Jan 21, 202015 min read

The rise of self-learning in the age of Information Technology—why it works, and the future of it.

Updated: Feb 16, 2020

An image of the YouTube home page on a laptop screen — The impact that YouTube has on Self-learning is immense. Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

Self-learning is not a new thing at all. We all go through a rigorous process of trial and error at the dawn of our lives. It transcends the fine line to instinctive curiosity, and this by far is one of the most valuable qualities anyone can possess. But the technology-induced version of self-learning is quite new, and in fact, it took the world by storm. Today, self-learning is constantly evolving through technology, with the internet and artificial intelligence playing a huge part in this evolution.

My personal self-learning experience

Allow me to tell you something from real-life experiences. I and science didn’t go well around the start of the previous decade. For the lack of a better word, I could say I despised it. But not that I knew I was doing so intentionally. Why would anyone hate something so intrinsic as science? Well, the reason why I wanted to share this little nugget of my life is that I wanted to emphasize a problem with how science is done in schools or was done in schools. Now, the school system seems to be going through a metamorphosis.

But back in the day, when I was in school, the school curriculum had one primary focus; getting the students to achieve top grades. Superficially it sounds like a good thing. Why would good grades sound anything else than good grades? The problem here is not about grades at all. But it kind of boils down to the fact that people are different. Now, this might be a statement that holds validity over anything that you can possibly think of in the context of human affairs, but in schools, the venue where talent is supposed to be identified, when all students do is learn for getting good grades, the art of knowing something deep just gets completely thrown out of the backdoor. Sir Ken Robinson, an international advisor on education, stresses this very fact in his infamous TED talk [1] titled, ‘Do schools kill creativity?’

I can vouch for this argument, for I too had a curiosity for science, especially a mysterious love for astronomy, even though I didn't quite know what the subject was in the early years of my science education. But it all fell apart somehow when things turned on its head when I reached high school. Now that I think about it often, none of the teachers were to be blamed. It was probably my cat-like attention span, which did not do me any good. But I only started looking back on it as I realized that my attention span wasn't that bad after all. It’s just that I found it hard to get awestruck by something. And if something didn’t lure me in to learn more, my bad attention span would take over from there. And this is something that I learned about myself when I came across YouTube. I only got to make full use of YouTube around the time I was in college. Mainly because much like many other social media, YouTube, took some time to catch on in India. But, when it did, I was intrigued by some of the content on it. I wasn’t bored anymore, nor was my attention dwindling. I was learning about the things that I’ve always been curious about, things that I had chose to forget somewhere along the way, and this was not just exciting, no, it felt more like falling in love.

The timeline of learning

Learning something new has always been held in high regard throughout human history. A casual retrospection of human achievements would almost always suggest a new collective societal skill, something that had not been performed before, be it agriculture, which changed the course of civilization, or crafting simple tools, which made hunting and locomotion easier. But if we plotted a graph of the efficiency of learning through the years, we would see the process improving by every passing century, if not years.

Ray Kurzweil, an inventor as well as a futurist, once gave a TED talk in which he exhibited the ‘countdown to singularity’[2] curve that denoted the depreciating time intervals between major events in the history of life. After simple life appeared on Earth about 3.5 billion years ago, it would take another 3 billion years for life to diversify into complex organisms in line with the Cambrian explosion[3] that happened about 541 million years ago. The next major event saw dinosaurs walk on Earth, only about 300 million years later. Our first human ancestors appeared about 2 million years ago, and it wouldn’t be until 200,000 to 300,000 years ago when modern humans would first appear on the evolutionary chart. But after that, evolution had a trick up its sleeve, something that would spur complexity in the brain, allowing our prehistoric ancestors to be conscious, and use this ability to invent hunting tools, fire, and go on to start civilizations, and practice agriculture. Since then, ‘the learning curve’ of humanity has grown exponentially with each new ‘major event’ in history taking place in lesser time.

Carl Sagan’s cosmic calendar[4] is one of the best ways to give this some perspective. The cosmic calendar compresses the age of the universe into a year, in which each day of the year represents 38 million years, an hour represents 1.6 million years, and a second is as long as 438 years. On this calendar, the Big Bang occurred on Jan 1st, and the Earth was formed on 2nd September. He assigns every major event a day on the calendar, so naturally, one would think where we humans would show up on it. Well, the primitive humans wouldn’t appear on this calendar until 10:24 pm on December 31st! And as we blink our eyes, a second or two to midnight, we will enter into our modern history! From the invention of the Gutenberg Press[5] to Galileo and Isaac Newton, from the artists of the Renaissance to modern-day universities and schools. All of it contained in a mere blink of an eye on the cosmic timescale.

But today, the Gutenberg press sounds prehistoric, even the laws of gravity was encompassed by a new understanding through Albert Einstein. This suggests that with the advent of information technology, people have become smarter. We are processing, storing, and sharing information at such a rapid rate since the industrial revolution that now, biological evolution is not the only word on the block, there is something new we are talking about, and it is called technological evolution. The process of learning something new within this evolutionary paradigm is easily more efficient than any other period in human history.

An image of the motherboard of a laptop — Perhaps, the information age wouldn't have come about if it weren't for transistors | Photo by Alexandre Debiève on Unsplash

Internet, the modern-day tool for self-learning

The way the world has changed in the past century is stupefying. Computers took over proceedings from the remains of the industrial revolution, as information became the cornerstone of modern-day civilization. But if we time travel back to the 50s, the world would be a very different place, it would undoubtedly be on the verge of change, but it would lack one thing that most people take for granted today, the thing that makes information accessible to all, the thing that we call the Internet.

In the old days, information was an amenity. It was certainly not readily available like it is today, and it most definitely had an over-the-top price tag. Yet, our history books tell tales of illuminated scientists, progressive leaders, idealistic artists, and architects who were autodidacts. Obviously, you don’t always need a tool like the Internet to be self-taught, books would be sufficient in most cases, and in fact, people would argue that books would never be replaced by the internet. And I would hard-agree on it to an extent, only to an extent, for maybe the point of the internet is not to replace anything. Speaking from a learning point of view, it’s only here to make our lives easier, only as an extremely useful option. So, as years passed, new self-learning tools became rapidly available to the world via the internet. All that a person now needed was a computer, and in most recent times, a smartphone, to make the learning process extremely efficient.

Why do people like self-learning, especially the modern way?

Over the years, the human collective has figured out that learning is an existential thing. Learning new things meant understanding the universe better, and a better understanding of the universe always yielded benefits, be it in the form of better living conditions or better chances at survival. So, we have been doing this ever since our species originated. The only difference now is that with the burgeoning technology, the concept of learning has branched out.

Today, we have a plethora of choices for learning new skills and self-educating oneself. But most of these choices in the self-learning system revolves around the internet, and this seems to be the new vessel for education. This is not to say that internet-based education is the best mode of education there is, after all, if you are pursuing a goal to be a scientist, the internet will be of help to you, but it won’t be able to serve you properly, because in the fields of research and experimentation, things are better when they’re hands-on, and it may well be left that way. However, setting some conditional cases aside, the internet is the ‘chosen one’ by many, including myself, when it comes to acquiring knowledge, and feeding curiosities. And here’s why I think it’s so.

People are different!

This doesn’t require an explanation. We all know that we are different from one another. But a TED talk[6] that I’d once watched gives it some elegant perspective. In the talk titled ‘The power of introverts,’ Susan Cain, an introvert turned lawyer, explains the way the society looks down on introversion, even in fields like education, where these biases are not supposed to exist. In the modern world, the school system focuses more on teamwork and collaboration, where not all people can thrive. She makes a case of a lack of opportunities for deep thinking in schools, which inhibits the values and ideas that introverts can bring to the table.

A comparative image showing introversion and extroversion — People are different. Images used: Left- Chichi Onyekanne @unsplash, Right- Ben White @unsplash

And perhaps, this is one of the reasons why people enjoy the online form of learning. The online learning environment is free of judgment, and the solitude often allows for deep thoughts and reflection. Even if you are watching a video on YouTube, or taking a course on Skillshare or Masterclass, there is no ‘ideal’ student— everybody is the same on the internet!

But, when it comes to the dire innate curiosities, there’s not much that separates an introvert from an extravert. Even on the character scale, no person belongs to a particular point on the scale for vast periods, in other words, no person is an absolute introvert or extravert. We transition between the phases, some better than others(ambiverts) depending upon circumstances. So, online-based learning is not just for the solitude-seeking ‘stereotypical’ introvert, it is a feeding ground for a vast spectrum of the population, for everyone is in search of answers.

