We have tastemakers for everything in life. Food critics (and increasingly food bloggers) to tell us where and what to eat. Fashion magazines to tell us what to where and what shops are hot (not that I care about any of that crap). A million people telling us what music we should be listening to (I find myself increasingly turning to Fred Wilson here).
Why shouldn’t we have tastemakers for what we should be learning? Recently I sent off e-mails to a bunch of my friends to ask them what books I should be reading and what blogs I should be keeping up with. These people were essentially educational tastemakers for me and the lists they gave me were pretty damn hot (see the list of books here).
But I don’t want to stop there. I want to know what you’re learning. Yes you. I want to know what crazy thing you just found out and who you found it out from. I want to know when you read some article that blew your mind (like this one). I want to know when you had an incredibly productive time of learning and growing and I want to share in that experience.
I want a Social Learning Discovery Service so that when I meet someone who is ridiculously smart in some area I can “subscribe” to that person’s knowledge stream. Some services are getting closer to this. Delicious. Sphere (kinda). But there’s still a long way to go.
Look at what’s going on in the music biz right now and you’ll get the best glimpse of what I think is possible. See how people are adopting the iLike Facebook app and think about what that means. See how services like last.fm and the Hype Machine operate and how they are fundamentally changing the music business. And why the fact that I’m listening to a great live version of “Misunderstood” by Wilco from Fred’s playlist as I write this gives me tremendous hope for the future of education.
