Well, actually, there's nothing new and revolutionary about this whole guerilla style of fighting. During WW2 Yugoslav partizans managed to liberate most of Yugoslavia by themselves using only guerilla tactics against German and Italian occupators and domestic collaborators. Actually, the same territory was problematic for conventional armies ever since the Roman times (Illyricum was never a Senate province), because of various technological levels of guerilla warfare.
Guerilla warfare is about morale as much as it is in unpredictable damage. You can predict in a conventional battle what kind of losses you might take. With that in mind, you can plan your moves. Guerilla means you might lose a shipment of food or fuel for some troops, a communications link, a truck or a single tank or anything else, and watches and guards have very little effect on such losses. An obvious economical calculation goes in favour of guerilla warfare: how much does an improvised piece of explosive cost in terms of a truckload of fuel? Any at-all-organized guerilla force can plant such a device with almost the freedom of location as that of an airstrike.
One might find a similarity with chaos theory here. Guerilla is about chaos, it resides in chaos and pulls towards chaos, although somewhat controlld chaos. Conventional warfare is about predictability and global strategies. If you're facing a guerilla threat, there's no point in looking at a global map and representing your army divisions as if playing Risk.
CCTV operates in public areas. Anything going on there is a priori NOT private. So, effectively and legaly no freedom is given up on. You can do anything you like as you coulde have done before, only the police now is a lot more likely to know -- you could have been reported by some concerned citizen just as well. I repeat, what happens in public areas is NOT private -- so this is NOT an attack on privacy, and is not an attack on freedom. It's added security and added knowledge to the police, but without loss of freedom.
To give you an example of loss of freedom to "security" -- take the airplane handluggage rules. There's now a very long list of rules and prohibitions on what you cannot and cannot (notice no "can") bring past check point on board the plane. Do these rules make sense? No, because you can have in your hand luggage anything you buy after the check point (i.e. at the duty free shops). Given enough technical knowledge, what is sold behind the check point can be used to comporomise the safety of the plane, but you can't buy a cola outside the check-point area and take it to the airplane. THESE rules attak one's personal freedoms for actually no gained security at all.
An acquaintance of mine is a Serbian news reporter here in Croatia, and it is believed that he is under constant watch by the intelligence agency. His comment to that was -- "well, it helps me to remember to behave a bit better." If he is under watch, then his privacy IS invaded, but this systems of cameras does something in a fundamental way different -- since no law on private information holds information given in public areas or media private, this system exploits your public information without invading your privacy.
Look at it this way -- it helps people behave, plus they're on TV whenever they're in public areas.:)
Computers may not have been vital to learning before their development, but computers gave a large spectrum of new methods of teaching old knowledge in a much more vivid fashion.
I agree, a laptop doesn't irrigate fields, and does not cure that many diseases. That's not it's job. It's job is to (exponentially) accelerate learning of more important things and make as much knowledge as accessible as possible. A smaller public library (for a population of, say 5,000 people) is rarely of any real use to anything but lowest level schooling and a lot of useless propaganda or similar literature. A computer, even without Internet access, can be much better in that aspect.
We are past the times when you had MIR publishers in USSR that published most of world's up to date textbooks and expert literature at really low prices in most languages (Western languages, USSR languages, 3rd world languages, etc.). Similar attempts of either lower price printing or donating books is commendable, and it definelty doesn't go against the ideas of OLPC -- they're not complementary, but are targeted at the same goal -- creating an enviroment for modern development, perhaps skiping some steps of industrial and educational development. The only problem is that unlike MIR's publishing focus -- mathematics and similar, these foundations concentrate on humanities and social sciences -- and these aren't anywhere close to the real need.
Let me explain the "great civilisational" illustration a bit. It might have sounded like I was trying to educate "savages on trees", but I was reffering to a historical precedent on an importance of a certain concept that may be, especially in poor countries, below the level of elementary geometry as known to the Egyptians (how to contruct a right angle, a certain distance, etc.). There are currently far too many people even in developed countries that don't know such elementary and important geometric concepts.
Why do I keep insisting on geometry, you might ask? Not only has it had the most profound effect on the development of any civilization, it is by far the easiest way of introducing people the idea of formal reasoning (after all, "the axiomatic method" was originally called "the geometric method").
There are so many ways of teaching history. And so many histories to be taught. Materialist, nationalist, this-ideology-based, that-ideology-based, conforming-to-our-dear-president's-work, our-enemies-were-our-enemies-for-centuries-based, we-are-at-war-and-have-always-been-at-war-with-eur asia-based... As a saying goes "God found out that he can't change hitory, so he invented historians." We had many of these histories recently taught in Croatia -- you (probobly) know what that led to -- a war. Of course, not just that, but the main claims were centuries of waiting for a state, nationalist romantic ideals et cetera. Facts were a lot more on the side of economy and some corporate interests.
