria-hidden="true"><path d="M20 14.5A8 8 0 1 1 9.5 4a6.2 6.2 0 0 0 10.5 10.5z"></path></svg><svg class="theme-icon-sun shrink-0" width="17" height="17" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="1.6" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" aria-hidden="true"><circle cx="12" cy="12" r="4"></circle><path d="M12 2.5v2.5M12 19v2.5M4.6 4.6l1.8 1.8M17.6 17.6l1.8 1.8M2.5 12H5M19 12h2.5M4.6 19.4l1.8-1.8M17.6 6.4l1.8-1.8"></path></svg></button></div></div></header><main id="main-content" tabindex="-1"><article class="mx-auto max-w-3xl px-6 pb-24 pt-14 sm:pt-20"><p class="eyebrow mb-5">Open Source &amp; Educational Abundance</p><h1 class="font-display text-[2.1rem] font-light leading-[1.1] tracking-tight text-ink sm:text-[2.9rem]">“Living textbooks” help envision an era of educational abundance</h1><div class="mt-6 flex flex-wrap items-center gap-x-3 gap-y-1 font-sans text-[0.82rem] tracking-wide text-muted"><span>New Lines</span><span class="text-faint">·</span><span>2024</span></div><div class="mt-10 h-px w-full bg-line"></div><div class="article-body"><p class="mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90">In an essay written in the depths of the Depression in 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes offered a hopeful vision for the role of technology in society. In the past, wrote Keynes, “the struggle for subsistence, always has been hitherto the primary, most pressing problem of the human race.” In 100 years that struggle could come to an end through technological advances. New inventions would increase productivity so much that they would free humanity from the burdens of hunger and meaningless labor.</p>
2<p class="mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90">We are now approaching that 100 year mark. <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/working-more-than-ever" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent">While working hours declined<span class="sr-only"> (opens in a new tab)</span></a> as productivity increased the promised benefits didn’t extend to most people. The world produces enough food to feed a population four times larger than when Keynes was writing. What he did not foresee is the level of inequality that humanity would be willing to tolerate. He envisioned that economic freedoms would flow down through the social classes, but today <a href="https://www.ilo.org/publications/flagship-reports/world-employment-and-social-outlook-trends-2024" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent">the majority of workers still “sweat for their daily bread,”<span class="sr-only"> (opens in a new tab)</span></a> and 733 million people live in hunger.</p>
3<p class="mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90">Stanford bioengineering <a href="https://engineering.stanford.edu/people/drew-endy" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent">Prof. Drew Endy<span class="sr-only"> (opens in a new tab)</span></a> (who teaches through Stanford Digital Education’s equitable <a href="https://digitaleducation.stanford.edu/projects/stanford-courses-title-i-high-school-students" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent">digital pathways program<span class="sr-only"> (opens in a new tab)</span></a>
3) <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/23/business/dealbook/synthetic-biology-drew-endy.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent">argues that we have<span class="sr-only"> (opens in a new tab)</span></a> “the potential for civilization-scale flourishing, a world of abundance not scarcity, supporting a growing global population without destroying the planet.” Yet our politics still reflect a world of scarcity.</p>
4<p class="mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90">We live in an era of learning abundance that mirrors food production. Who could have imagined 94 years ago that the world’s greatest educational institutions would find ways to open their knowledge to learners everywhere, and that Wikipedia would have billions of page views per month?</p>
5<p class="mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90">Yet as with the unequal distribution of food, too many people are starved of educational opportunities. The educated have grown more educated, and they have <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/books/dream-hoarders/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent">hoarded opportunities<span class="sr-only"> (opens in a new tab)</span></a> for themselves. We may have the ability to educate the world, no less than we do to feed it, but <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/children-not-in-school" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent">we have failed to do so<span class="sr-only"> (opens in a new tab)</span></a>.</p>
6<hr class="my-12 border-t border-line"/>
