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UN Internet Summit High Points
hotsauce writes "Negroponte has unveiled his $100 laptop with Kofi Annan at the UN Internet summit. The plan is to have several countries, both rich and poor, sign up for at least a million each of these machines within a year. Many countries and companies seem interested. Also at the UN summit, the ITU is predicting an internet of things, and warning that social safeguards need to be put in place, as the BBC gleefully talks about employers watching workers via RFID tags." From the article: "Although children will be able to interact with each other through the machines, education was still the priority for the laptops. But by using mesh networking, the vision is for children to interact while doing homework, and even share homework tips on a local community scale. "
Looks like a few million africans are gonna get their first taste of hardcore porn!
Here's to the internet!!
More info on the $100 laptop, as well as some good pictures, can be found here.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Be thankful no-one's decided to call it The Thingternet. Yet.
share homework tips
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR
But by using mesh networking, the vision is for children to interact while doing homework, and even share homework tips on a local community scale.
Kids already have a way to interact while doing school work: It's called SCHOOL!
Let's stop waiting and hoping for "Pie in the sky" solutions for problems that already have a low-tech solution.
Let's start using what we have, and stop looking as technology as a panacea to fix the worlds' ills.
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
...an RFID tag for my tinfoil hat?
This is a sig. It is appended to the end of comments I post.
Apparently the plan is to rot the minds of third-world children, thus preventing them from becoming a threat to the US in the future. How diabolical! Kudos to the UN for facilitating this.
Have you read my blog lately?
Hi, my name is XXXXXX, and I am a young member of the Nigerian Royal Family. I am in need of assistance from a trustworthy person. I have homework stored on a Nigerian Server, and I will gladly give you 10% of the homework for your assistance in getting it out...
I love the quote... "now students can learn by doing"
OMFG it took this long for people to realize this? I get a kick out of the experts that poo-poo the small scale engineering projects that MIT is doing that give basically an electronics lab, CAD system, Machine shop and other advanced equipment to common people in small villages. They say that it takes years of higher education to learn how to design things, while 8-12 year old kids learn how to do their craft in less than 24 months and create things that the masters degrees could not think of them selves.
if you give children and people the tools they will learn how to use those tools and usually exceed the experts that are trained to use them in a specific way.
I really hope that they allow these $100.00 laptops to be modified as that is the real place to learn by taking that device way outside the box it was defined in.
If a kid in Kenya can write his own software on the machine instead os using it as an appliance then they will learn even more.
and personally, I really want one for a hiking/7day backpacking device for recording journal events and carrying maps and other information.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Here are the top 15 most repressive countries when it comes to the Internet, according to Reporters without Borders:
Saudi Arabia, Belarus, Burma, China, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Libya, Maldives, Nepal, Uzbekhistan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan and Vietnam.
Remember: it's a free Internet as long as you fight for its freedom.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
>Lets start with books
These are books! Not paper books (...which I love...) but effective books: an entire dictionary, access to google, and even Wikipedia [snicker]
>...a trade system which doesn't punish the poorest ...
That's a fair 'nuf righteous comment, but I submit these poor people are going to have to implement a fairer trade system on their own because the people who profit from the current trading system have no motivation to give it to them. And because knowledge=power, the improved access to information this technology offers may be the decisive force multiplier.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Here in The US, a technologically above-average country, classroom technology is going to waste because the college educated teachers are too lazy or not smart enough to learn how to apply the technology.
In a poor third world country, where the standards are significantly lower for instructors, who expects the students and instructors will somehow instinctively know how to use these computers for educational benefit? If they are networked the kids will very quickly figure out how to IM answers during tests, but only if they first learn to type.
How?, Where? What will RFID tags do to make HIV drugs cheaper? When can we expect these revolutions? Who is working on them? Where in hell did this assertion come from? What does this have to do with "Cars that warn their owners when they develop a fault"? Mine already does that via dashboard lights?
Honestly, is this an article about the issues surrounding next-generation technology and the direction whe are heading or is just some free-association wishlist?
Lets look at the underlying issues. A UN body presents a report outlining privacy issues, health-and safety issues, and other looming crises that must be addressed now before ubiquitous sensors, and rfid tags become too commonplace to regulate effectively.
And what does the BBC do? They give us more padding than pudding and spend most of the article lauding the joys of ubiqquitous sensors ("better coffee") and the growth of RFID tags ("Wal-Mart made the chinese use them") than addressing or even framing the issues raised. And then whan they run out of filler factoids they make more pie-in-the-sky promises like the ones above.
This isn't an article, it's a lullaby: "don't worry about privacy, your bag will tell you when you forgot to shop at Wal-Mart."
Proprietary formats will have to be marginalized. I know this laptop is "just for kids" but if all the content is in .doc , .wma, quicktime, etc. then a lot of people will be left out in the dark. I think there will be a groundswell of resentment and awareness of the ridiculousness of proprietary formats. Once most content is available in standard formats, one of the largest hurdles to adopting Linux elsewhere will disappear.
I'd love to roll Linux out district-wide in our school district. The problem is that there is so much content our there that our teachers and students wouldn't have access to. Sure, the older formats have been reverse engineered or cracked, but the modern, up-to-date content would probably be unusable. What about eBooks? Most of the text book vendors can't agree on a standard and when they do it DRM'ed to hell and require a proprietary [Windows] app to play it. If "all the children of the world" get a linux laptop, that will have to change.
Here's hoping!
