Sugata Mitra | How Learning Emerges Naturally Through Self-Organizing Systems

So we try to use the word self-directed learning more , but unschooling is the term that John Holt coined all those years back . So that is what it's easier for many people to understand .

The only way you can learn is going to a school and sitting down , and you need to change subject every 45 minutes because that is apparently good for learning .

What I wanted to say was that self-directed is different from self-organized and both of them are very different from a self-organizing system . You take all the three words together a self-organizing system .

I wanted to make that distinction because what I had bumped into in those experiments , you know , 25 years ago , was , I believe , a self-organizing system , and people saw the results and they thought the results were interesting , but they would invariably describe it as self-directed or self-organized and I would say , well , no , we are looking at something different .

But first I would like to thank you because , as a parent who come from choosing a path of home educating your children , and as us , using the word unschooling even though , as we talked briefly about , we like self-educated or self-directed more and or self-organizing system is probably even better for it I have a point . I have a point Then .

I would very much like to thank you for the TED talk you did all those years ago , because in the start , when I as a parent felt I needed to defend our choice and people was like how will your children ever learn ? I could take your TED talk up and say please look at this one first , and here we're talking about the hole in the wall .

So , if we can turn back time a little and I would like to how did it happen ? How did you get this idea to test this out , and can you say just a little about it , because I think the other dialogue we had should continue also .

They were expensive and you know , usually about a month , two months salary or something like that to get a PC which you then bring home to do your work with . You know , word processing and whatever . That PC , that expensive piece of equipment , was certainly not meant for children .

So some of my friends who could afford such equipment , they bought PCs and they brought it home , and those of them who had little children would then install the PC in their living room or in their study . They would notice a little fellow staring at them , the son or the daughter , and they would turn and they would say never , don't touch it .

Okay , this was really the reality of 1990s , because it was so expensive , you know . And children , what would children do with a computer ? The operating system was DOS , disk operating system . You had to . You know , type in commands , this . That . So there we were . Then I noticed something else .

I noticed first one friend , then another , then another , all with little children , seven , eight years old , saying Sugata , you're interested in education , you know , I have a feeling my child is gifted . So I said well , why is that ? Well , you know , the other day I was working on my new PC .

I was looking for a file and the files would scroll up very quickly . Working on my new PC , I was looking for a file and the files would scroll up very quickly on the screen . So I couldn't actually read to see if the file I wanted was on the screen or not , it would just go up .

I was trying again and so on , when I heard a little voice and it was my little girl there . She said you know , try D-I-R , slash W , slash E , and when you do that you get them in pages . And so I turned to the little girl . This is my friend saying it . I turned to the little girl and said how did you know that ?

And she says something very simple , like well , you did that yesterday , you've forgotten . So this was happening across one friend , then another , then another something similar . And I thought to myself now , could it be possible that all the rich people's children are becoming gifted ? Because only the rich people have PC .

All of their children seem to be very gifted . Or could it be that children , just by looking at the computer , looking at someone doing something on the computer , have this photographic memory of what's going on and can reproduce it ? So if that's the case , then any child should be able to do that .

So I decided well , why don't I just take it and give it to some children who cannot possibly have access to a personal computer ? There was a slum right next to my office , so I built a structure in the wall that separates the slum from my office , a structure which looks like today's ATM machines kind of a hole .

And from my side of the wall I pushed the monitor In those days we had these big monitors Pushed the monitor through that hole and I also pushed in a touchpad Didn't push into a keyboard because you know it wouldn't pass and then I covered the other side with a sheet of glass so that you can't actually push it back .

And it was three feet off the ground and I just turned it on and it was running . In those days I remember whatever version of Windows was available , probably , you know , 1.0 or something like that .

So just the Windows screen sticking out of that dirty stretch of wall , and because it was three feet off the ground , people who find three feet off the ground a convenient height approached it , which were obviously children , and they didn't touch it , they just stood there staring at it . I was there . So I said well , and they said can we touch it ?

And I said , sure , it's on your side of the wall . And they said , okay , they still didn't touch it . So I thought this isn't working . In my friend's home one of the parents was actually using the computer and the children were watching . The child was watching . Here , nobody's using the computer , it's just standing there and the children are not touching it .

Is that why ? And now this is a good example of how researchers like myself make big mistakes . So I said , oh , so it needs an operator . So I turned around and walked back to my office , thinking that I would send someone across and say do something on the computer . But as I turned around and walked I heard a lot of excited voices from behind .

