Bill Gates recently predicted that online learning will make place-based colleges less significant, and five years from now, students will be able to find the best lectures in the world online. I applaud Mr. Gates. But what's taking us so long?

    As early as 1997, MIT (麻省理工) decided to post videos of all university lectures online, for free, for all people. But today, how many students have you met who mastered advanced mathematics or nuclear physics from an MIT online video? Unfortunately, the answer is not many.

    The problem is the poor quality of online education websites and the experience they provide to students. Those who go to the MIT website and watch courses online are surely very smart people, but it's not like playing a video game such as World of Warcraft. Only the most ardent students, those who are highly motivated, will devote themselves to studying these boring online videos.

    The real question is why we aren't spending more to develop better online education platforms. Where is the Avatar of education? Think about this. The market for Hollywood films per year is worth around 30 billion USD. Education in the world is a trillion-dollar-a-year market, hundreds of times bigger than Hollywood movies. Yet the most expensive digital learning system ever built cost well under 100 million dollars.

    Bill Gates' prediction is going to happen. There is no doubt about it. But it will only happen when we create high level educational content and experiences that engage and excite more than has ever been possible in the real world.

    I'm a 20-year-old boy,and the following is my story.

    A month after I graduated from high school in August,2007,I was coming home from swim practice in the training centre of the city and was involved in a car accident.I was so seriously injured that I was in a coma for more than two months at Prince Georges Hospital.

    I suffered a lot from the experience of dying eight times during my coma and I couldn't open my mouth to talk or to communicate when I eventually came around.At that time,it seemed that walking was never going to happen again due to all the extreme injuries.Just like my body,my dreams were completely destroyed.But I was not going to let my injuries stop me from realizing my dreams.

    After receiving a total of 15 operations and 36 blood transfusions,I had to make every great effort to learn to talk,eat,walk,shower,and live on my own again.When I was out of hospital,I still had to Go to outpatient therapy in Waldorf,Maryland.After I spent a few months in a wheelchair,I took baby steps to walk on my own.It was a miracle that I was able to walk again,but I still wanted to prove that I could not only walk,but also run.When it came true,I wanted to get back into the pool again.After having a few lung tests,I was able to go in the pool a little bit each week. After a few months of swim training,I began my freshman year at St.Mary's College of Maryland and then became a proud member of the swim team.

    By telling my story,I want to make a positive influence on the world.I am just trying to live every day to the fullest and inspire other people never to give up their dreams no matter how bad a situation is to them.I remember when I was still in my hospital bed,I would have my mom and dad push me round in my wheelchair to the other rooms to see the other patients and chat with them and their family members.I wanted to let them know that everything was going to be okay.Somehow,things would work out for the best.

    Our room was on the second floor but you could still hear the roar of the ocean and see the stars at night. I used to take long walks along the water. The food in town was wonderful and the people were very friendly. The area was very quiet and peaceful, and fairly deserted.

    The last evening of our vacation, however, we all heard strange footsteps following closely behind us as we were walking up to our room in the holiday centre. We turned around and noticed a fairly young man moving very rapidly across the beach and getting closer to us. He was tall and wore a baseball cap. We didn't have any cell phones on us. I never saw Dad as worried as he was then and knew that something was terribly wrong. The sense of fear started to overwhelm Mom and me. We had had such a good time in town. Now, the night was rapidly turning into a dangerous situation.

    We could hear the man's footsteps getting closer. Dad's face was almost pale. The so-called intruder (侵入者) had moved nearer and nearer when all of a sudden, the nearby vending (自动贩卖) machine started going crazy and spitting out cans of soda! The noise actually scared the intruder and he ran out of sight. My parents were shaking, but we all turned around to see who had put money into the vending machine downstairs, and actually saved us, but no one was around at all.Not a soul.

    It's one vacation I will never forget.

