Sweeny vs Bard #64 w. Zak Stein and Michael Gibson

Education and Enculturation in the Digital World

Recorded September 6th, 2024

What is school and culture in the time between worlds? This is a rich conversation about the present digital age and its horrors and educational possibilities.

Biographies: Michael Gibson is the co-founder of the 1517 Fund, a venture capital firm that supports young entrepreneurs challenging traditional education paths. He was instrumental in developing the Thiel Fellowship, which awards $100,000 grants to innovators under 23, encouraging them to skip or leave college. Previously, he worked at Thiel Capital alongside Peter Thiel. Gibson studied philosophy at Williams College and the University of Oxford, and his background in philosophy shapes his approach to supporting unconventional ideas and innovation. Gibson wrote the magnificent "Paper Belt On Fire".

Dr. Zak Stein studied philosophy and religion at Hampshire College, and then educational neuroscience, human development, and the philosophy of education at Harvard University. While a student at Harvard, he co-founded what would become Lectica, Inc., a non-profit dedicated to the research-based, justice-oriented reform of large-scale standardized testing in K-12, higher-education, and business.​He is also a writer whose work has appeared in a variety of journals including American Psychologist, New Ideas in Psychology, Mind, Brain, and Education, Integral Review, and the Journal of Philosophy of Education. He has published two books, Social Justice and Educational Measurement a dissertation that traces the history of standardized testing and its ethical implications, and Education in a Time Between Worlds, which expands the philosophical work to include grappling with the relations between schooling and technology more broadly. He is also the co-author of David J. Temple's First Principles and First Values: Forty-Two Propositions on Cosmoerotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come.