So I turned a little bit and I saw the computers covered with children . So I didn't go back to my office and I sent a colleague of mine . I said go and do something on that computer . Those children , what can they do with it ? And that fellow went and he came running back . I still remember his name is .

He came back and he said those children , they're surfing and they're teaching each other how to surf . So I said oh you , you showed them . He said no , I didn't even get close to the computer , they're already on it . So I said well , that's very strange . They've never , seen a computer before .

They don't know what the internet is , they don't know what a mouse or a touchpad is , they don't know what browsing means and they don't know English . So what's going on ? And that's the question the press started to ask , because the press had landed up by then and they were saying that these children know how to , you know , go from one website to another .

I mean , browsing is a big word . They weren't really browsing . They knew how to go from one website to another . I mean , browsing is a big word . They weren't really browsing . They knew how to go from one website to another and they found that really funny .

They would go there , close the website , open another one , close the other , that kind of thing , and laugh . So they asked me this question who taught them ? And I said I don't know , no-transcript .

And the children were playing it . It was actually a Mickey Mouse game from the Walt Disney site Disneycom in those days , and I asked the children what is this ? And they said it's a game . I said yes , I know it's a game , but how did you get the game ? And they said it's a game , can't you see ?

I said yes , I know it's a game , but how did you get the game and they said it's in the computer .

And a month passed , and these were the days of the first of the taliban wars in afghanistan , and I found the screen full of war pictures and news and I said gosh , what's this ? I went to my , to the children , and I said what's this ? I said yeah , it's about war . See those planes , they're dropping bombs . I who is fighting with whom ?

And they said the Americans are fighting with the Taliban . And I said so , who's winning , who's good , who's bad ? And they gave me an answer which I guess I'll remember for the rest of my life . They said they're both very bad people . I said why are they both very bad people ? And they said as're both very bad people .

So I said why are they both very bad people ? And they said as though it's very obvious . They said well , bad people fight you . I said yeah , I guess so , but anyway , could you be looking at that ? And they said well , I mean , this computer is standing there and it's got everything inside it . So this was the beginning of the war .

And by then people started to say , well , what is this ? And they said I didn't say . They said this is self-directed learning . So who's the teacher ? Nobody , obvious . So so who's the teacher ? Nobody , obvious , no . So self-directed means that there is a self who is doing the direction , but I couldn't find any such self in there . There was no teacher .

So where was the direction coming from ? Then I thought , no , no , hang on , I've got it . This is not self-directed , this is self-organized . So what's the difference ? Well , let's imagine for a moment that while you're listening to this , you're doing your dishes .

Let's imagine for a moment that while you're listening to this , you're doing your dishes , but you're self-directed , right ? I mean , you could be not doing your dishes , you didn't want to , but you decided to do them , so that's self-directed . Suppose your sink was full of , you know , dirty dishes and you had not decided to feed them .

But some friends landed up and you said , oh , my sick's full of dirty dishes . And your friends said , oh , hang on , let's just take care of it . And two or three of them got together and self-organized and in a few minutes your dishes are clean . So two things self-directed , self-organized . So I decided what was happening in the hole in the wall .

That's what the press called it the hole in the wall experiment .

That whole thing is documented in the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology . A month later I went back and said guys , remember , I asked you about the DNA ? And one of them said yeah , we couldn't understand anything . It's all full of chemistry and all that . So I said really nothing , so you just switched it off .

He said no , no , of course we didn't switch it off , we didn't look at it . So you look at what I mean . You didn't understand . I said well , you know . I mean , apart from the fact that improper replication of the DNA molecule causes genetic disease , we've understood nothing else . So well , that can't be self-organized either .

It certainly isn't directed because there's no teacher . It couldn't have been self-organized , because how would eight and ten-year-olds organize themselves to understand , you know , dna structures and DNA replication , so on and so forth . Where is this learning coming from ? I got the answer . I think I got the answer .

I got the answer almost four years later , around 2004 . Almost four years later , around 2004 . You know , by education . My own education is not in the social sciences , in education itself . My educational background is in theoretical physics . So I had no means in my head other than theoretical physics to try and explain what was going on over there in the world .

And there is , in those days , a fringe side of theoretical physics it's no longer fringe , but it was fringe at that time called self-organizing systems . This was an attempt to understand creation . Where does it all come from ? Who made DNA ? Who wrote the programs ? And the answer that physics gave us was nobody did it happened by itself , happened by itself .

