For MIT’s latest issue of Technology Review, the editors asked several technology and internet luminaries about what they imagine the web will be like in five or ten years. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and one of the real inventors of the internet, had this to say:

“I would like to see the internet reach people in rural areas and help alleviate poverty. I would like to see more people reaching the web from devices big and small, fixed and mobile. I look forward to more voice technology—in hands-busy scenarios such as driving, and also to increase accessibility (e.g., for people with low vision). The long tail of video on the web is creating a new market of direct access to independent films and also has the potential to help with literacy issues. I hope for the proliferation of Linked Open Data: the Semantic Web ‘done right.’ I hope that governments will open their data stores to all citizens. A mashup sphere will feast on a wealth of Semantic Web data and herald the next wave of progress and creativity on the web.”

Where will you be?

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: The Future of the Web

This is for you dedicated students and other fans of continued learning!

A degree from a top university often comes with a hefty price tag. But these days you can nearly get an online education from these institutions for free! Though the business world indeed puts a high premium on the actual credentials you can put on your resume, and the peer network you will form at one of these colleges can help you go a long way too, the teachings and knowledge just overflowing from these institutions is nothing to sneeze at!

“Open courseware” has been a hot trend on the web for the last couple of years, as the evolution of web 2.0 encourages sharing, collaborating, and open sourcing of knowledge as well as software. Many of the top research institutions are sharing their lectures and presentations via online videos, audio podcasts, and articles. I’ve personally followed (and highly recommend) series such as Stanford’s Social Innovation Conversations, the Stanford Technology Ventures Program’s Ed Corner, featuring awesome resources on entrepreneurship and presentations by many of Silicon Valley’s tech elite, as well as Google’s TechTalks.

If you’re inclined to learn from some of the incredible educators at MIT or Stanford, Education Portal has put together an invaluable list of the ten best universities with primo online open courseware offerings. The list includes:

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (mit.edu)
2. Open University in the UK (open.ac.uk)
3. Carnegie Mellon University (cmu.edu)
4. Tufts University (tufts.edu)
5. Stanford (stanford.edu)
6. University of California, Berkeley (berkeley.edu)
7. Utah State University (usu.edu)
8. Kutztown University of Pennsylvania (kutztownsbdc.org)
9. University of Southern Queensland (usq.edu.au)
10. University of California, Irvine (uci.edu)

YES, all these universities serve up free education resources! So go learn! To see the full details and get links to each institution’s online courseware, check out Education Portal’s list “Universities With the Best Free Online Courses.” Lifehacker also recommends Wendy Boswell’s guide to the “.edu underground”.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: The Top 10 Universities with Great Free Online Courseware

The Heroines of Personal Finance and Entrepreneurship series continues at IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com with Anya Kamenetz, a young author and columnist for the New York Times, Washington Post, Salon, Slate, and Village Voice. Her first book is Generation Debt: How Our Future Was Sold Out for Student Loans, Bad Jobs, No Benefits, and Tax Cuts for Rich Geezers — And How to Fight Back. Here are a few excerpts from my Q & A with Anya:

You were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for the series “Generation Debt: The New Economics of Being Young” in 2004. What were your main findings?

Student loans and student credit cards have multiplied very fast and under the radar so that large amounts of debt are now a rite of passage for a majority of young people. Two thirds of college graduates borrow loans to get through college, up from less than half as recently as 1993, and they graduate with an average of $20,000 in loans and almost $3000 in credit card debt. Combine that with a changing job market that offers fewer benefits, and a higher cost of living, especially housing, in many metropolises and you have a lot of middle-class, educated young people falling behind, to say nothing of the fate of McJob Nation; the two out of three kids with no college degree have seriously fallen behind in income and stability.

Since graduating in 2002 you’ve freelanced as a writer and editor for several publications. What are some recommendations you can make for aspiring professional writers?

Think hard about it. I don’t know many “professional writers” as opposed to people who happen to be lucky enough to occasionally get paid to write. Boyce Rensberger, head of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships at MIT, told the New York Times on June 10: ”I feel a little queasy encouraging young people into journalism. It’s such a precarious industry right now.”

I think if you want to write for a living you need to be pretty hardcore about your craft and your subject area or field. You can build up knowledge of your field by working a related job (in politics, the law, nonprofits, fashion, etc.) and you can build up your craft by writing, writing, writing, and being in a writers’ group, and taking classes or workshops, and working in media-related fields. I freelanced as a writer’s assistant, fact-checker, and copy editor before I started writing full time. If I were starting out now I would definitely blog too.

Continue reading at IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com: Heroines of Personal Finance and Entrepreneurship #2: Anya Kamenetz. Also be sure to read Anya’s new Yahoo! Finance expert column and grab her book Generation Debt if you’re interested!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: An Interview with Anya Kamenetz, Author of Generation Debt