In an interview with James Morrison, "Innovate's" editor-in-chief, Vijay Kumar describes how rethinking distance learning as network-enabled open education can catalyze a whole new set of learning opportunities. The growing open-education movement has made an increasing number and variety of resources freely available online, including everything from lecture notes to complete courses and real-time laboratory experiments. The result is an ability to tailor education to local contexts and individual learners. That ability, combined with communication technologies that link learners across the world, can create a powerful new kind of learning experience that melds localized, individual education with global networks.