7<p class="mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90">The most important intellectual legacy of Keynes’s essay is the concept of “technological unemployment,” a term he defined as “unemployment due to our discovery of means of economizing the use of labor outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labor.” This idea has shaped education policy ever since.</p>
8<p class="mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90">Responding to the upheavals of the industrial revolutions, the American response, copied by the rest of the developed world, was to invest in ever-higher levels of public education, successively establishing the world’s first systems for universal elementary education, high school education, and higher education. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Claudia Goldin and her co-author and Harvard colleague Lawrence Katz called this the “<a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674035300" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent">race between education and technology<span class="sr-only"> (opens in a new tab)</span></a>.” Through the 19th and 20th centuries, education helped workers stay ahead of the threat of obsolescence by continually improving their skills.</p>
9<p class="mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90">The next upheaval, the information revolution of the 1990s, prompted the question: could educators repurpose the very technologies that were transforming the economy into tools that would allow humans to level up, yet again?</p>
10<p class="mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90">Launched in April 2001, MIT Open Courseware (OCW) was a milestone in higher education’s response to that challenge. With funding from the Hewlett and Mellon Foundations, OCW showed that MIT could freely give away syllabi, assignments, and later, lecture videos, at no harm to its own interests. (In fact, <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691148748/unlocking-the-gates" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent">
10the project benefited MIT<span class="sr-only"> (opens in a new tab)</span></a> by reducing silos and allowing students and faculty to better understand the course offerings across the institute.) The creation and mass distribution of global educational public goods offered a mission-driven, not-for-profit alternative to the gold rush of the early internet. MIT was the first university to demonstrate the potential for what economists call a non-rival, non-excludable model of educational publishing. Or, as then-MIT president <a href="https://fnl.mit.edu/may-june-2021/on-the-20th-anniversary-of-opencourseware-how-it-began/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent">Charles Vest said<span class="sr-only"> (opens in a new tab)</span></a>, “when you share money, it disappears; but when you share knowledge, it increases.”</p>
11<p class="mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90">In subsequent years open education lost momentum within higher education and most institutions abandoned it. But the collaborative potential of open creation was realized in Wikipedia, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-visited_websites" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent">the seventh most visited site on the internet<span class="sr-only"> (opens in a new tab)</span></a>. It depends on the contributions of <a href="https://www.404media.co/email/d516cf7f-3b5f-4bf4-93da-325d9522dd79/?ref=daily-stories-newsletter" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent">thousands of editors<span class="sr-only"> (opens in a new tab)</span></a> actively working on editions in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent">more than 300 languages<span class="sr-only"> (opens in a new tab)</span></a>. Wikipedia combines the learning potential of open educational resources with the methodology of open source, the basis of most of our software infrastructure. It showed that high-quality content could be created through radically democratic collaboration.</p>
12<hr class="my-12 border-t border-line"/>
13<p class="mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90">Emerging from a diverse set of Stanford faculty authors, a new model of educational content is applying the lessons of Wikipedia’s success. “Living textbooks” are built on open source principles, using the infrastructure of GitHub (or similar platforms) to facilitate collaboration and dissemination. (GitHub provides the technical infrastructure for <a href="https://github.com/open-source" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent">3,800 open source projects<span class="sr-only"> (opens in a new tab)</span></a>, allowing for worldwide collaboration among millions of “committers” to shared code bases and dissemination of shared libraries and projects.)</p>
