We take one of the most amazing and far-reaching achievements in recent times for granted: free access to knowledge.
The advent of user-generated content, the so-called Web 2.0, has enabled initiatives like Wikipedia to assemble an unfathomable amount of human knowledge --- at your fingertips. The Google Books Project has scanned and digitalized millions of books making them searchable on-line.
Google Scholar is a search engine accessing countless published scholarly articles. Many publications nowadays are open access and often working papers or preprints are available (like arxiv.org, biorxiv.org, ssrn.com). If this isn't enough, "Alexandra Elbakyan, a researcher from Kazakhstan, created Sci-Hub, a website that bypasses journal paywalls, illegally providing access to nearly every scientific paper ever published immediately to anyone who wants it" (src). Obviously, this results in a cat-and-mouse game:
- http://sci-hub.io/
- http://sci-hub.bz/
- ...
- TOR scihub22266oqcxt.onion
Enter YouTube, respectively its content providers. There exist a multitude of channels featuring videos aimed at explaining countless topics from science to philosophy. But crucially, this is done in an entertaining and/or visually appealing manner. Some of my favorites are: Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshel, CrashCourse, Vsauce, Veritassium, MinutePhysics or one of the channels of Brady Haran (list).
And, last but not least, TED and TEDx talks entertain "ideas worth spreading". In other words, personal insights from people working at the cutting edge of current knowledge or simply talks packed with inspiration.
This all means that you have a nearly inexhaustible treasure trove of knowledge at your free disposal, broken down into piecemeal units, ready for instant education.
Enjoy:)
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Edit: Some of my Youtube playlists:
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