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

Global Contacts/ Pen Pals

[gte910h]

Old idea, new opportunity. Use the links to teach kids about the things that they can do to improve their community. Use the international interconnectivity to have the children learn about the different changes that are needed all around the world.

A NYC kid will be totally surprised when a kid from India is trying to better toilet facilities in his neighborhood. A kid in Djibouti will be surprised that the kid in London doesn't know everyone on his block.

The international network, and the knowledge that someone is watching their projects will both make it easier for the kids to persist and to get aid in their endeavors.

Cynicism

[Wind_Walker]

Excuse me for being cynical, but how is getting 3000 young children together and giving them PDAs somehow "innovative" or "world-changing"?

I don't see how this is anything more than a few companies (who are mysteriously remaining nameless) to get together and try to cultivate some public interest by "making 3000 children to join hands and sing for world peace". Give me a break.

I'm sorry, but I don't see why this is deserving of the millions of dollars you're putting into it. I'd much rather see that money go towards feeding the hundreds of millions of people starving all around the world, and not to some corporate PR department trying to spin this as world-changing.

Or maybe it's just me.

Re:Cynicism

[rde]

I'm sorry, but I don't see why this is deserving of the millions of dollars you're putting into it. I'd much rather see that money go towards feeding the hundreds of millions of people starving all around the world, and not to some corporate PR department trying to spin this as world-changing.

Or maybe it's just me.

Yeah, it's just you. For a lot of the rest of us, humanity and society are advanced by projects like this; it may be less than innovative, but it's a start, and isn't helped by sanctimonious slashdotters (who own computers doubtless lots of other stuff) whining about why other people aren't helping the needy.

Why I think this is a good idea: as we all know, kids are the best at adapting to new technology. The old staple of only the eight-year-old being able to set the video is more than a cliche; it's often true. Equipping a bunch of sprogs with PDAs and asking them how they could be improved is the best way of advancing the internet, and therefore communications, and therefore humanity. A kid will tell you what s/he'd like to see, and what it'd be cool for his new tricorder to do.

In short: this is a great idea.

Re:Cynicism

[rde]

I'm saying that there are better applications of that money, other than having a small percentage of the world's population (1 out of 2 million) play with a new toy.

And I'm saying that kids make great testers of technology because they consider it a toy, not a technological toy. Kids accept the world and all that's in it, and will reply with few preconceptions when asked about what they'd like.

These kids won't remember that this happened (if indeed it ever does).
So what?

I'd much rather see children [etc etc] than children playing with PDAs.
So would I. I'd also rather the world's governments fed children than build missiles. I'd like to teach the world to sing. But none of these things is going to happen, and any pontificating on my part isn't going to accomplish anything, except perhaps increasing my own level of smugness.

I'd much rather *NOT* see children exploited for a corporation's PR purposes
I'd rather not see Concern, or Christian Aid, or any of that bunch exploit children in order to increase donations.
The fact that children are involved doesn't mean they're being exploited.

Interaction is key

[bobetov]

I love this idea, but it's hard to comment on without a little more guidance. What's the primary goal? Is it to foster technology prowess, or to build virtual communities, or education?

I'd be most interested in novel ways to have networked PDA's share info, like a peer-to-peer system. Maybe some sort of problem solving, where each person answers part of a complex question, and the correct result emerges from all the contributions?

I remember a story (by Bruce Sterling?) about a similar type of setup, where person X would advertise "I need something" and person Y would advertise "I have something", and their PDA's would notice the match and alert X and Y. There's a lot of good potential in such a system, and we haven't seen a lot of it in the real world yet.

Good luck!

Asking the wrong audience

[Bookwyrm]

This should be addressed to children in the target age range today, not the slashdot folks who have (presumably) grown up since they were that age group. What would seem neat or interesting to us based on how we remembered that time period is not necessarily the same as what would be neat or interesting to children living in the current time (or 2005) rather than the times of a decade ago.

It sounds like the whole point of the experiment may be to see what the children will do with the technology, not that what people now would have wished they could have done when they were children -- that is, it sounds like building to a set of preconceptions could be counter productive to the goals of the experiment.

