SparkNotes world--the educational industrial complex

I'm guessing everybody knows (and may have used) SparkNotes.  I fell last night, needing a fast plot summary for Brave new world (coming up in 'Science and Culture') and forgetting that the online version I put on my Moodle already has great context / summary material on it.  I ended up sort of horrifies and entranced.  It's morphed into a social network, with blog prompts on subjects like 'hating hipsters' and 'never been kissed in Michigan,' to which people are responding like mad.  These are, of course, data-mining devices, and the 'labor' being unwittingly sold becomes marketing capital. When one changes fields (to 'main characters' for example), a forced Flash commercial for the new Microsoft phone operating system is mandatory for 8 seconds.  I watched the two dudes skydive about six times, frantically clicking the 'X.'  An ad (Flash animated) for Metro State appears at the head of every new text column.  Facebook-like sponsored ads are bannered down the sides (including Phoenix University).  Big Barnes and Noble presence. Pull-down for 'No fear Shakespeare' (side-by-side translation into the English 'real people speak').  Pull-down for 'College,' where you'll find help on admissions and finding scholarship.  Pull-down for SparkLife where you can network about books, entertainment, music, the internet--and Prom. 

Want to take a look?  Here's Brave new world according to SparkNotes  http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/bravenew/.

Observations:

• it's pure and valuable 'ethnographic' data on real life in highschool.  Hidden curricula?  can probably get to it here.  How do we study?  This will show us a lot.

• similarly useful on the core / basic curricula: what's IN it; what they are asked to DO; how they receive it.  Like the cheater sites, SparkNotes has a great sense of what English and History classes are demanding; where and how it's hard and what students do to workaround.  It has a scary 'wholesome' quality: playful, 'good-student-ly,' want to do well—but why the hell would you READ the novel?  Using them, you'd easily pass any usual test in an underfunded, stressed, fractured normal high school.  With a small measure of BS ability, you'd ace it.

• they get it wrong, but not TOO wrong.  The interpretations, character sketches, plot structures are often crashingly 'off.'  So are the pieces of historical context.  It's 50's era New Criticism and symbol-chasing. But a student using it would look totally ordinary.  I don't think I could tell if they 'really read it.'

• it's brilliant marketing--and web marketing-driven.  The 'free' material generates a marketing and data goldmine.  Perfect market segment defined and motivated.

• that Metro and 'get into college' (and Phoenix) are present makes separating the marketing aspect and the educational virtually impossible.  School, simply, is a market.