I won’t try to defend Friedman, but I believe you misunderstood what Thrun was trying to say: he is a very conceptually accurate guy, and him saying it is a bad

I won’t try to defend Friedman, but I believe you misunderstood what Thrun was trying to say: he is a very conceptually accurate guy, and him saying it is a bad ‘product’ doesn't mean the general concept is flawed, but that his ambition to market the whole of superior education as a video class has, with testing proven to show issues, with engagement in particular. He is far from abandoning the idea, but reacted by switching Udacity towards a for-pay, vocation certification platform. Having the best professors use video (or radio) to openly broaden the audience of their abstract teachings is a concept that has been widely tried since, well, I’d say 1530 with the College de France, but the recordings where a bit different then — anyway: it’s the principle of almost every high-brow show. Those tend to have less of an audience than we’d like, or need considerable adaptation — but Udacity was one attempt that was remarkable in mainly one way: how little the class was adapted for anything but highly intelligent and motivated twenty-somethings with fresh brains. Look at what Dan Ariely is doing for an great example of how to preserve the internet support and have an engagement comparable to a physical class.