I mean , that sounds like a bad sci-fi movie . What happened ? How do you mean that happened by itself ? But then when you go into it , which I did you suddenly find that nature is full of that example . Imagine some bees building a beehive . The beehive is made up of perfect hexagons . Do the bees know what a hexagon is ? I don't think so .

I don't think they've ever studied Euclid or anything like that , so they don't know what an hexagon is . Do they know what they're doing ? Do they know that they're building a BI ? Well , we don't know , but I would guess that the individual B who's building that little accident , and the next one , and the next one .

He doesn't know what it's doing really , it's just following some basic instinct , something like that . But then how do we get that perfect beehive with its chambers and everything inside it ? Physics said it's a self-organizing system .

When things are connected to each other , like each bee can see what the other bee is doing and therefore change its actions accordingly , the system itself organizes , okay . Another example Ants . You know little ants . You can see them sometimes , particularly in the tropics during the monsoon rains .

You can see the ants marching in a perfect straight line Left , right , left , right , left , right . Okay , in a straight line there . So what happened ? Did the ants have a military academy ? Who taught them to do that ? Well , we know the answer to that from insect specialists . They do something very simple .

Each bee follows excuse me the backside of the ant in front of it . That's all it does . It just looks , finds the back of the ant in front of it and follows that . When a thousand ants do that , what you end up getting is a lie . The ants didn't make the lie . The ants did not self-direct . The ants did not even self-organize .

The system itself was a self-organizing system . I know it's not the easiest thing to grapple with , but that line of ants wasn't created by the ants . It was a property of that systemic rule to follow the one in front . And then I read a little bit more and I found oh gosh flocks of birds . They do the same thing .

Does an individual bird know what it's doing ? No , it has no idea . It just knows it has to maintain a certain distance from its neighbors Schools of fish . Do they know what they're doing ? No , they just know that they have to maintain a certain distance from their neighbors and followers .

The result is marvelous patterns that people look at and say how on earth did they do that ? But they didn't . Something else did , and I couldn't get that out of my mind . I guess physicists have jased this for ages . If it wasn't done by people , then who was it done by ? But the answer is not . Is that ? The question is not right .

It's not who was it done by , it is what was it done by ? So one man had , I think , gotten this idea right . A Russian physicist who , I think , migrated to one of the Scandinavian countries , won the Nobel Prize . His name was Ilya Prigozhin , and Prigozhin wrote a book called Order Out of Chaos . He wrote this book somewhere .

Order Out of Chaos he wrote this book somewhere in the late 1970s . In the late 1970s I was doing my PhD . I had no interest in children's education , I was doing quantum physics and had gone for a conference in New Delhi , and I must tell you this story , even though it's a very stupid story . I I went to the conference .

I went to the men's room and you know , we had this line of men . I was one of them and next to me , slightly shorter than me , was a white man , and I turned and he looked very serious . I said good morning , sir . While we were both standing there and he said good morning , we finished .

And as we were washing our hands , I said , sir , I'm a PhD student . Sir , my name is Sugata , and he said well , I've had to work with physics too . My name is Ilya Prigozhin . So that's how I met Prigozhin . I'm very proud of this .

I used to look at those hole in the wall experiments . By then we had many , many sites all over India , africa , cambodia . So look at those crowds of children . I used to think of ants , I used to think of bees , I used to think of birds . But one day I thought of Ilya Prykushin and I said I got it . This is a self-organizing system .

One day I thought of Ilya Prykushin and I said I got it . This is a self-organizing system . No one is teaching them , not even themselves . It's order appearing out of nowhere . I actually said that in my TED speech . There's one sentence that says learning is an emergent phenomenon in a self-organizing education system . Nobody paid the slightest attention .

What kind of sentence is that ? But I thought I'd got it .

I brought the results to England and in 2006 . And tried it out at the schools of Gateshead . You know , gateshead is across the River Tyne , newcastle and northeastern England .

If you remember the map of England , it's about 2 thirds of the way from London to Edinburgh in Scotland , but 2 thirds of the way up north , across the river from Newcastle , is the town of Gateshead . It's a poor area of the country and I went into the schools of Gateshead and I set up the hole in the wall . You can't set up the hole in the wall in .

