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?"
BEN
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.
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
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.
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.
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."
No. It should absolutely not be cultural based. "cultural" programs have a long and sordid history of complete failure. What I mean by "cultural programs" is programs who's focus is specifically and by design on the interaction of groups from different usually arbitrarily defined social groups, for example, the Camp David experiment with the Israeli and Palestinian children.
Cultural exchange and interaction is an incidental effect of lots of other things. It's only possible when people already have an interest in each other for more personally motivating reasons.
Example? Chess. Lots of cultural and philosophical interchange happens between chess players because they share a passion. When they meet people who share that passion with them and who in interesting within that context they naturally try to enlarge the context: who are you, where are you from, what's it like to be Swahili or Pakistani or American, or whatever...
But placing the focus on cultural interchange is dooming a project to failure. Firstly, it does so because most people (let alone children) do not identify strongly motivational level with their cultural groups. How often have you heard a programmer say, "I program because I'm a Jew", or an athlete say I wrestle because I'm Chinese? Secondly, because if that "cultural" is the context, people - regardless of intentions - will try to find things that motivate them. Their stereotype themselves in order fit with what they perceive as their grouping (ethnic, cultural, national). This results in talented programmers not talking about programming because they're a Cossack and Cossacks are warriors and programming is beneath any good Cossack. And thirdly, once you've established that context you make it irrelevant by claiming equality and just confuse everyone.
Base it on soccer.
Base it on chess.
Base it on a proper appreciation of falling snowflakes in summer.
Whatever, but don't force a "cultural" basis.
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
For heaven's sake, don't pit them against each other across cultural/national dividing lines. If you must divide them into teams, make the teams cross-cultural. Even better would be to make them all one team.
Then come up with a dramatic demonstration of what they can accomplish as a human swarm if they ignore cultural boundaries and all cooperate. Concentrate on drama. Give them an experience that will imprint on their minds the power of letting go of nationality and attacking problems instead of each other.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
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.
ok, this project is really kewl ;-)
;-) 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 ;-)
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
OK.
:) ...
:)
For those that haven't read diamond age.
One of the underlying themes was that of a "young lady's illustrated primer".
Think of a PDA with a terabyte of data, voice recognition, and advanced AI. It pays attention to a childs growth and continually challenges them.
Any question that the child asks will be immediately answered.
The PDA also used "mediaglyphs" which are sort of a Esperanto based on symbols. Instead of building a device which says "eject" you just have a mediaglyph which animates when you put your finger near it of a VCR ejecting a tape.
The first child that grew up with the "primer" was significantly advanced from other children.
I am in the process of building a "primer" for my niece (she is one). It won't be as advanced as the one in the Diamond Age but it will have a dictionary, encyclopedia, art, pictures, etc.
... it might be a good idea to build an "Illustrated Primer" open source project that could build Open Source content for children with geeky relatives
... buy the diamond age and read it now!
Kevin
Spare the lab monkeys, bunnies and rats! Use children!