14<p class="mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90">With living textbooks, the book becomes an open source project. Contributions can be made to the content or to embedded code. Readers can propose corrections or amendments using the “forking” and “pull request” features that open source committers use to fix bugs or propose new features. And thanks to progressive thinking at university presses such as MIT and Princeton, authors can still publish peer reviewed print versions of their books and benefit from the distribution, prestige, and sales acumen of established publishers.</p>
15<p class="mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90">Living textbooks need not be open in the same style as Wikipedia. As with open source software, <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674018587" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent">multiple governance structures could work<span class="sr-only"> (opens in a new tab)</span></a>, some more like Apache (projects led by core groups of committers), others more like Linux (with stronger central control). Unlike Wiki
15pedia, living textbooks have named authors who reap the professional rewards of peer reviewed publishing. In the psychology department, Prof. Mike Frank and seven colleagues used this model to publish <a href="https://experimentology.io/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent"><em class="italic">Experimentology: An Open Science Approach to Experimental Psychology Methods</em><span class="sr-only"> (opens in a new tab)</span></a>. Similarly Prof. Russell Poldrack published <a href="https://statsthinking21.github.io/statsthinking21-core-site/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent"><em class="italic">Statistical Thinking for the 21st Century</em><span class="sr-only"> (opens in a new tab)</span></a> as a living textbook. And in the Doerr School of Sustainability Prof. Ines Azevedo, who coined the living textbook moniker, is co-authoring one based on an energy systems course she co-teaches with Profs. Adam Brandt and Steven Chu.</p>
16<p class="mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90">David Wiley, one of the pioneers of open education, recently argued that <a href="https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/7589" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent">AI represents the demise of open educational resources.<span class="sr-only"> (opens in a new tab)</span></a> Living textbooks offer a rebuttal. While they can be used to train AI, they will not be replaced by it. Human-centered teaching and learning requires trusted resources and references. As long as there is a role for instructors, there will be a need for educational materials. And with living textbooks, any instructor (or student) who uses a textbook can also contribute to its translation, adaptation, and improvement.</p>
17<p class="mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90">Keynes titled his essay “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren.” Despite having the resources for widespread economic freedoms, we failed to provide those possibilities to everyone. In responding to the latest wave of challenges posed by AI we should be attentive to questions of distribution and implementation. We need an open education vision that shares the incipient learning abundance as widely and democratically as possible. The educational possibilities for our grandchildren depend on it.</p>
18<p class="mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90"><em class="italic">With thanks to Zach Chandler.</em></p></div><nav aria-label="More in Open Source &amp; Educational Abundance" class="mt-16 grid gap-px overflow-hidden rounded-lg border border-line bg-line sm:grid-cols-2"><span class="hidden bg-paper sm:block" aria-hidden="true"></span><a class="group flex flex-col items-start gap-2 bg-paper p-6 text-left transition-colors hover:bg-paper-deep/60 sm:items-end sm:text-right" href="/writing/why-five-recipes-are-better-than-one"><span class="font-sans text-[0.7rem] uppercase tracking-[0.16em] text-faint">Older<!-- --> in Open Source &amp; Educational Abundance<!-- --> →</span><span class="font-serif text-lg leading-snug text-ink transition-colors group-hover:text-accent">Why Five Recipes are Better than One</span></a></nav><div class="mt-16 border-t border-line pt-8"><p class="font-serif text-base italic text-muted">By <!-- -->Matthew Rascoff<!-- -->. Originally published in <!-- -->New Lines<!-- -->,<!-- --> <!-- -->2024<!-- -->.</p><p class="mt-3 font-sans text-[0.82rem] tracking-wide text-muted">New essays go out through<!-- --> <a href="https://substack.com/@mzrascoff" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="text-accent transition-colors hover:text-accent-soft">my newsletter<span class="sr-only"> (opens in a new tab)</span></a> <!-- -->first.</p><a class="mt-4 inline-block font-sans text-[0.82rem] tracking-wide text-accent transition-colors hover:text-accent-soft" href="/#writing">← Back to all writing</a></div></article></main><footer class="border-t border-line"><div class="mx-auto flex max-w-5xl flex-col gap-4 px-6 py-10 sm:flex-row sm:items-center sm:justify-between"><p class="font-display text-base tracking-tight text-ink">Matthew Rascoff</p><div class="flex flex-wrap gap-x-6 gap-y-2"><a href="https://viafabri.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="font-sans text-[0.8rem] tracking-wide text-muted transition-colors hover:text-accent">Via Fabri<span class="sr-only"> (opens in a new tab)</span></a></div><p class="font-sans text-[0.75rem] tracking-wide text-faint">© <!-- -->2026</p></div></footer><!--$--><!--/$-->
