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Knowledge Made Cheap: Global Learners and the Logistics of Reading

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Hansun Hsiung
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Extract

“You only have to know one thing: You can learn anything. For free. For everyone. Forever” (Khan Academy). Utopias of learning abound in our contemporary media landscape. Take, for instance, the above motto of Khan Academy (#YouCanLearnAnything), one of the earliest providers of open online education. With lessons in over twenty-four languages on topics from algebra to art history, Khan Academy aspires to reach an unprecedented global audience—not only children from the United States who are stuck in “a corrupt or broken [school] system” but also the “young girl in an African village” and the “fisherman's son in New Guinea” (Khan 4). In this sense, Khan Academy enjoys a paradoxical kinship to the diverse geographies studied in this cluster of essays. By promising the global provision of education, it seeks to conquer geography itself.

Type
Theories and Methodologies New Geographies of Reading
Information
PMLA , Volume 134 , Issue 1: Special Topic Cultures of Reading , January 2019 , pp. 137 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2019

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