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
http://www.bnamericas.com/story.jsp?sector=1&idiom a=I¬icia=334597
Govt snubs US$100 laptop program - Argentina, Chile
Published: Thursday, November 3, 2005 17:16 (GMT -0400)
The Chilean government has announced that it will not participate in the "One Laptop Per Child" program being promoted by MIT Media Lab director Nicholas Negroponte, regional press reported on Thursday.
While the Argentine government recently committed to purchasing at least half a million of the US$100 computers, the Chilean authorities showed no interest acquiring them.
"The first shipment of these computers will be in either December 2006 and January 2007, so it would be utopian to commit [to buy] a number of computers that do not yet exist," Hugo Martínez, national director of the Chilean government's Enlaces technology program, was quoted as saying by local newspaper supplement Mouse.cl.
"[We also have] questions about their educational use and about the contents and types of interaction that they would produce," said Martínez.
Martínez also put forth an apparently protectionist argument, saying that Negroponte's program "could hurt local vendors if we don't develop a way for the ministry to buy machines that are not distributed by traditional channels."
"In Chile there is a generalized rejection of innovation," countered Tim Delhaes, a local high-tech entrepreneur and general coordinator of open source initiative Viva Firefox. "In eight years of developing tech start-ups it was impossible to get government support for anything if you weren't an already established company," he said.
"The government's decision to not participate in the US$100 laptop initiative almost certainly has to do with intense lobbying by Microsoft and Intel, companies the [Chilean] government has close ties to, because the laptop would use a Linux operating system and AMD chips," said Delhaes.
The Chilean government plans to run a trial program of branded laptops in an unspecified number of schools during 2006, said Enlaces' Martínez, and would be more than happy to share its findings with Negroponte, he added.
By Scott Sadowsky
www.BNamericas.com
...is the hand-crank. I can see kids in poor African villages spending their days out in the sun, cranking furiously while trying to play WoW. How much you want to bet that as you crank the handle you hear tinny carnival music and a small Bill Gates head pops out of the top.
My problem is, where is all the infrastructure going to come from? At some point a lot of these places need Internet connectivity, and frankly not everyone in the Third World has convenient access to electricity, let alone a wireless Internet connection. Bill Gates better get out his checkbook.
Do not get me wrong, I'm all for it, as long as it is done right and not as some panacea to appease the general populace. I think a lot of kids in the Third World, or anywhere for that matter, would get a better education if they had a) decent homes, b) clean water, c) lots of food, and d) schools with books and teachers.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I'll buy one for $200-300 and they can give 1-2 for free to kids in developing countries. I can afford paying more than them if I want a fun little gadget terminal to play around with. A school in a third world country probably needs pencils, paper, crayons, chalk and books instead of this. Set up a webshop where we geeks can buy these and use the income to donate computers to those who can't afford them. It won't finance the entire project, but it could help?
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
cat
While I find this accomplishment impressive, I think energy should be focused on the basics in poor nations. Basic necessities like food, clean water, healthcare are more vital. Yes technology is great, but look at the US. Every kid uses a computer from day one and we still lag behind many countries in the basics like math and science.
gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/I wasn't accusing the BBC of Right-Wing Bias or, for that matter Left wing bias. This is just bad reporting.
from TFA:
"He did not say who would build the machine, which will cost $110 to make, but at least five are considering bids to do so. Negroponte said the laptops could become available on the commercial market, but at a higher price."
Like he said, we'll get them, they'll just cost more but... um... so it's going to cost $110 to make, and they're selling them to the countries for $100? Or are the countries paying $110 each, and selling them to... huh? How are these $100 laptops if they cost $110 to make, who's only paying $100? The countries? And he's going to eat $10 per laptop multiplied by 1 million laptops?
i love this though:
"He said they were colored lime green, with a yellow hand crank, to make them appealing to children and to fend off potential thieves."
ohhh.... so if they were Dell black, grey & silver they'd be stolen more right? interesting theory... yeah what man would wanna sit on the subway with a lime green laptop in his lap?
Maybe the commercial versions will be $199 but painted Dell black, grey & silver and have upgradeable flash memory storage?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I've travelled extensively throughout the 3rd world and with this attitude the program is going to be a disaster "The goal is to provide the machines free of charge to children in poor countries who cannot afford computers of their own,". If you provide them free of charge all of the most abject poor are going to get them and sell them, especially all the children who have hardly enough $ to eat, and many parents would send their children to get them free so they can sell them. It's not nice but it's reality.
Selling cheap stuff as long as they pay for it and cant resell it for a profit isn't such a bad idea however I've generally found that even the poorest people interested in pcs have been able to get a dodgy box to learn and use their skills to get some sort of computer related job.
I, for one, welcome our new crank-wielding African pornogapher overlords.
i got ball this is my adress 108 20 37 av corona come n do it iam give u the sidekick so I can hit you wit it
For every one such machine sold at $200 in the more well-off parts of the world, they could give two more laptops away at even half price (or if need be, even another one for free ) to the countries and people otherwise most unlikely to afford them even at $100.
Moreover, I don't see how it makes sense to withhold the machine (despite a focus on open source so strong that it reportedly made them reject even free MacOS) from those who may want to develop for it, "pro bono", without being part of the target audience.
So why in the world would they not sell it to everyone... probably with a less colorful lid - so it would be even more validated (and valued by the students) as something that's useful beyond school, while the green color would make everyone with a diverted "educational edition" look ridiculous at first sight in the early years) from day one?
(And please don't you say: "because it would cannibalize a market for overprized low-end laptops"!)
As of yet, they don't seem to have realized how the restriction to the educational market (and its unnecessary automated enforcement with huge potential for abuse) only add to a problem...