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18<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"8:[[\"$\",\"header\",null,{\"className\":\"sticky top-0 z-50 border-b border-line bg-paper/85 backdrop-blur-md\",\"children\":[\"$\",\"div\",null,{\"className\":\"mx-auto flex max-w-3xl items-center justify-between px-6 py-4\",\"children\":[[\"$\",\"$L6\",null,{\"href\":\"/\",\"className\":\"font-display text-[1.05rem] font-medium tracking-tight text-ink\",\"children\":\"Matthew Rascoff\"}],[\"$\",\"div\",null,{\"className\":\"flex items-center gap-4\",\"children\":[[\"$\",\"$L6\",null,{\"href\":\"/#writing\",\"className\":\"font-sans text-[0.82rem] tracking-wide text-muted transition-colors hover:text-accent\",\"children\":\"← All writing\"}],[\"$\",\"$L7\",null,{}]]}]]}]}],[\"$\",\"main\",null,{\"id\":\"main-content\",\"tabIndex\":-1,\"children\":[\"$\",\"article\",null,{\"className\":\"mx-auto max-w-3xl px-6 pb-24 pt-14 sm:pt-20\",\"children\":[[\"$\",\"p\",null,{\"className\":\"eyebrow mb-5\",\"children\":\"Open Source \u0026 Educational Abundance\"}],[\"$\",\"h1\",null,{\"className\":\"font-display text-[2.1rem] font-light leading-[1.1] tracking-tight text-ink sm:text-[2.9rem]\",\"children\":\"“Living textbooks” help envision an era of educational abundance\"}],[\"$\",\"div\",null,{\"className\":\"mt-6 flex flex-wrap items-center gap-x-3 gap-y-1 font-sans text-[0.82rem] tracking-wide text-muted\",\"children\":[[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"children\":\"New Lines\"}],[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"text-faint\",\"children\":\"·\"}],[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"children\":\"2024\"}],\"$undefined\"]}],[\"$\",\"div\",null,{\"className\":\"mt-10 h-px w-full bg-line\"}],[\"$\",\"div\",null,{\"className\":\"article-body\",\"children\":[[\"$\",\"p\",\"p-0\",{\"lang\":\"$undefined\",\"className\":\"mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90\",\"children\":\"In an essay written in the depths of the Depression in 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes offered a hopeful vision for the role of technology in society. In the past, wrote Keynes, “the struggle for subsistence, always has been hitherto the primary, most pressing problem of the human race.” In 100 years that struggle could come to an end through technological advances. New inventions would increase productivity so much that they would free humanity from the burdens of hunger and meaningless labor.\"}],\"\\n\",[\"$\",\"p\",\"p-1\",{\"lang\":\"$undefined\",\"className\":\"mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90\",\"children\":[\"We are now approaching that 100 year mark. \",[\"$\",\"a\",\"a-0\",{\"href\":\"https://ourworldindata.org/working-more-than-ever\",\"target\":\"_blank\",\"rel\":\"noopener noreferrer\",\"className\":\"text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent\",\"children\":[\"While working hours declined\",[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"sr-only\",\"children\":\" (opens in a new tab)\"}]]}],\" as productivity increased the promised benefits didn’t extend to most people. The world produces enough food to feed a population four times larger than when Keynes was writing. What he did not foresee is the level of inequality that humanity would be willing to tolerate. He envisioned that economic freedoms would flow down through the social classes, but today \",[\"$\",\"a\",\"a-1\",{\"href\":\"https://www.ilo.org/publications/flagship-reports/world-employment-and-social-outlook-trends-2024\",\"target\":\"_blank\",\"rel\":\"noopener noreferrer\",\"className\":\"text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent\",\"children\":[\"the majority of workers still “sweat for their daily bread,”\",[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"sr-only\",\"children\":\" (opens in a new tab)\"}]]}],\" and 733 million people live in hunger.\"]}],\"\\n\",[\"$\",\"p\",\"p-2\",{\"lang\":\"$undefined\",\"className\":\"mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90\",\"children\":[\"Stanford bioengineering \",[\"$\",\"a\",\"a-0\",{\"href\":\"https://engineering.stanford.edu/people/drew-endy\",\"target\":\"_blank\",\"rel\":\"noopener noreferrer\",\"className\":\"text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent\",\"children\":[\"Prof. Drew Endy\",\"$L15\"]}],\" (who teaches through Stanford Digital Education’s equitable \",\"$L16\",\") \",\"$L17\",\" “the potential for civilization-scale flourishing, a world of abundance not scarcity, supporting a growing global population without destroying the planet.” Yet our politics still reflect a world of scarcity.\"]}],\"\\n\",\"$L18\",\"\\n\",\"$L19\",\"\\n\",\"$L1a\",\"\\n\",\"$L1b\",\"\\n\",\"$L1c\",\"\\n\",\"$L1d\",\"\\n\",\"$L1e\",\"\\n\",\"$L1f\",\"\\n\",\"$L20\",\"\\n\",\"$L21\",\"\\n\",\"$L22\",\"\\n\",\"$L23\",\"\\n\",\"$L24\",\"\\n\",\"$L25\",\"\\n\",\"$L26\"]}],\"$L27\",\"$L28\"]}]}],\"$L29\"]\n"])</script>
