Some of his examples, like Shakespeare, I found a little difficult to make the transition between classic literature and cyberinfrastructure. Seemed like quite a leap to make when he talks about every student needing to learn to become his or her own system administrator, whereas I’m pretty sure not everyone who learned writing and literature became even close to Shakespeare’s level of genius. With regards to that, Campbell does discuss the PS3 game LittleBigPlanet, where players act as both participants and producers, and that of the creations made in the game, the majority aren’t worth a second look. I get what he’s trying to say, but the logic doesn’t work for me. That’s not the focus in my opinion. Teaching skills should be done to teach skills, using technology to enable skill-creation and learning should be the end-goal: not to find the next Shakespeare of the cyberworld by training the masses to find the one gold nugget.

Gardner? What say you?