The Internet is the greatest collection of knowledge in human history, but if an alien were to download it he’d think we were still experimenting with how to breed. And getting it fantastically wrong a lot of the time. The Library of Alexandria was not stuffed with naked bodies in improbable combinations, but it also wasn’t open to everyone.
You had to be well enough off to have time to read instead of earning food. For the first time in history we can now educate while earning a living, and online associate degrees are a huge step in that.
Imagine logging on to education instead of funny pictures of cats. Or even better, logging on to classes AND videos of cuddly Maru. (Look him up if you don’t know him. You’ll thank us. Claim it’s a study break.) But instead of improving themselves, millions of people waste billions of man-hours on endlessly clicking ‘refresh’ on the same few sites. So we got to thinking: what if those sites offered online associate degrees?
An online associates degree in Facebook would be closest to a real-world MBA: a relentless obsession with networking which approaches new contacts more like a hungry shark than a friendly person. The Facebook graduate doesn’t need to be doing something, but desperately needs to be seen doing things which leads to feverish activity.
Unfortunately at least three-quarters of every effort is wasted on making sure that the task is documented, tagged, commented, liked, and submitted to every group and network in existence.
This is the MBA Facebook from above, so adding an online associate degree would be a dangerous mix of incredibly business-based dedication and social networking. Entering “LinkedIn” in LinkedIn’s own education history risks creating a recursive feedback loop of being far too online, and could end up creating the Matrix.
If Facebook is the MBA, Twitter is the Social Media Networking Guru. Except the first thing they’ll teach you in any good online associates degree is not to call yourself a guru. They can teach that with a baseball bat if they want because it’s very important.
The combination of ultrafast super-short sentences with an entire degree program might sound challenging, but that’s what an online associate degree is all about: getting good at something you can then do whenever you want. This should be a job, and that’s a good thing.
MySpace
An online associate degree in MySpace would translate to some real world liberal arts, like the feminist reinterpretation of medieval pottery.
Technically you can claim it’s a real field and it is possible to spend lots of time on it, but you’re really just avoiding work and then – when you try to get a job – you’ll find your ill-chosen degree is far too good at helping you avoid any kind of employment. But such mistakes aren’t terminal. You can always get an online associates degree to upgrade your skill set with something more relevant.
Google Reader
Not everyone uses Google Reader, but for those that do it’s less a website than a lodestone. The place you start, and return to in order to recharge yourself with all the wisdom of the Earth. Collecting all your regularly used sites in one Reader saves an enormous amount of time, because you no longer have to check if they’ve updated.
They’re on a computer, it should do the extra work to tell you, and that’s exactly what Reader is for. And picking and choosing exactly what you want to learn and doing so as quickly as possible is exactly what you should be doing with your life. Learning never has to end, and with modern technology it’s easier than ever to add to your skills – even at home, or on the bus, or in any office you might be working in if other staff aren’t so attentive or you can angle your monitor away from them. Unfortunately, Google Reader is being phased out.
About Greg Voakes
This is a unique take on social media sites and the ways individuals use or abuse them. Although there solid humor in comparing these various sites to a type of degree, the funny thing is you may be ahead of curve here. Seemingly well educated individuals manipulating and utilizing the potential of these social media/networking mechanisms may be essential to an organization or even individual success in the future. Clearly social media is here to stay and even though the sites may change their effects may not. Would you agree that social media has an ROI? Or that individuals who are well trained to use them could be helpful or may even be a profitable trait?
Very interesting post. Never looked at social networking site that way. but you are right.
Great post and interesting. will stop by more often.