Flexibility

‘Time’ in this day and age is a strange commodity. The way of telling time has never been this accurate, but, oddly, people don’t seem to have any in their hands, in a way, we are hurried by the lives that we live. So, naturally, we are always on the prowl for alternatives no matter what the task entails, looking to buy some apples, we search for the nearest grocery store, want to get some ice cream, I’ll wait for the ice-cream truck to come by, we are obsessed with time management, so much so that the society expects you to have a grip on the concept of time.

A photo of a woman sitting at a table, and doing work on her laptop. — Time management is important in the modern world. Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

Even education isn’t free from how the modern world works. People seek knowledge faster, and comparatively, the information doesn’t get faster than the internet. So, another reason why platforms like YouTube perform well? well, it’s a flexibility issue more than anything else. You see, learning something new, for the most part, starts with a question. Then the question leads you to a path, and you embark on a journey to find a reasonable answer. But traditional school systems are set up in a way that it doesn’t involve taking shortcuts, you are provided a syllabus, and sometimes, the answer that you are seeking is a needle in a haystack of information. Now, I’m not saying that cutting corners is a good thing, in pursuit of a particular piece of information, an individual might miss out on several other learning opportunities. So, online learning is not that foolproof; it has got its fair share of problems. But it just happens to work in this speedy world, harmonizing effortlessly with our daily lives.

Options like never before

As much as I love science, I have an affinity to art as well, if you hang around this website long enough, you’d see why. About two years ago, I tried to learn Photoshop on a whim, however slowly it was, there was progress, and month by month, I was learning new skills and techniques, and a year later I had gotten better and better at it. Even though I haven’t mastered Photoshop by any means, it’s safe to assume that I have learned to composite images and create visual artworks. But in my journey, and I’m certain this would be true for any self-taught content creators, one of the places where I sought information from was YouTube. Whenever I’d gotten stuck or confused with a specific feature on Photoshop, I’d seek help online, and more often than not, help was always given.

Now that I think about it, if it were 20 years ago, before YouTube, and a whole lot of other online tools, I can’t even imagine how I would have tried to learn photoshop. (yes, photoshop is pretty old, dates back to 1990) Instruction manuals? Well, when has anyone ever looked forward to those?

YouTube is just an example here. It represents options, and never in the history of learning had such a treasure trove of options existed. With the blooming of social media in the last decade, people are offering online courses on pretty much anything that you could think of. Khan Academy[7], started by Sal Khan in 2006, is another platform that has risen to almost an unchartered territory in self-learning. With a substantial number of lessons offered on the STEM fields, on basic and complex levels, whether you are a school-goer or home taught, you have the tools to understand concepts at your leisure, in the comfort of your schedule. This redefines education and makes sure that people don’t get left behind, even if they are a little slow at grasping concepts.

Future of self-learning

Today, with the growing standards of the internet, learning something new has become efficient as information has never been this easy to access. All it takes is a press of a few buttons, or a few hand gestures or even the limited use of your vocal cord, to get information at your fingertips.

This is not to say that everyone enjoys the fruits of the internet equally. While for some, it is more or less a basic need these days, for others, it remains a luxury. But the way the world is changing now, there have been plans[8] to make internet access a basic amenity for everyone on the face of this planet. Call it stupid, call it crazy, but perhaps crazy might change the world. More internet users would mean more sharing of information, and that would lead to a deeper understanding of the world, and most importantly, if we have more educated people, it accelerates technology. And technology makes the world grow smart.

This might be a nice segue into a topic that has become more and more relevant to the onset of intelligent machines. If once upon a time, artificial intelligence was just sci-fi, perhaps just a cog in a well-constructed Isaac Asimov novel, today, it’s very real, machines are getting smarter, and this has gotten people talking. In 2016, when Google DeepMind’s[9] AI, known as AlphaGo[10], beat the legendary Go champion, Lee Sedol[11], it intrigued people even more, because the way AlphaGo played the game was unprecedented and unconventional.

The game of Go[12] dates back to ancient China, and it's widely regarded as the oldest existing board game. But the most mind-boggling thing about Go is the fact that there are more combinations in Go than there are atoms in our universe![13] But while playing the game, there is no way any smart computer, much less a human being would go through all those combinations. With the least of Go knowledge I’ve acquired while writing this article, it’s through previous experiences, game knowledge, and a boatload of creativity that someone can master this board game.

