FLEX, Life, & TIME

Whew. I've not given quick versions of my stories about FLEX & IBM, FLEX & Ma Bell. At least some of what I told at Knatz.com / InfoAll.org is again somewhere. Here's a three syllable forecast of the most important of such stories:

1971, 1972: TIME-Life hired a guy. The guy saw FLEX's cable show, listing FLEX community learning resources 24/7. TIME told their new guy: find that guy: "that guy" meaning me: find the guy who was implementing Illichian learning webs in real time, real space, in a real city: New York City. The guy found me: it was no trouble. All that data was on the cable show! (How stupid did TIME have to be not to have seen it themselves?)

The guy interviewed me, got all excited. That got me all excited: it was about time that somebody recognized the revolution we were living. Newsweek had considered of giving FLEX seed money, as had IBM. But they didn't; not one penny. By this time NYSCA was stealing my (and Illich's) ideas. NYS was cringing from FLEX by founding pale imitations, run by the kleptocrats: schools without walls, school credit for life experience ... Cheez.

TIME's guy brings me in: to Madison Ave.: to introduce me to his bosses. He does. The bosses interview me: and shunted me out the back door: no trumpet blasts: not even the sound of a flushing toilet.

Now TIME puts the founder of FaceBook.com on its cover! Forty years after betraying the human species, entrenching kleptocracy, protecting the owners from information revolution. There isn't any part of FaceBook that doesn't devolve from Illich's Deschooling Society and from my Free Learning Exchange. Ditto Google, Yahoo, Amazon.com ... It's all plagiarism! Kleptocratic-kleptocracy encore.

I see it as simple. TIME wanted the information revolution. It wanted to control it. To ride it. To master it. I wanted to ride it, lead it, goad it, in a sense to master it; but not to control it. I didn't want TIME controlling the information any more than I wanted the school board controlling attendance, curriculum, costs ...