Now, if the goal is to develop a new class of technologies *first*, then expose the children to see if they develop mutant powers -- er, develop interesting new uses of technology, then that is a slightly different matter. Something like, oh, combining Instant Messenging with a neural network system -- give every child a PDA that is also a node on the neural network. Set it up so the children could set up rules/weights for automatically processing messages (i.e. if both Amy and Joey send me a message about the new movie, pop it up on my screen, otherwise I'm not interested in movies that Amy and Joey don't like. If Amy, Joey, and Bob like it, it must be really cool -- forward the message to Kelly, too!) Turn the nodes into a combination advanced instant messaging/USENET node. Sort of Google crossed with Instant Messenging. Every node contributes as a filter/forward/weighter of messages to the neighbor -- ideally, the entire system would start to more intelligently route messages around internally only to the people who are interested in them (i.e. don't alert me about that new article from CNN unless it also shows up on Slashdot and at least two of my friends think it is interesting). The major issue would be having a easy to use user interface that would let people easily set up the filtering/forwarding/weighting system.

"Under carefully controlled circumstances of light, temperature, pressure, and humidity, the organism will do what it damn well pleases."

Not so sure about PenPals

[Triv]

I had a penpal in Montreal when I was in 6th grade. I got the cheeziest letters outta him because his teachers screened everything and were constantly looking over his shoulder (I assume - mine was doing the same thing to me)

I think something creative would be better - I honestly don't think words are the best medium of communication, it's too easy for words to slip into cliche. Conversations of the 'how are you? I am fine. I just got a new bike. It is blue" variety are...empty.

Let the kids draw. Paint. CREATE something - give 'em a webpad with a good freehand program and a simple interface (NO CLIPART - no 'place sun with streaming rays here' button) Let 'em express themselves. It's easier for kids to become involved if words are only minimally involved. Or, do both - couple/link it with a livejournal-type diary interface. Diaries are more about the person than about who they're 'talking' too.

Jsut the perspective of an artist/musician. Take it for what you will.

Triv

wind up IM toy with a babelfish built in

[circletimessquare]

ok, this project is really kewl ;-)

i read a while ago about a guy who was building wind-up flashlights, for everywhere, and things like wind-up radios and televisions for places like rural africa. no batteries! (except internal lithium rechargeable? can a capacitor handle the charge storage? i dunno.) the radio just needs a few cranks every now and then and it will pipe out broadcasts for a few hours before needing a new crank. here's a link i found.

so we have all these failed (business-wise) iridium satellites flying around and other satellite networks with a few extra bandwidths here and there that might be persuaded to have something alloted from them for this project.

so make a pda that has a handcrank, uplinks to a satellite, and is basically nothing but a glorified Instant Messenging App with some sort of Babelfish (the fish!) built in that translates whatever native language is involved into a neutral heuristic. then that xml heuristic is uplinked via satellite, downloaded to a recipient, and retranslated into whatever language the recipient is using on their pda.

i'm certain that would be kewl enough for these kids to take home with them after a few days, get hooked on, and use as long as the handcrank still works, the supposed lithium batteries don't bleed away, the ruggedized case survives kid-friendly drops and crunches and unfriendly monsoons and drops in streams and drainage ditches, and the satellites stay in orbit and their bandwidth backers stay interested in the program.

i think that your biggest challenge, whatever tech you implement, will be keeping them interested. it would be a shame to blow all that dough on something that stops working after a few days or the kids just plain lose interest in because of complexity or lack of compelling features.

ok, kind of ambitious, but it sounds like you have some money to burn ;-) i was thinking illiteracy would be a problem, but not really: can you think of a better motivator for a rural poor kid to get reading or what? good luck! look forward to reading about how it is all received on slashdot in 2005 ;-)

Suggeston: Non zero sum games.

[bons]

A zero sum game is a game that, by defination, someone is going to lose. Chess is a zero sum game. http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ZESUGAM.html for more details.

Non-zero sum games are something else altogether.
http://www.winwenger.com/part37.htm is a good read on this subject with an extremely simple zero sum game (on page 2)

http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/eco/game/ ze rosum.html is a longer read with some more complex games. Well worth the time.

If you want some deeper insight, try http://ubmail.ubalt.edu/~harsham/opre640A/partVI.h tm