Jonathan Wexler - Silenced: From the Salvation Army to Billionaires Row

For Sofia in Connecticut

This was the last time he was prompted for an answer before he was silenced. From then on things moved ahead in an automatic way. He was of sound mind and body, but his body was mostly synthetic and his mind a hodge-podge of computer algorithms. Jim had risen from the doldrums of the Salvation Army to Billionaires Row in Manhattan on the back of his invention an online education system that become the de facto standard world wide but it is what opened him up to the brain hack that has left him on the sidelines: a spectator to his own life.

Those early days for Jim at the Salvation Army were magical for him. He bought into their counter-culture ethos and the poverty and drugs surrounding him were secondary to the freedom he felt. Away from the money culture, the daily grind, he knew where his meals were coming from and with unlimited wifi and a Linux computer he was free to experiment, and work, along with his buddies in an unorthodox but productive environment.

This is what had sparked his trillion dollar idea. What if education could be free? Like really free and collaborative and available to every bum on the street just as much as the rich kids in Connecticut. There were of course many competitors to Jims idea, mostly put out by the elite institutions of the day, but none were really built from the ground up using open source software with this egalitarian idea at the core.

Jim was eating now and dietary information flashed across the screen for everything he was putting in his mouth up there on the 86th floor. He almost forgot what an apple tasted like away from these statistics that explained it to him. His chewing was robotic, as was his swallowing. If only he could choose something to eat that was unscheduled, what bliss would this be?

I think Ive reach the point, Jim was able to reason to himself, that I am no longer in control of anything, from my bodily functions on up to the system.

The system is what Jims invention was now known as, so ubiquitous it had become. He could not have foreseen what he had sparked when he started getting the project together in those bedbug infested apartments that surrounded the Salvation Army in downtown Ottawa. How he would hook up with the various distributed internet projects and overturn 500 years of academic life worldwide.

The system was not simply a list of videos with quizzes at the end of each lesson and a credentialing apparatus, but it was an AI-backed self-learning all knowing conglomeration of video, text, exercises, virtual reality, and above all collaboration between the students, professors, and the machine that produced more than the sum of its parts.

Later, it would take on K-12 and all post-secondary education outperforming anything that could really be thrown at it. Because it was open source and distributed its feature list grew exponentially and bankrupted all other LMS (Learning Management Systems) on the market. There would be simply one online education system available, with Jim as its head.

This would dwarf even the monopolies of search and social, as it would take down real elite universities one-by-one as education was now offered free and what you got from the system, if it didnt outperform what was available in the real world, once the material was digitally digested, it would.

Jim could remember writing the first lines of code, some twenty or more years ago. And then his meteoric rise through Silicon Alley in New York all the while keeping the company private. The richest man in the world he would become, after all, there is no bigger market to capture now in our age than education.

_______

Jim missed the giddiness he felt when he was first interfaced with the system. His was an early experiment because of his dementia it was felt that the increasing sophistication of the system would allow him to keep control of his faculties while the organics inside of him continued to fail.

And it worked.

He had insight into the goings-on around the world to right in front of his face. The system would put together his sentences, take care of his necessities, and allow him to continue to run things in the way he saw fit.

______

A day did not go by that Jim Sheen did not think of his little girl whom he had met only once, when she was an infant. But unlike others in his situation, Jim had the privileged view that the system allowed. He could track his little girl, Mia, especially as she grew older and more was available of her online. He could see details of every class she took and every credential she earned. He could tap into her social network and her browsing history. He could tour VR representations of where she lived, went to school and hung out. The one thing he could not do was to contact her.

______

The Salvation Army in Ottawa was a hulk of an institution. It was run according to the principles of the international movement. For all of the addicts it had something called the Day Program, run in that part of the day when the residents were otherwise locked out of their rooms as they were cleaned. Jim attended the Day Program because of his drinking problem but it ended up being the guinea pig he needed to test out the system.

He could remember the day he announced it to the group. I am building a learning system, Jim said at his turn to speak. It will allow anyone in the world to plugin and take classes from the best teachers on the planet.

This did not make much of an impression on the hodge-podge crowd of neer do well opioid poppers and alkys of various sorts.

One of the young eager guppies did take notice of Jims announcement and approached him afterwards.

Why do you think you really have a chance, said Steve to Jim as they were walking out of the meeting. What makes your stuff so different.

Jim was a bit taken a back that he had managed to get anyone interested at all. He looked this guy Steve over, couldnt have been more than 25, with a scar down the right side of his cheek. Otherwise blond and blue eyes and a bit out of place among the boozy grey beards that mostly inhabited these day programs.

First, said Jim, it will be independent, open source, and self-learning. It will be peer-to-peer and include all learning materials. It will be what the internet was truly meant to facilitate.

Wanna smoke, said Steve as he digested what Jim had been saying. Steve in fact had been a programmer in a past life and got the gist of what Jim was saying right away, but it seemed a rather elementary explanation. He already knew about technology like the Blockchain and the Internet of People, so Jims plan did indeed peak his interest.

You are preaching a full internet revolt is what you are saying Jim. Everything built up, these oligarchic companies fighting over control.

Jim interrupted him. It is more ambitious even than that. I am talking the biggest turn of events since the invention of the printing press and the Reformation, and we are in the perfect place to get started, a revolutionary institution already dedicated to the downtrodden, the rebellious, the poor and the hungry. The Salvation Army.

______

Fragments of memory now flashed before Jims eyes.

______

When Jim attended services at the Salvation Army his mind would often wander to religious things. Jim indeed had grown up religious so it is so ironic that in a Protestant revolutionary movement called the Salvation Army is where he would find his Salvation in the form of his online education platform. As the chaplain read passages from Matthew, Jim recalled his days as a computer programmer working for various American subsidiaries cross Canada.