If you find that material again, I'd love to see it. I'm particularly interested in distance learning for linguistics, that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
There's an inherent tension between "information wants to be free" and "you get what you pay for." Both are true as far as they go; neither covers the whole of human knowledge. The more complicated and esoteric the knowledge you seek, the more likely you'll get better results from buying it. It's not just that payment tends to attract more skilled contributors -- it's also that people deserve to profit from their hard work and they're more able to afford to do it if they get paid. What I see evolving online is that much basic material and some intermediate material is available free, but premium and advanced services cost. I think that's a reasonable balance.
As a writer, I deal with similar issues, in various genres and formats. Everyone can read my blog for free and enjoy my voice, my casual musings, and short descriptions of how to do stuff. People who want detailed writing instructions can go buy Composing Magic. Everyone can contribute prompts in my poetry fishbowls and read the posted poems. People who want to see a specific poem or share it with others can sponsor it. So far this seems to work fairly well.
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dancing_serpent
Wow!
Date: 2009-01-27 09:49 pm (UTC)There's an inherent tension between "information wants to be free" and "you get what you pay for." Both are true as far as they go; neither covers the whole of human knowledge. The more complicated and esoteric the knowledge you seek, the more likely you'll get better results from buying it. It's not just that payment tends to attract more skilled contributors -- it's also that people deserve to profit from their hard work and they're more able to afford to do it if they get paid. What I see evolving online is that much basic material and some intermediate material is available free, but premium and advanced services cost. I think that's a reasonable balance.
As a writer, I deal with similar issues, in various genres and formats. Everyone can read my blog for free and enjoy my voice, my casual musings, and short descriptions of how to do stuff. People who want detailed writing instructions can go buy Composing Magic. Everyone can contribute prompts in my poetry fishbowls and read the posted poems. People who want to see a specific poem or share it with others can sponsor it. So far this seems to work fairly well.