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. "

Comments

Pornography for all

[sam_paris]

Looks like a few million africans are gonna get their first taste of hardcore porn!

Here's to the internet!!

Euphemism of the day

[Viper Daimao]

share homework tips

Kids don't need mesh networks to ineract!

[gambit3]

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.

Re:Kids don't need mesh networks to ineract!

[NardofDoom]

There are things we can do right now to improve the lives of people in Africa that don't involve Mesh networks. Things like investing in their infrastructure. Even in some of the richest countries the roads are predominantly dirt. By doing this, we'll improve health, increase access to education, and allow more people to interact more easily. If we put the money we're spending on these "miracle laptops" into building roads and water systems, I'm almost certain we'll see more results and it would magnify the impact of these machines.

Re:Kids don't need mesh networks to ineract!

[manabadman]

Kids already have a way to interact while doing school work: It's called SCHOOL!

I grew up in a rural area of a third world country. All communication infrastructure is bad. There were no phones, the roads bad and public transportation almost non existent. I would have welcomed any possibility of interaction with other kids outside of school. Especially on weekends and holidays.

Let's stop waiting and hoping for "Pie in the sky" solutions for problems that already have a low-techsolution.

I have taught in a third world country. There simply are not enough trained teachers. Distance learning (formal or not) has the potential to make a difference.

Let's start using what we have, and stop looking as technology as a panacea to fix the worlds' ills.

I'm a scientist and an engineer. Using technology to try and help is what we do. If someone from another discipline has an idea that they think can work, please go ahead and help.

Maybe $100 computers won't solve our problems, but the other things we've been trying for the past couple centuries don't seem to have been working out either. If computers don't help education that much, would all the first world countries please send the computers in their schools to schools in third world countries? If it doesn't work out for us either we can use the cases as traps to catch dinner.

What about the low points?

[Noryungi]

There are a few things about this summit that need to be reported as well:

1. Robert Menard, the President of 'Reporters without Borders', an ONG dedicated to preserving reporters, freedom of speech and freedom of the press worldwide, has been denied access to Tunisia, under the pretext that his organization protested the imprisonment of a Tunisian journalist.
2. Coincidentally (or not) Reporters without Borders has published its list of the Top 15 Internet black holes: the top 15 countries who try to limit access to an uncensored Internet.

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.

Cheaper HIV Drugs, How?

[Irvu]

Some of the benefits of this ubiquitous networked society include cheaper HIV treatments ...

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."

Chilean Government Snubs Negroponte's Laptop

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.bnamericas.com/story.jsp?sector=1&idiom a=I&noticia=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

I'll buy one!

[ksp]

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?

Make them pay for the laptop

[external400kdiskette]

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.