England . Why ? Because the weather will not permit it no one's outside no , nothing happens outside , okay . So I said , oh , this is a problem . But how do you do it ? It's very simple . Okay , for those of you who are teachers , okay , here's how it goes , very , very simple . Take a class full of 24 children , let's say 24 .

Take six computers , just six , not 24 , no matter how rich your school is , no matter how rich your country is . One computer for every four or five children . Give them those six computers and ask them a question Move back and sit down . That's all . When you do it the first day , it won't work . The children are going to think that there's a trick .

Sooner or later she's going to get up and yell at us and say what are you doing Something like that ? The second or third time you do it , they begin to realize that you're serious . You're actually allowing them to do whatever they want . What would they do ? Well , they'll form groups . Obviously , six computers and 24 children . They have to form groups .

They form groups , they start talking to each other , they start looking at each other's computers those six of them and then , in about 30 to 40 minutes , self-organization happens . They learn . They learn something . It depends on what question you asked . If you got the right question you get whatever you wanted them to learn .

Otherwise they learn something in any case . Remember those children with the Taliban in the war ? I didn't want them to learn anything . I didn't even want them to look at those pictures . But what did they learn ? Bad people fight . Would I like my children to know this ? I think I would . Bad people fight Just three words . Think about it .

So self-organizing systems are different from self-directed and self-organized . Self-organized is two separate words .

I mean it's been such a long time now that now it's just we don't get up in the morning and not send our children to school . It's not a thing . We just get up in the morning and not send our children to school . It's not a thing . We just get up in the morning and live our lives .

But it was a big deal when it happened and your TED Talks and your work in general was a big part of okay . This can be done in many different ways . It's just now . I realize I don't like the idea of the curriculum like a state or school defined journey of learning for 10 years of children's lives . I don't like that .

That's not where the responsibility should be . That doesn't make sense . I don't like homeschooling because that's like doing the same thing . It's just the parents doing it . So I as a mom have to decide what my children are doing . I don't like that . But I actually also equally don't like the idea of the children having to plan it out and being responsible .

We've said many times it's one of our kind of mantras that learning is a byproduct of living , it's something that happens . And now I realize that sentence learning is emergent has kind of been lurking in there in the depth of my mind .

I just didn't really give it like it should have had more of a center stage , because that's the same thing , right , that learning is something that happens because you're doing something that makes sense or something that ignites your interest , or something that we are social beings .

So maybe you want to be with your friend and your friend is talking about this thing and you might have never been interested , but now you are because there's this social situation . So that's where the learning comes from , Is that ? Oh , we might have to change the name of the podcast .

The rules are creating the game and are creating that system , or , as you maybe would say , it emerges .

He just put a full stop there and you know , I thought he didn't say anything bad about school . He didn't say anything bad about education . He just said we send our children to school to be disciplined . You sit where you have to sit , you stand where you have to stand , you say good morning .

When somebody says good morning or you meet someone , you say sorry and you say thank you . When I say read your book , you read your book . It's not what you're doing , it's whether you are following the instruction . And Peter Gray likes my work . He told me this himself and both of us decided that there are a couple of things we don't know .

Okay , this is going to be another bit of a problem . You know you send your child to school so that they would know things or you homeschool them so that they would know things . In any case , you want your children to know stuff . But you know , the trouble is if I were to ask you , what does knowing mean ?

We don't have a definition , so what do you want ? Now somebody just called me called this a sophist argument . They said this is the kind of thing that they used to do in ancient Greece just tie you up by asking you stupid questions . Everybody knows what knowing is , do we ? I think so . And then came along Generative AI .

Just a year ago , two years ago , 22 . And people started asking me about Generative AI . I had no idea . I didn't know what it was , how it worked , I mean . I knew what it did , but I didn't know how it worked . So I decided to stay absolutely silent until I knew how it works .

It took only a few days to figure it out , actually because of the internet , but how it works is an engineering I believe we have never seen before . You know in engineering , you know what your machine does , we know what it does . We don't know how it does it and , worse than that , as of today , as of this moment , we cannot know how it works .

It will take too long to go over that in a podcast like this . But I know the insights of it . I know how to build one . I actually tried building one on my stupid laptop . It obviously is a very stupid gen AI that I built . But in building it I realized one thing I can build it , but I have no way to figure out why .

