All this brouhaha about the state Texas and it's proposed textbook standards doesn't concern me much because I think textbooks and universities for that matter are soon to be things of the past. The internet is making the need to go somewhere to learn something nonexistent. More and more people will be learning more and more things informally and for free. The level of literacy of the world population is rising and will continue to rise more rapidly.

One need, however, that universities fulfill that is not so obviously provided by the internet as it is today is the certification of education. The letters you get to put after your name after you put in your years, take your tests, write your theses. There's a lot of infrastructure behind those letters, including state textbook standards. However that infrastructure is going to have to change as education migrates to the internet. The internet is making education much more accessible and fluid and cheap and I suspect much of the certification infrastructure is based on the costliness of education. Ultimately it comes down to "who do you trust", and the trust structures of the internet are still being developed.

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