18<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"15:[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"sr-only\",\"children\":\" (opens in a new tab)\"}]\n16:[\"$\",\"a\",\"a-1\",{\"href\":\"https://digitaleducation.stanford.edu/projects/stanford-courses-title-i-high-school-students\",\"target\":\"_blank\",\"rel\":\"noopener noreferrer\",\"className\":\"text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent\",\"children\":[\"digital pathways program\",[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"sr-only\",\"children\":\" (opens in a new tab)\"}]]}]\n17:[\"$\",\"a\",\"a-2\",{\"href\":\"https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/23/business/dealbook/synthetic-biology-drew-endy.html\",\"target\":\"_blank\",\"rel\":\"noopener noreferrer\",\"className\":\"text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent\",\"children\":[\"argues that we have\",[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"sr-only\",\"children\":\" (opens in a new tab)\"}]]}]\n18:[\"$\",\"p\",\"p-3\",{\"lang\":\"$undefined\",\"className\":\"mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90\",\"children\":\"We live in an era of learning abundance that mirrors food production. Who could have imagined 94 years ago that the world’s greatest educational institutions would find ways to open their knowledge to learners everywhere, and that Wikipedia would have billions of page views per month?\"}]\n19:[\"$\",\"p\",\"p-4\",{\"lang\":\"$undefined\",\"className\":\"mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90\",\"children\":[\"Yet as with the unequal distribution of food, too many people are starved of educational opportunities. The educated have grown more educated, and they have \",[\"$\",\"a\",\"a-0\",{\"href\":\"https://www.brookings.edu/books/dream-hoarders/\",\"target\":\"_blank\",\"rel\":\"noopener noreferrer\",\"className\":\"text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent\",\"children\":[\"hoarded opportunities\",[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"sr-only\",\"children\":\" (opens in a new tab)\"}]]}],\" for themselves. We may have the ability to educate the world, no less than we do to feed it, but \",[\"$\",\"a\",\"a-1\",{\"href\":\"https://ourworldindata.org/children-not-in-school\",\"target\":\"_blank\",\"rel\":\"noopener noreferrer\",\"className\":\"text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent\",\"children\":[\"we have failed to do so\",[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"sr-only\",\"children\":\" (opens in a new tab)\"}]]}],\".\"]}]\n1a:[\"$\",\"hr\",\"hr-0\",{\"className\":\"my-12 border-t border-line\"}]\n1b:[\"$\",\"p\",\"p-5\",{\"lang\":\"$undefined\",\"className\":\"mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90\",\"children\":\"The most important intellectual legacy of Keynes’s essay is the concept of “technological unemployment,” a term he defined as “unemployment due to our discovery of means of economizing the use of labor outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labor.” This idea has shaped education policy ever since.\"}]\n1c:[\"$\",\"p\",\"p-6\",{\"lang\":\"$undefined\",\"className\":\"mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90\",\"children\":[\"Responding to the upheavals of the industrial revolutions, the American response, copied by the rest of the developed world, was to invest in ever-higher levels of public education, successively establishing the world’s first systems for universal elementary education, high school education, and higher education. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Claudia Goldin and her co-author and Harvard colleague Lawrence Katz called this the “\",[\"$\",\"a\",\"a-0\",{\"href\":\"https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674035300\",\"target\":\"_blank\",\"rel\":\"noopener noreferrer\",\"className\":\"text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent\",\"children\":[\"race between education and technology\",[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"sr-only\",\"children\":\" (opens in a new tab)\"}]]}],\".” Through the 19th and 20th centuries, education helped workers stay ahead of the threat of obsolescence by continually improving their skills.\"]}]\n1d:[\"$\",\"p\",\"p-7\",{\"lang\":\"$undefined\",\"className\":\"mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-in"])</script>
