Testing Technology on a Veritable Army of Children?

golem1024 asks: "I've been presented with the opportunity to design and implement any sort of project with a technological/learning/experimental bent that can be carried out over two days in 2005, across six continents, involving on the order of 3000 children as participants, drawing from a multi-million dollar budget. An example project that is being seriously discussed is to equip each child with a PDA that we will design from scratch, implement, and manufacture in quantity. (Think Neil Stephenson's 'Diamond Age') The organizers/funders (to remain unnamed until the event is publicly unveiled) have every intention of 'changing the world'...whether or not they will succeed is yet to be seen, but I think its certainly worth trying. To that end, I'm interested in gauging the thoughts of the Slashdot community." Sounds damned cool! If it weren't for the fact that the age group was targetted at a younger audience, I might think someone was reading last week's Ask Slashdot.

"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?"

Comments

Re:Opinions...

[blowhole]

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.

Do you really have to ask?

[NerveGas]

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

Re:Is it just me?

[murphj]

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.

Testing technology on children

[Andrewkov]

Yes, I agree with this, we should test any new technology on children. Heck, why stop at technology? New drugs, cosmetics, bullet-proof vests, etc, should all be tested on children before they are considered safe for general use.

Spare the lab monkeys, bunnies and rats! Use children!