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Age of Enlightenment was a time of renewing the European social life and culture. The thinkers of the enlightenment put reason before mysticism and democracy before autocracy. The movement grew on intellectual and scientific development of the past centuries and created the basis for several revolutions and other more peaceful movements like liberalism.
 
The evolution of European culture and education is based on written word. The ideas of the enlightenment got inspired by ancient greek literature which were inspired by even older mesopotamian wisdom and so on - Dwarves on the shoulders of giants so to speak. Written word is more easily spread when bound as books. Books are most easily achievable when stored in public libraries. Like one can build a tower from books, the same way can a higher level of knowledge be found.
 
Nowadays public knowledge resides in web. Internet could be described as a vast pool of knowledge which is constantly changing and developing. In internet it is possible to combine the attainability of knowledge with the idea of dwarves and giants. However, like in social evolution, there are problems to arise in internet too. Reliability of the information is the first, persistency of the development process the second and organization of the data the third major concern.

 
 
When the ancient scholars like Eratosthenes had the possibility to combine measurements gathered from different parts of the African continent about shadow lengths in certain given date they were able to calculate circumference of Earth. This would not have been possible without the Great Library of Alexandria. Could this kind of achievements be possible now through public education? How many Eratostheneses there are to be found?
 
To me the state of current pedagogial research seems promising. The situation could be similar to the rise of the Enlightenment what comes to the development of natural sciences and humanistic philosophy the movement was built on. We are on the brink of very diffucult times and changes are to come for keeps. I think I am telling now about the awareness of the state our world has come to and how well do people really comprehend this? I am not that sure that anything like the Enlightenment is emerging from the entanglement of all the different pedagogical theories but then again, why not? The future of the whole human race might depend on this development and how well these new possibilities of spreading knowledge and education is utilized.
 
Do we just keep on educating the already “civilized” or the rich? Or do we offer our knowledge to everyone regardless of social status, nationality or background? Folk high schools might be one solution and they have been a good start but I believe it is not enough. Free software movement has shown that greater things can be achieved by believing that the open collaboration can work and not everything has to be based on maximizing the profit. We can create new markets, increase value and speed up the production. More than this, we could start thinking bigger. We could begin to work towards common just goals that seem otherwise unreachable. This is not news, but a fact that everyone should take seriously and participate.