My young son is into solving Rubik's cubes. But it's a very different thing than in my childhood. When I was a kid, I was happy if I could solve a single side after some extended tinkering. He, on the other hand, can solve the entire cube in just minutes [update: his latest time is one minute, three seconds] — and is working to improve that. He's a smart kid, but most of his ability has come from the infrastructure of on-demand learning.
But let's start at the beginning, and see how we got to where we are today…because maybe that will give us a clue to where we'll be tomorrow.
In 1974, Ernő Rubik was a teacher of architecture at the Budapest College of Applied Arts. His desire to simplify the teaching of three-dimensional geometry and spatial relationships led him to create a small teaching model, or puzzle made of wood and elastic bands. It could rotate independently on all axes while maintaining its shape.
Importantly, to this story, when Ernő Rubik first created the Rubik's Cube, it took him over a month to solve it.
Rubik transitioned to a robust plastic puzzle design, selling it locally until, in 1980, the American company Ideal Toy Corp. licensed the cube, rebranding it as the "Rubik's Cube" and launched it globally. It was a craze in the 1980s, but has seen a resurgence, including sophististicated 'GAN' Cubes that used internal magnet arrays to speed the physical act of solving the puzzle, named after speedcuber Ganyuan Jiang.
The world record is now 3.47 seconds, yes, seconds, solved by Yusheng Du in 2023.
So, how did we get from 'over a month' to solve the cube, to 3.47 seconds? Yes, there is some manufacturing improvements that enable this. But even if it took thirty seconds using a regular cube, the ratio between 30 days and 30 seconds is vast. That's a 2,880x improvement.
The answer, of course, is YouTube. My kid, after all, sees YouTube as the source of all on demand learning. Techniques, walk throughs, and the development of a set of algorithms that make for a guaranteed solved puzzle, with the fewest steps.
There’s also motivation. Once the YouTube algorithm sees your interest in speedcubing, then you’re inundated with videos on the topic. A kind of fake peer-group, where everyone talks about speedcubing, looks cool, and does cool things (and only cool things).
He doesn’t know anyone else who is into Rubik’s Cubes. He had one given to him, which sat on the shelf for years, and one day started his YouTube journey.
The delta between he and I, is instant, on-demand learning including instant synthetic peers. I don’t think we really understand how to direct that firehose yet. Traditional education certainly doesn’t. But the rise of cohort based learning with online materials is on the path.