Skipping Class Is Rad.

  The current set of generations who were born or brought up in a time when computer technology and the internet were readily available find themselves at an interesting point in the history of education.  Some tech-savvy Gen-X, Gen-Y and iGen (I shit you not, those are real names for the last 3 generations of people, according to journalists who make up words) may see the days when the idea of "class attendance" is phased out of the curriculum.  They may see a time when all education is done purely online, with a university transformed into a purely social institution.  Bear with me.

  So, as it stands right now, most university units have a reading component and a lecture component.  It's understandable that lectures were done in the past because there was no easier way to transmit as much information as they needed to in a more efficient fashion; textbooks would have to either be huge or miss chunks of information, you'd need a book for every class, it'd be expensive and unwieldy.  Unfortunately, you'd need some books, otherwise it'd be impossible to give students the background they needed before certain lectures, or give them problems to do without having to write them for every lecture.  So the lecture component and the reading component had a certain harmony, balancing each other out.

  Thing is, lectures are an awful medium for transmitting information, they're time consuming and impossible to follow at your own pace.  The only real advantage they offer is live demonstrations, assuming one needs them.  If it were possible to have all the information written down somewhere, accessible to all at their leisure, no matter where they were, in one small device, then you wouldn't really need to go to the lectures.

  Oh, wait...

  The idea of having a large session wherein information that is readily available online is spoken at you in a large room is a holdover from the past.  Now, that's not to say that there should be no classes; live demonstrations saved my arse a couple of times when I was studying engineering (although they ultimately did not help me enough to prevent my eventual failure and subsequent booting out of the university) and discussion sessions, study groups and tutorials are a big help, especially in communications and arts units.  In addition, the social aspect of the university experience is equally important, with the various clubs and the ubiquitous tav.  But lectures?  They're for old people that don't know computers.

  Skipping class to socialise (and commit crimes) is not being a delinquent.  Well, maybe it is.  But it's also a considered stab at the luddites of today, a stride towards the future, to possible transhumanism or at least a lot more down time.  And that's why skipping class is rad.