I think it can and I think online learning is the key to it.
If everyone is learning, building and sharing, then we can all be creators.
I teach what I know and learn what I don't from someone else.
Online learning communities are showing us how to change our mindsets, and the advice we give, from consumer-centric to creator-centric.
Age old advice has become outdated. 50 years ago if you read anything you had more info than most, but now we all read. Too much maybe. Today good advice would be about managing inputs and outputs, consuming and creating.
Old learning incentives are fractured and misaligned. "Education" is a consumer-centric, industrial-age, assembly-line, status-oriented system that incentivizes brainwashed "students" to fall in line.
"Learning" is something better. Learning is better because the incentives are aligned. You learn something, you build something, you share something... and in return you reinforce your skill, you get feedback, you prove your expertise. The new degree.
The #buildinpublic and #learninpublic movements have been a revelation for me. These are the key to online learning.
The obstacle is imposter syndrome, but if you let that stop you it's ironic because you won't learn as fast and you'll feel like an imposter even longer.
Social media has a role to play in online learning but it has to be used correctly - with an active, creator-oriented mindset and not a passive consumer-oriented one. I've been doing social wrong :)
Thanks for reading! I've been doing a lot of learning and building in the past few years, but not a lot of sharing.
Sharing:
Learn to Create - https://alphabits.io/t/2229913dda503a50f9e773842f4d2a5f
On twitter - https://twitter.com/KaustubhB/status/1356742244821323776
Building: https://alphabits.io
Learning: marketing, designing visuals, product-market fit, growth
I doubt there's room for everyone. Before the internet, geographic barriers created natural moats. You could be the world's 100,000th best calculus teacher and still get paid, because you might still be the best in your town.
With the internet, there are no barriers. Suddenly you're competing with everyone on the planet. The top best few people will take most of the market. So in order to compete, you have to either be the best, or escape competition by finding a niche. There are plenty of niches. But I doubt there are as many niches online as there are geographic small-town niches. Which means there's not enough room for everyone.
But it's fine.
It doesn't need to accommodate everyone. If you're an indie hacker in 2021, you're on the bleeding edge. 99% of people are not yet building for the internet. You don't have much competition. If you want to teach, teach. If you want to write, write. There are still countless niches that are ripe for the taking.
Thanks for the reply, and good point - the Internet provides unlimited reach for the best stuff to get to everyone. And I agree, that's fine with me from a personal point of view.
But I'm more curious about this from a market point of view than from a personal point of view. Could a natural moat still exist in the case of teachers and students on the Internet? A student's access to a teacher in a two-way relationship? Student preferences for learning style and medium being different?