What affect does this space have on business?

What space do you mean?

Welcome, welcome, welcome - Dear Contributors.

In today's day and age we are no longer worried about studying. Why? Because the days of struggling or paying to get information is long gone. It literally takes a click of a button and voila! We have 1000's of answers, solutions or comments about the topic at hand.

It is insane, we even have MOOC's. What is a MOOC? (google it, find out and contribute if you like).

In an article :  11 Enlightening Statistics About MOOCs

MOOCs are growing in popularity and size, but do students benefit? by Jimmy Daly posted February 5, 2013

$60 million Amount invested by Harvard and MIT to launch edX (Source)

$21.1 million Venture capital funding that Udacity has raised (Source)

1.7 million Students who have registered for a Coursera class (Source)

370,000 Number of students who registered for edX courses in fall 2012 (Source)

150,000:1 The student-to-professor ratio in a fall 2011 Udacity class (Source)

98% The percentage of professors that Udacity rejects (Source)

38.5% The percentage of free online classes that are taught from the United States (Source)

33 Universities that have partnered with Coursera (Source)

27% Percentage of MOOCs that focus on computer science (Source)

6%–15% Percentage of gross revenue that Coursera pays to a partner university (Source)

5% The pass rate in MITX’s only massive open online course (Source)

Some might find the above stats interesting while others find it useless. Before we had free access to educational courses we were in a space (pre 1985) where we did not even have free / easy access to world news. CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage as per wikipedia and the article further comments :-

The CNN effect

Coverage of the first Gulf War and other crises of the early 1990s (particularly the infamous Battle of Mogadishu) led officials at the Pentagon to coin the term "the CNN effect" to describe the perceived impact of real time, 24-hour news coverage on the decision-making processes of the American government.

John Kiesewetter explained:

"CNN has changed news. Before CNN, events were reported in two cycles, for morning and evening newspapers and newscasts. Now news knows no cycle. When a plane has crashed, or shots are fired in school, we expect to see it immediately on all-news channels. We don't depend on the Big Three broadcast networks. The turning point point came shortly after CNN's 10th birthday, when Bernard Shaw, Peter Arnett and John Holliman provided play-by-play of the 1991 Gulf War from a Baghdad hotel. The Gulf war proved how CNN had changed the world. U.S. military leaders chose their words carefully during televised press briefings, knowing that Sadam Hussein was watching CNN, too."^[4]

What do you think the impact free access to information (space) has on the business’ decision-making process? 

Check out this Cool YouTube video about MOOCs:-
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqQNvmQH_YM

Cannot wait to see your comments!