An image of the board used in the Chinese game called Go — The Chinese board game of Go | Public domain

Coming into this best of five-game, which was named the DeepMind challenge match, the decorated Go master, Lee Sedol, was quite confident about his chances against AlphaGo. In the beautiful award-winning documentary[14] titled AlphaGo, you get a glimpse of the tense moments that unfolded in Seoul, as AlphaGo made history by beating the Go champion 4-1.

The algorithm works on a deep learning technique, which is based on three main components, the policy network which trained the AI on high-level games, a value network that works on probabilities of winning from various positions on the board, and a third component known as the tree search that enables the algorithm to predict a future move by an opponent. Before the match against Lee Sedol, even the creators of the AI weren’t exactly certain about how AlphaGo was going to perform against Lee Sedol. Perhaps, even just one win would have been promising for the DeepMind team. But from the moment the first game began, Lee Sedol was in a state of self-doubt against his non-human opponent, that was aggressive, smart, and was playing as a competent Go player would, and ultimately it won the first game.

With a win under the AI’s belt, the second game was played with a sluggish pace, with Lee Sedol, pondering cautiously before making his moves. But, in the 37th move of the second game, the AI did something quite remarkable. It had made what was later called as an ‘original’ move. The Go experts with the media, covering the games, were surprised for it was a move that no human would have played, and AlphaGo confirmed that only 1 in 10,000 people would have played that move. The AI had just done something creative— it had thought out of the box! What it meant was that AlphaGo was learning from the game time with Lee Sedol. It was thinking for itself, by doing which, it was not just mastering the complex mathematics behind an elegant board game, it was going down unchartered lanes, where no human had ever ventured while playing the game of Go. In the documentary, Lee Sedol, admired the 37th move, calling it, “Really creative and beautiful”. In the final game, the AI was at it again, when it did something bold and nonsensical from a conventional Go perspective. It was sort of baiting the opponent with a mistake-like move, and while watching the documentary, you almost feel this humane quality to this AI, something that you know doesn’t exist, but yet it does somehow.

After AlphaGo’s amazing achievements, google DeepMind launched similar AI programs with greater capabilities. Today, AlphaZero, the latest successor of AlphaGo, is perceived to be the best player of Go, after defeating AlphaGo zero, its predecessor, a better version of AlphaGo. This actually opens a new bag of questions in the field of self-learning. What if the future changes our drive to learn new things? what if in the process of making our lives easier, we become lazier to dust our imaginative minds? Will self-learning matter to us at all, if we leave everything to the machines?

AlphaGo is just one amongst many examples of how the paradigm of self-learning is shifting continuously. There are AI programs like AICAN[15], which can create ‘novel’ art, and storytelling AI like Benjamin[16] that can write original movie scripts. We normally say that AI works efficiently in areas where there are large chunks of datasets, areas where ordinary computers are already better than humans. But now, AI is exhibiting creativity, a quality thought of as a deep and visceral human quality. Artificial intelligence is learning, but it's in a nascent state. Perhaps, there is a long way to go for AI to become a Picasso, or a Da Vinci, or maybe, it might reinvent the concept of the word ‘original’—Who’s to know? But thinking that it’s impossible is probably not idealistic. When the wright brothers invented the airplane, they didn’t think it was possible to fly across oceans, but yet it was made possible.

So, AI might not make our lives a living hell like ‘Sky net’ from Terminator, but it might make our lives too easy, and therefore a bit tedious and lethargic. There is a chance that it could inflict damage to the passion and imagination of the human mind, and self-learning might become less and less necessary. And this is a sad thought, what would ‘being human’ then be? This is something that I’ve been contemplating throughout the latter part of this article.

But after watching the movie AlphaGo, I think I saw another possible outcome that would come out of artificial intelligence, something hopeful and beautiful, the idea that we’ll coevolve with AI. You see, in the documentary, there was a moment in the 4th game, when Lee Sedol, played a move that outsmarted the AI, giving him an upper hand that led to him winning that game. But maybe the right word here is not ‘outsmart’— maybe it is better to say that he ‘learned’ from the circumstances he was in. Maybe, playing in an unorthodox manner, the AI had pushed Lee Sedol to new limits, that he had developed a newer understanding of the game.

At the end of the documentary, you almost feel very humanlike, as if the AI had taught us something that we had forgotten, which is to keep pushing boundaries and to look at the world through different perspectives. It is without a doubt that we can say that learning would change in the future, and AI would be at the center of it. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll lose interest in learning new things, as Fan Hui, the former European Go Champion said— “Maybe it can just show humans something that we have never discovered, and maybe it is beautiful.”