In his 2013 talk, software engineer Sugata Mitra regales us with a heartwarming story in which he installs a computer in the middle of a slum in India as an experiment. He wanted to test a hypothesis: can children learn without teachers?

The results were astonishing. The kids taught each other how to use the computer– and furthermore, they taught themselves English in order to use it! These were poor children, who had never seen or interacted with a computer before, and did not speak the Operating System’s english language.

Mitra simply installed the device inside a “hole in the wall”, told the children that it was “something”- and then walked away.