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18<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"1e:[\"$\",\"p\",\"p-8\",{\"lang\":\"$undefined\",\"className\":\"mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90\",\"children\":[\"Launched in April 2001, MIT Open Courseware (OCW) was a milestone in higher education’s response to that challenge. With funding from the Hewlett and Mellon Foundations, OCW showed that MIT could freely give away syllabi, assignments, and later, lecture videos, at no harm to its own interests. (In fact, \",[\"$\",\"a\",\"a-0\",{\"href\":\"https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691148748/unlocking-the-gates\",\"target\":\"_blank\",\"rel\":\"noopener noreferrer\",\"className\":\"text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent\",\"children\":[\"the project benefited MIT\",[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"sr-only\",\"children\":\" (opens in a new tab)\"}]]}],\" by reducing silos and allowing students and faculty to better understand the course offerings across the institute.) The creation and mass distribution of global educational public goods offered a mission-driven, not-for-profit alternative to the gold rush of the early internet. MIT was the first university to demonstrate the potential for what economists call a non-rival, non-excludable model of educational publishing. Or, as then-MIT president \",[\"$\",\"a\",\"a-1\",{\"href\":\"https://fnl.mit.edu/may-june-2021/on-the-20th-anniversary-of-opencourseware-how-it-began/\",\"target\":\"_blank\",\"rel\":\"noopener noreferrer\",\"className\":\"text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent\",\"children\":[\"Charles Vest said\",[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"sr-only\",\"children\":\" (opens in a new tab)\"}]]}],\", “when you share money, it disappears; but when you share knowledge, it increases.”\"]}]\n"])</script>
18<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"1f:[\"$\",\"p\",\"p-9\",{\"lang\":\"$undefined\",\"className\":\"mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90\",\"children\":[\"In subsequent years open education lost momentum within higher education and most institutions abandoned it. But the collaborative potential of open creation was realized in Wikipedia, \",[\"$\",\"a\",\"a-0\",{\"href\":\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-visited_websites\",\"target\":\"_blank\",\"rel\":\"noopener noreferrer\",\"className\":\"text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent\",\"children\":[\"the seventh most visited site on the internet\",[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"sr-only\",\"children\":\" (opens in a new tab)\"}]]}],\". It depends on the contributions of \",[\"$\",\"a\",\"a-1\",{\"href\":\"https://www.404media.co/email/d516cf7f-3b5f-4bf4-93da-325d9522dd79/?ref=daily-stories-newsletter\",\"target\":\"_blank\",\"rel\":\"noopener noreferrer\",\"className\":\"text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent\",\"children\":[\"thousands of editors\",[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"sr-only\",\"children\":\" (opens in a new tab)\"}]]}],\" actively working on editions in \",[\"$\",\"a\",\"a-2\",{\"href\":\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia\",\"target\":\"_blank\",\"rel\":\"noopener noreferrer\",\"className\":\"text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent\",\"children\":[\"more than 300 languages\",[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"sr-only\",\"children\":\" (opens in a new tab)\"}]]}],\". Wikipedia combines the learning potential of open educational resources with the methodology of open source, the basis of most of our software infrastructure. It showed that high-quality content could be created through radically democratic collaboration.\"]}]\n"])</script>
18<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"20:[\"$\",\"hr\",\"hr-1\",{\"className\":\"my-12 border-t border-line\"}]\n21:[\"$\",\"p\",\"p-10\",{\"lang\":\"$undefined\",\"className\":\"mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90\",\"children\":[\"Emerging from a diverse set of Stanford faculty authors, a new model of educational content is applying the lessons of Wikipedia’s success. “Living textbooks” are built on open source principles, using the infrastructure of GitHub (or similar platforms) to facilitate collaboration and dissemination. (GitHub provides the technical infrastructure for \",[\"$\",\"a\",\"a-0\",{\"href\":\"https://github.com/open-source\",\"target\":\"_blank\",\"rel\":\"noopener noreferrer\",\"className\":\"text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent\",\"children\":[\"3,800 open source projects\",[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"sr-only\",\"children\":\" (opens in a new tab)\"}]]}],\", allowing for worldwide collaboration among millions of “committers” to shared code bases and dissemination of shared libraries and projects.)\"]}]\n22:[\"$\",\"p\",\"p-11\",{\"lang\":\"$undefined\",\"className\":\"mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90\",\"children\":\"With living textbooks, the book becomes an open source project. Contributions can be made to the content or to embedded code. Readers can propose corrections or amendments using the “forking” and “pull request” features that open source committers use to fix bugs or propose new features. And thanks to progressive thinking at university presses such as MIT and Princeton, authors can still publish peer reviewed print versions of their books and benefit from the distribution, prestige, and sales acumen of established publishers.\"}]\n"])</script>
