Hello friends, and welcome to this week's edition of beyond signal 😄
The protagonist in Neal Stephenson’s bildungsroman ‘The Diamond Age’ is assisted and guided by a fascinating educational technology called "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" (See diagram below).
The primer is an interactive book that can answer a learner's questions, presents contextual just-in-time information, and follows a learning progression with tasks of increasing complexity with the ultimate goal of supporting the learner to become a strong and independent thinker.
Many have tried to bridge the gap between science fiction and science fact and bring this miraculous tool into the real world. However, an artificial intelligence that can mentor a learner in real-life complex problems is still far away.
This is the moonshot idea that Nilesh at Learn Awesome hopes to build. If he’s successful, children everywhere will have a fully-customised education of the highest quality and, by extension, a great deal of economic progress will be made and human suffering reduced.
In our wide-ranging conversation, Nilesh and I cover everything from emerging forms of credentialing to the secret behind the success of the Polgar sisters. Nilesh is a true polymath and so this conversation is fast-paced and jam-packed with multi-disciplinary insights. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I did recording it 😁
Best,
Will
Designing The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer