Slashdot Mirror
Testing Technology on a Veritable Army of Children?
"The idea is to bring together children ages 10 to 15 years old from around the world at 8 or 9 centers scattered about all continents except Antarctica. The children will congregate at these centers for two days in 2005 to participate in creative technology workshops both virtually between centers and hands-on at their particular center. There will be a heavy emphasis on community building and shared information, in many ways similar to Slashdot. The entire event and all the projects it entails are designed to live on after the kids go home when the two days are up. How this will be done is as of yet uncertain, but will most definitely involve net connectivity to some extent (whether through the village kiosk's 28.8kbaud line in Cambodia or the living room broadband line in NYC). Naturally, issues such as language barriers will have to be addressed. In the particular case of the language barrier, there is talk of designing a custom written language (again, think mediaglyphs from 'Diamond Age') for children to use, build upon, and shape. What other projects are worth considering?"
Crap. They're going to teach all those children to come together under the banner of l337sp34k.
The future is doomed.
Sharkey
Time how long it will take a global game of Starcraft/Quake/Doom/RocW to develop.
Time how long it will take for a pr0n server to develop.
Time how long it takes one of them to own you monitoring machine.
Time how long it takes your developed language to be deformed into shorthand.
I fear this is likely to end in fire and uselessness... So why not garner information gained from the chaos caused by teens?
tech is already frustrating enough when the instructions are in english! "mediaglyphs"? that's the most ridiculous thing i've ever heard.
as for sharing information, what information? will these pda's be nothing more than a web forum? without some content creation tools, i see little use for sharing of information. and what kind of content is really worth creating on a hand held pda (within the grasp of a 10-15 year old)?
i'm sorry, but i'm highly skeptical of these schemes involving handing out useless tech to kids. if you want to change the world, give these kids scholarships, not pieces of plastic and metal.
"Ask me about Loom"
Free ice cream shops on every corner, a built-in circus, and a ultra-ray gun to shoot down invading aliens.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
"The idea is to bring together children ages 10 to 15 years old from around the world at 8 or 9 centers scattered about all continents except Antarctica.
As a 12 year old from Antarctica why am I denied access to this experiment. Bah! It wouldn't have involved PDA's with Penguins anyway.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
This is the perfect chance for a meaningful experiment into what different people think about the same thing
This just in... 9 out of 10 Spaniards like ice cream and lollipops. 4 out of 10 South Africans dislike math homework. Jonny's sister is a big poopyhead. More news as it breaks...
Remember that these are just kids, I don't think we're gonna find all that much profundity.
"Ask me about Loom"
You have the chance to implant mind-control units, instantly creating thousands of slave-warriors all over the globe, and you even paused for thought? Geez, what kind of evil genius are you?
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Why not? Better yet, search for intelligent life at home :)
Push the envelope. Watch it bend.
Well, you could get these kids together and teach them to sing in perfect harmony. Then you could buy them a Coke, and keep them company... *sway*
This is not likely to produce anything meaningful or even useful. It is more likely to be a giant feel-good soirie, where we ask the "future generations" how they think the world could be made a better place.
Bah.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
too bad on the third day when the 3000 child-geeks get back to school their 9000 bully couterparts are not only going to steal their lunch money, they'll get a free PDA.
:)
Your affecting such a incredibly small percentage of kids, how are they going to spread the knowledge that they gained at a 2 day seminar...
easy...
Amway
I Heart Sorting Networks
some venture capitalist had alot of money left over and there are no more .COMs left to get rid of it with, so he decided to design and manufacture 3000 PDAs and give them to children.
.COMs had
I will grant it this though, it is a better business model than many of the
I Heart Sorting Networks
Having been to Chuck E. Cheese, a two day conference on children screa^H^H^H^H^Hspeaking different languages sounds like a really long time to me.
SONY. Because caucasians are just too damn tall.
I've always had this idea of building a scooter like device with just two wheels. I've always thought that might change the world.
I think with todays technology you could almost make it drive itself. And with 2-3000 child laborers handy you might make a buck or two. You may also want to patent the idea so no one steals it...
It's for children accross the world to experience firsthand the unity and cross-cultural understanding made possible by unnamedcorporation(tm)'s new handheld friendmaker. . .
.made possible by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.
. .
Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.
Spare the lab monkeys, bunnies and rats! Use children!