18<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"23:[\"$\",\"p\",\"p-12\",{\"lang\":\"$undefined\",\"className\":\"mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90\",\"children\":[\"Living textbooks need not be open in the same style as Wikipedia. As with open source software, \",[\"$\",\"a\",\"a-0\",{\"href\":\"https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674018587\",\"target\":\"_blank\",\"rel\":\"noopener noreferrer\",\"className\":\"text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent\",\"children\":[\"multiple governance structures could work\",[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"sr-only\",\"children\":\" (opens in a new tab)\"}]]}],\", some more like Apache (projects led by core groups of committers), others more like Linux (with stronger central control). Unlike Wikipedia, living textbooks have named authors who reap the professional rewards of peer reviewed publishing. In the psychology department, Prof. Mike Frank and seven colleagues used this model to publish \",[\"$\",\"a\",\"a-1\",{\"href\":\"https://experimentology.io/\",\"target\":\"_blank\",\"rel\":\"noopener noreferrer\",\"className\":\"text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent\",\"children\":[[\"$\",\"em\",\"em-0\",{\"className\":\"italic\",\"children\":\"Experimentology: An Open Science Approach to Experimental Psychology Methods\"}],[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"sr-only\",\"children\":\" (opens in a new tab)\"}]]}],\". Similarly Prof. Russell Poldrack published \",[\"$\",\"a\",\"a-2\",{\"href\":\"https://statsthinking21.github.io/statsthinking21-core-site/\",\"target\":\"_blank\",\"rel\":\"noopener noreferrer\",\"className\":\"text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent\",\"children\":[[\"$\",\"em\",\"em-0\",{\"className\":\"italic\",\"children\":\"Statistical Thinking for the 21st Century\"}],[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"sr-only\",\"children\":\" (opens in a new tab)\"}]]}],\" as a living textbook. And in the Doerr School of Sustainability Prof. Ines Azevedo, who coined the living textbook moniker, is co-authoring one based on an energy systems course she co-teaches with Profs. Adam Brandt and Steven Chu.\"]}]\n"])</script>
18<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"24:[\"$\",\"p\",\"p-13\",{\"lang\":\"$undefined\",\"className\":\"mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90\",\"children\":[\"David Wiley, one of the pioneers of open education, recently argued that \",[\"$\",\"a\",\"a-0\",{\"href\":\"https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/7589\",\"target\":\"_blank\",\"rel\":\"noopener noreferrer\",\"className\":\"text-accent underline decoration-accent/30 underline-offset-2 transition-colors hover:decoration-accent\",\"children\":[\"AI represents the demise of open educational resources.\",[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"sr-only\",\"children\":\" (opens in a new tab)\"}]]}],\" Living textbooks offer a rebuttal. While they can be used to train AI, they will not be replaced by it. Human-centered teaching and learning requires trusted resources and references. As long as there is a role for instructors, there will be a need for educational materials. And with living textbooks, any instructor (or student) who uses a textbook can also contribute to its translation, adaptation, and improvement.\"]}]\n25:[\"$\",\"p\",\"p-14\",{\"lang\":\"$undefined\",\"className\":\"mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90\",\"children\":\"Keynes titled his essay “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren.” Despite having the resources for widespread economic freedoms, we failed to provide those possibilities to everyone. In responding to the latest wave of challenges posed by AI we should be attentive to questions of distribution and implementation. We need an open education vision that shares the incipient learning abundance as widely and democratically as possible. The educational possibilities for our grandchildren depend on it.\"}]\n26:[\"$\",\"p\",\"p-15\",{\"lang\":\"$undefined\",\"className\":\"mt-6 font-serif text-[1.18rem] leading-[1.75] text-ink/90\",\"children\":[\"$\",\"em\",\"em-0\",{\"className\":\"italic\",\"children\":\"With thanks to Zach Chandler.