Cable Green, Director of Learning at Creative Commons, on the Obviousness of Open Policies

Ruth Suehle | OpenSource.com | October 27, 2011

Cable Green, director of learning at Creative Commons, gave the final morning's opening keynote at the 2011 Open Education Conference on the seeming obviousness of open policy as a necessity for education. "I'm interested in the policies that prevent us from providing an education to anyone in the world who might want one," Green said. That worldwide demand for education outpaces our ability to meet it.

One in seven people on the planet don't get enough food, a fact that led Green to ask whether, if we had a machine that could feed everyone with a marginal cost of zero, and no ill effects to farmers, should we turn on the food machine? The obvious answer seems to be yes--and Green says that while we don't have a food machine, we do have a learning machine.

But without policies--open policies--we can't turn it on...