Of a saying from stephen hawking again one of those sayings that sticks in your mind forever . Remember ? Stephen hawking said , talking about god , he said a creator that watches helplessly as his creation unfolds Watches helplessly . Well , I wish I could put it in a more funny way , but it's not funny . It's not funny at all . So Gen AI works like that .

So Gen AI came along . When I understood how it works , sort of I began to speak about it . How do you build Gen AI ? Well , you feed it lots of stuff into it and where does that stuff go ? You know people say . You know the AI reads everything there is , does it ? No , it doesn't do anything other than song .

It converts everything it reads into numbers , everything you feed it into numbers , and it uses those numbers to change other numbers and those changed numbers change other numbers and other numbers and other numbers into an enormous , gigantic matrix of numbers . And then you ask a question .

The question enters the matrix , the numbers do their magic and what comes up , if you've done everything right , is a sensible , meaningful answer . What do you as a programmer ? How much control do you have ? You know people ask . They say you know Google should be careful about what their AI is doing .

You know Meta should be careful about what their AI is doing , and we should . You know Meta should be careful about what their AI is doing . They must take responsibility , and I think to myself . The creator that watches helplessly is creation and product . Well , gentlemen , does that make any sense ?

As we are full-time travelers , we see a lot of different countries and I was like why do the scandinavian countries have this tradition of using cardamom in some of our food , in our baking and stuff like that ?

And I asked chat gbt and got the story about the vikings all the way from back then they traded , they traded in spices and it showed well to use it and that they used it in their line of work .

So there's so much where it reminds me of the knowledge bank that the hole in the wall was for these young people , that I'm curious about your thoughts about what will it do for learning . And then there's the other part , as are we as a society ready , which is a different dialogue about it .

And I know I'm jumping a little , but among the things you said about the self-organizing system , I am baffled and still thinking about what kind of world have we created ? How self-organizing are the systems ? The school doesn't seem like a self-organizing system when I look at it .

The way we live in the so-called nuclear families doesn't look as a self-organized thing . Least doesn't look as a self-organized things that the individuality have become the goal , where everyone have their own trampoline , their own chainsaw , everything , so you don't need to interact with your neighbors even more .

So I'm like the the self-organizing gets so small that it's on a family basis and I'm just thinking that cannot be healthy . And those are some of the thoughts that what you're saying is bringing into my mind and I'm like is there a question in this ?

computer inside the computer kind of program and we use some of us , my husband , uses it every day and and he's begun the past , I don't know six months to send me long whatsapp messages that are clearly not written by him but by chat GBT . And I usually say I'm not talking to robots , not that the information is bad , it's just . I get this .

I'm an old fashioned studied at the University of Copenhagen in the 90s and we were reading actual books and you know this is not before the internet , but it was with the modem kind of system . Um , I like books , I like a table of content , I like references , I like knowing where my information comes from .

You know , and I think you put way more thought into this than I have . So the question is what about the truth in ai ?

I mean , after all , an easy definition of truth is what you believe . So you know I mean , it's a long discussion Is there something called absolute ? We don't know . We have to ask Socrates . But the thing is , what should you do with your children ? Where is that generation going to head towards ? Okay , in a world where knowing is obsolete , think about that .

We're so proud of knowing stuff . I studied in the university . I know this , I know this , I know this . Is that relevant today , when you have this generative machines which let you know ? anything you want at the point in time when you need to know it , provided you grasp it quickly enough . So suppose for a minute you take this argument further .

So knowing is not necessary anymore , and I know that a lot of adolescents would kind of nod their heads because they ask themselves the same question .

So should I ask questions to you to which an answer is already known ? It's a waste of time , but I could do something else . I could ask you a question to which no one knows the answer . If no one knows the answer , the Internet doesn't know the answer either . If the Internet doesn't know the answer , generative AI doesn't know the answer .

If I ask a question to which no one knows the answer , I have to figure it out for myself or I have to give up . So what if I focused on the questions to which no answer is known yet ? That's point number one . Number two what else can generative AI not do , apart from answering questions to which no answer is known ? It cannot do another thing .

It cannot deal with nonsense . You can try feeding in lines from Lewis Carroll . You know , I don't know whatever . The cat became a butterfly . It will tell you immediately oh , this was written by Lewis Carroll , the famous author of that , so on and so forth . But it will tell you immediately oh , this was written by Lewis Carroll , the famous author .

But it will steer away from the cat becoming the book of life , because you know that's nonsense . I think children love nonsense . Everybody knows that . So point number one the questions to which no answers are known yet . Point number two the value of nonsense . Imagine that a two-year-old , he appears in front of you and you say morning good .