\"}]}]\n27:[\"$\",\"nav\",null,{\"aria-label\":\"More in Open Source \u0026 Educational Abundance\",\"className\":\"mt-16 grid gap-px overflow-hidden rounded-lg border border-line bg-line sm:grid-cols-2\",\"children\":[[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"hidden bg-paper sm:block\",\"aria-hidden\":\"true\"}],[\"$\",\"$L6\",null,{\"href\":\"/writing/why-five-recipes-are-better-than-one\",\"className\":\"group flex flex-col items-start gap-2 bg-paper p-6 text-left transition-colors hover:bg-paper-deep/60 sm:items-end sm:text-right\",\"children\":[[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"font-sans text-[0.7rem] uppercase tracking-[0.16em] text-faint\",\"children\":[\"Older\",\" in Open Source \u0026 Educational Abundance\",\" →\"]}],[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"font-serif text-lg leading-snug text-ink transition-colors group-hover:text-accent\",\"children\":\"Why Five Recipes are Better than One\"}]]}]]}]\n28:[\"$\",\"div\",null,{\"className\":\"mt-16 border-t border-line pt-8\",\"children\":[[\"$\",\"p\",null,{\"className\":\"font-serif text-base italic text-muted\",\"children\":[\"By \",\"Matthew Rascoff\",\". Originally published in \",\"New Lines\",\",\",\" \",\"2024\",\".\"]}],[\"$\",\"p\",null,{\"className\":\"mt-3 font-sans text-[0.82rem] tracking-wide text-muted\",\"children\":[\"New essays go out through\",\" \",[\"$\",\"a\",null,{\"href\":\"https://substack.com/@mzrascoff\",\"target\":\"_blank\",\"rel\":\"noopener noreferrer\",\"className\":\"text-accent transition-colors hover:text-accent-soft\",\"children\":[\"my newsletter\",[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"sr-only\",\"children\":\" (opens in a new tab)\"}]]}],\" \",\"first.\"]}],[\"$\",\"$L6\",null,{\"href\":\"/#writing\",\"className\":\"mt-4 inline-block font-sans text-[0.82rem] tracking-wide text-accent transition-colors hover:text-accent-soft\",\"children\":\"← Back to all writing\"}]]}]\n29:[\"$\",\"footer\",null,{\"className\":\"border-t border-line\",\"children\":[\"$\",\"div\",null,{\"className\":\"mx-auto flex max-w-5xl flex-col gap-4 px-6 py-10 sm:flex-row sm:items-center sm:justify-between\",\"children\":[[\"$\",\"p\",null,{\"className\":\"font-display text-base tracking-tight text-ink\",\"children\":\"Matthew Rascoff\"}],[\"$\",\"div\",null,{\"className\":\"flex flex-wrap gap-x-6 gap-y-2\",\"children\":[[\"$\",\"a\",\"Via Fabri\",{\"href\":\"https://viafabri.com\",\"target\":\"_blank\",\"rel\":\"noopener noreferrer\",\"className\":\"font-sans text-[0.8rem] tracking-wi"])</script>
18<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"de text-muted transition-colors hover:text-accent\",\"children\":[\"Via Fabri\",[\"$\",\"span\",null,{\"className\":\"sr-only\",\"children\":\" (opens in a new tab)\"}]]}]]}],[\"$\",\"p\",null,{\"className\":\"font-sans text-[0.75rem] tracking-wide text-faint\",\"children\":[\"© \",2026]}]]}]}]\n"])</script>
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18<script>self.__next_f.push([1,"14:[[\"$\",\"title\",\"0\",{\"children\":\"“Living textbooks” help envision an era of educational abundance — Matthew Rascoff\"}],[\"$\",\"meta\",\"1\",{\"name\":\"description\",\"content\":\"“Living textbooks” help envision an era of educational abundance. Originally published in New Lines, 2024.\"}],[\"$\",\"meta\",\"2\",{\"name\":\"author\",\"content\":\"Matthew Rascoff\"}],[\"$\",\"link\",\"3\",{\"rel\":\"canonical\",\"href\":\"https://mzrascoff.com/writing/living-textbooks\"}],[\"$\",\"meta\",\"4\",{\"property\":\"og:title\",\"content\":\"“Living textbooks” help envision an era of educational abundance\"}],[\"$\",\"meta\",\"5\",{\"property\":\"og:description\",\"content\":\"Originally published in New Lines, 2024.\"}],[\"$\",\"meta\",\"6\",{\"property\":\"og:type\",\"content\":\"article\"}],[\"$\",\"meta\",\"7\",{\"name\":\"twitter:card\",\"content\":\"summary_large_image\"}],[\"$\",\"meta\",\"8\",{\"name\":\"twitter:creator\",\"content\":\"@mzrascoff\"}],[\"$\",\"meta\",\"9\",{\"name\":\"twitter:title\",\"content\":\"“Living textbooks” help envision an era of educational abundance\"}],[\"$\",\"meta\",\"10\",{\"name\":\"twitter:description\",\"content\":\"Originally published in New Lines, 2024.\"}],[\"$\",\"meta\",\"11\",{\"name\":\"twitter:image\",\"content\":\"https://mzrascoff.com/twitter-image?1de2661a8bf35528\"}],[\"$\",\"meta\",\"12\",{\"name\":\"twitter:image:alt\",\"content\":\"Matthew Rascoff — Writing on Education, Technology \u0026 Opportunity\"}],[\"$\",\"meta\",\"13\",{\"name\":\"twitter:image:type\",\"content\":\"image/png\"}],[\"$\",\"meta\",\"14\",{\"name\":\"twitter:image:width\",\"content\":\"1200\"}],[\"$\",\"meta\",\"15\",{\"name\":\"twitter:image:height\",\"content\":\"630\"}],[\"$\",\"link\",\"16\",{\"rel\":\"icon\",\"href\":\"/favicon.ico?favicon.23nh2lqpj-bi2.ico?dpl=dpl_9yvCRmy5tELh7ENiQUQE49KhoUko\",\"sizes\":\"48x48\",\"type\":\"image/x-icon\"}],[\"$\",\"link\",\"17\",{\"rel\":\"icon\",\"href\":\"/icon.svg?icon.3v5mq9whvto-j.svg?dpl=dpl_9yvCRmy5tELh7ENiQUQE49KhoUko\",\"sizes\":\"any\",\"type\":\"image/svg+xml\"}],[\"$\",\"link\",\"18\",{\"rel\":\"apple-touch-icon\",\"href\":\"/apple-icon.png?apple-icon.2xtmg58r25v4j.png?dpl=dpl_9yvCRmy5tELh7ENiQUQE49KhoUko\",\"sizes\":\"180x180\",\"type\":\"image/png\"}],[\"$\",\"$L2a\",\"19\",{}]]\n"])</script>
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