I'm sorry to have not seen your reply, because I'd like to say that I don't disagree with you in the slightest, but I also don't think that your assertion and mine are in contradiction of one another. After all, an academic pathway is merely one pathway. I would be extremely reluctant to let someone without a pertinent degree in the field, perform open heart surgery on me, though while I may believe that "The faster we can transfer knowledge, the thinner the gap between professionals and autodidacts becomes", I recognize that the gap in general exists. However, because IT is an ongoing process(ongoing exponentially!), I think were going to see some amazing things, and that the jury is still out on weather or not some day that gap may close.

The faster we can transfer knowledge, the thinner the gap between professionals and autodidacts becomes. I think this is true of every profession, and not just the medical field.

This may be the most idiotic thing I've read about on slashdot(and I read it every day). The article seems to recognize that students and teachers are divided by a generational gap, and that this divide is paralleled by a differentiation in musical preference, which is also a generational gap. It seems dumbfounding to me that rather than causing these two demographics to integrate as a solution, they've caused them to become more alien to one another. I suppose that problem will go away when all the "old people" die off. If young people hate school and just want to get drunk at parties, and old people want to listen to Mozart, looks like they've ruined their chance of getting drunk and partying to Mozart together, which would be my solution.