And the two-year-old kind of looks at you and you say good morning . And the two-year-old says morning good . And you say good morning . And he said that's upside down . And I say no , it's sideways and he said what are you talking about ?

And so on and so forth Doesn't take much , it's just a little switch you have to put off in your mind , a switch they put off for you in school . Don't talk nonsense . Put it back on . Watch the two-year-old light up . That's a good plan . I don't have much of a plan , apart from at this point in time . I wish I could be more useful , but I can't be .

I an apartment at this point in time . I wish I could be more useful but I can't be .

And what makes us human is partly to be able to think about questions to which maybe there is no answer , but we need to think about it anyway , and also to be ridiculous , which is , you know .

Your example about the two-year-old morning good thing made me think about all the many , many times we've had fun with small children saying , you know , pointing at grandma and saying , is that uncle ? And they laugh . You know , that's uncle . Ah , it's funny and it's just ridiculous . But it's ridiculous small scale , but we're still having fun . It makes you laugh .

So , talking about self-organizing systems and learning when all knowledge is right in our pocket , professor , the chat , gpt or the Gemini or which one ever we use is , then what are we supposed to ? Yeah , my , my question is how do you think we will organize uh onwards ?

And , as I said before earlier , I , to me it looks like that some of the self-organizing systems in our society , in our culture , have been broken down . There's not a lot of self-organizing systems in our society , in our culture , have been broken down . There's not a lot of self-organizing , there's a lot of chopped down life .

How do we reclaim living in self-organizing systems ? Have you made thoughts about that ?

When agriculture came in , we formed cities , we formed societies and we decided we need order . In order to get order , you need a social hierarchy , you need , eventually , kings and queens and ministers and bureaucrats and the whole system to keep the machine going .

We thought we were machines , we thought we could live like machines and I don't know why we thought that living like machines would make us happy . But it didn't work . It didn't work . It didn't work .

It didn't work because , as you can see from the world today , every now and then the system kind of revolts you know revolts disintegrates into chaos and then another emergent order appears , and I remember the face of Ilya Prigogine .

So if that's the way it is , I mean we see in nature that that's the way everything works , that's the way we appeared over here . That's how we evolved into what we are right now . That's how we evolved into what we are right now . If that's the way it is , then why would we want to oppose it with a mechanistic culture ?

If talking to each other is our way of self-organizing , why do we want to be alone our way of self-organizing ? Why do we want to be alone ? Why do we want to segregate ? Why do we want our own lawn mowers and our own this and our own that , so that we don't need to deal with anybody else ? Well , I don't know who has that answer .

I don't think physics has that answer . I don't think physics has that answer . I think maybe we need to ask the ghost of Sigmund Freud . I know this is not going to be very popular , but Sigmund Freud , nobody cares about him . He's a pervert , he's blah , blah , blah . I love that man , I think he was a genius .

I love that man , I think he was a genius . Read him and you'll see why we want to be the way we are and why it's not going to work . So what should we do then ? Is there a way to go back to hunter-gatherers ? I don't know if society can ever do it , but we have done it with information .

We don't need to go to the structured library anymore to pull out the books and read them . We hunter-gather , we go after information like a hunter going after prey , and we have the means to do it in every pocket . If we could have done that with information , can we do that with society ?

What would the society look like if it were to decentralize into that format , the format for which I don't even have a name ? What if nothing belongs to anybody , just as the beehive belongs to nothing , to nobody , just as the flock doesn't belong to the bird , just as the line doesn't belong to the line of hand ? Is there a way to do that ?

Well , there are philosophers who have said that . There are philosophers who have attempted answers . Mostly failures as far as we can tell , mostly failures as far as we can tell . But one thing we cannot undo as far as information and knowing goes , we have gone from structured to hunter-gatherer and our children have headed in that direction .

Where will that take us ? Not for people of my age to answer that question you have to ask the 16-year-olds or maybe even the 5-year-olds .

I know it will linger on me for years to come and it has been very , very inspiring .

the way he was asking questions was asked by a genius , I agree . And that's the interesting thing about this conversation as well is the questions I sit back with .

It was said , I don't know , two and a half thousand years ago , the Buddha said it , socrates said it , confucius said it , they all said it's the question that matters yes , what a wonderful place to stop , said it's the question that matters .