    Pat O'Burke was a poor Irishman with a large family, and one morning, waking up very early from cold and hunger, he decided to go shooting in a wood near his cottage. The wood belonged to Lord Northwood, a rich gentleman, Pat had no right to go there, but in it there were swarms of rabbits and flocks of birds that were good to eat, and Pat determined to take the risk. Suddenly he saw the owner, with a group of friends, coming towards him in the wood. There was a look of anger on Lord Northwood's face as he caught sight of the gun in Pat's hands. Pat's heart sank with fear, but he saw there was no hope of escape, so he walked boldly(大胆) up to the company and said to Lord Northwood, “Good morning, sir, and what has brought you out so early this morning?” Lord Northwood, rather surprised, said he and his Mends were taking a little exercise to get an appetite(食欲) for their breakfast. Then, looking at Pat with suspicion(怀疑), he said, “but why are you out so early in the morning?” “Well, sir” said Pat, “I just came out to see if I could get a breakfast for my appetite.” The whole crowed burst into laughter at Pat's ready wit(机智), and with a smile Lord Northwood walked on, leaving Pat to try his luck with the rabbits.

    Debby Harris says she would never have started going to the Glastonbury Festival if her friend who runs a food stand hadn't needed a hand a few years ago. "I thought it would just be all noise, and I never liked rock music.^" Now she says she would pay her friend to allow her to work at her stand!^" The tickets sell like hot cakes, so it's the best way of making sure I can get to the five-day festival in June." she points out.

    Nick Hendon likes going to the Cambridge Folk Festival, which takes place over a long weekend in summer at Cherry Hinton Hall. His favourite festival area is the Club Tent where members of the audience, as well as the invited artists, can get up and perform. "My wife usually takes part. She has a beautiful voice," he says proudly.

    Joan Mitchell does her best to get to the International Eisteddfod, a dance and music festival which takes place every year during the second week of July in Wales. The festival is also famous for the final Sunday Evening Gala concert which usually has some of the biggest names in opera as guest performers.

    ^“I've seen Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, James Galway and Montserrat Caballe, but no one could ever match Luciano Pavarotti. He was truly breathtaking!''

    Graham Crosby tries to get to as many concerts as possible during the eight-week summer season of the Proms festival every year. The Proms is the largest classical music festival in the world." The atmosphere (氛围)is much more relaxing than that at other classical concerts. In fact, the audience sometimes behave more like rock fans, jumping up and down to the music, which is really exciting."

Economically speaking, are we better off than we were ten years ago? Twenty years ago?

In their thirst for evidence on this issue, commentators seized on the recent report by the Census Bureau, which found that average household income rose by 5.2% in 2015. Unfortunately, that conclusion puts too much weight on a useful, but flawed and incomplete, statistic. Among the more significant problems with the Census's measure are that: 1) it excludes taxes, transfers, and compensation like employer-provided health insurance; and 2) it is based on surveys rather than data. Even if precisely measured, income data exclude important determinants of economic wellbeing, such as the hours of work needed to earn that income.

While thinking about the question, we came across a recently published article by Charles Jones and Peter Klenow, which proposes an interesting new measure of economic welfare. While by no means perfect, it is considerably more comprehensive than average income, taking into account not only growth in consumption per person but also changes in working time, life expectancy, and inequality. Moreover, it can be used to assess economic performance both across countries and over time.

The Jones-Klenow method can be illustrated by a cross-country example. Suppose we want to compare the economic welfare of citizens of the U.S. and France in 2005.

In 2005, as the authors observe: real consumption per person in France was only 60% as high as the U.S., making it appear that Americans were economically much better off than the French on average. However, that comparison omits other relevant factors: leisure time, life expectancy, and economic inequality. The French take longer vacations and retire earlier, so typically work fewer hours; they enjoy a higher life expectancy, presumably reflecting advantages with respect to health care, diet, lifestyle, and the like; and income and consumption are somewhat more equally distributed there than in the U.S. Because of these differences, comparing France's consumption with the U.S.'s overstates the gap in economic welfare.

Similar calculations can be used to compare the U.S. and other countries. For example, this calculation puts economic welfare in the United Kingdom at 97 % of U.S. levels, but estimates Mexican well-being at 22%. The Jones-Klenow measure can also assess an economy's performance over time. According to this measure, as of the early-to-mid-2000s, the U.S. had the highest economic welfare of any large country. Since 2007, economic welfare in the U.S. has continued to improve. However, the pace of improvement has slowed markedly.

Methodologically, the lesson from the Jones-Klenow research is that economic welfare is multi-dimensional. Their approach is flexible enough that in principle other important quality-of-life changes could be incorporated—for example, decreases in total emissions of pollutants and declines in crime rates.