I agree, one has got to be exposed to many historical fact in order to fully appreciate his/her present situation. But a critical mind is not developed through teaching or learning history -- it's, after all, history that taught us that noone ever learns from history. If we help develop a society like a 1930ies Germany, 1990-Yugoslavia or something worse we will lose. We will lose all our effort. Our effort becomes entropy, or worse -- bloodsheds.
"Our" goal here is somewhat like that of an University according to E.W. Dijkstra -- not to give what the society (replace with poor countries), but rather give what the society (replace again) needs.
Now, for your points on disadvantages of laptops:
1) price: Are there currently technologies to produce laptops in such massive amounts? No. There are technologies to produce laptops in somewhat massive numbers, but this is an order (or even more then one) of magnitutde larger. OLPC is here to create a somewhat aritificial demand so that such technologies might develop. The end result: lowering of price and new
I am perhaps a bit more interested in people learning how to think, rather then filling people's minds with loads of unneccessary data.
Radios do that. Books do that.
Radios give one-way line of communication. Radio HAM is far too expensive and doesn't quite do the trick.
What can people learn by using laptops that can't be done with books?
Well... geometry -- compare textbook geometry to the touch and feel of computer geometry systems. And guess what? Great early civilizations learnt geometry first, then became great (not ONLY because of geometry, of course).
Other "experimental mathematics" is the holy grail of learning that the computer might bring to people. It develops the analytic mind, unlike the modified and adopted history textbook or radio news that complies to the govermental intepretation of the past.
Programming and other structural thinking is also a neccesity that made civilizations great.
So, a laptop has all the benefits of a library, plus gives people the opportunity to learn how to think and then to help themselves in a way that doesn't seem to reach them.
And all that is done without the Internet. Now, with the Internet, you also have means of communicating and trade.
Summing up, the laptop:
1) is a compact library
2) teaches people how to think and analyze, better than anything yet invented
3) enables people to test their ideas on various things, once they've learned how to use it
4) makes communication and trade a LOT easier.
Think about it.
'ave fun!
Sinisa
Slashdot Mirror
These are new times in warfare
Well, actually, there's nothing new and revolutionary about this whole guerilla style of fighting. During WW2 Yugoslav partizans managed to liberate most of Yugoslavia by themselves using only guerilla tactics against German and Italian occupators and domestic collaborators. Actually, the same territory was problematic for conventional armies ever since the Roman times (Illyricum was never a Senate province), because of various technological levels of guerilla warfare.
Guerilla warfare is about morale as much as it is in unpredictable damage. You can predict in a conventional battle what kind of losses you might take. With that in mind, you can plan your moves. Guerilla means you might lose a shipment of food or fuel for some troops, a communications link, a truck or a single tank or anything else, and watches and guards have very little effect on such losses. An obvious economical calculation goes in favour of guerilla warfare: how much does an improvised piece of explosive cost in terms of a truckload of fuel? Any at-all-organized guerilla force can plant such a device with almost the freedom of location as that of an airstrike.
One might find a similarity with chaos theory here. Guerilla is about chaos, it resides in chaos and pulls towards chaos, although somewhat controlld chaos. Conventional warfare is about predictability and global strategies. If you're facing a guerilla threat, there's no point in looking at a global map and representing your army divisions as if playing Risk.
'ave fun!
sm
CCTV operates in public areas. Anything going on there is a priori NOT private. So, effectively and legaly no freedom is given up on. You can do anything you like as you coulde have done before, only the police now is a lot more likely to know -- you could have been reported by some concerned citizen just as well. I repeat, what happens in public areas is NOT private -- so this is NOT an attack on privacy, and is not an attack on freedom. It's added security and added knowledge to the police, but without loss of freedom.
:)
To give you an example of loss of freedom to "security" -- take the airplane handluggage rules. There's now a very long list of rules and prohibitions on what you cannot and cannot (notice no "can") bring past check point on board the plane. Do these rules make sense? No, because you can have in your hand luggage anything you buy after the check point (i.e. at the duty free shops). Given enough technical knowledge, what is sold behind the check point can be used to comporomise the safety of the plane, but you can't buy a cola outside the check-point area and take it to the airplane. THESE rules attak one's personal freedoms for actually no gained security at all.
An acquaintance of mine is a Serbian news reporter here in Croatia, and it is believed that he is under constant watch by the intelligence agency. His comment to that was -- "well, it helps me to remember to behave a bit better." If he is under watch, then his privacy IS invaded, but this systems of cameras does something in a fundamental way different -- since no law on private information holds information given in public areas or media private, this system exploits your public information without invading your privacy.
Look at it this way -- it helps people behave, plus they're on TV whenever they're in public areas.
sm.
Computers may not have been vital to learning before their development, but computers gave a large spectrum of new methods of teaching old knowledge in a much more vivid fashion.
I agree, a laptop doesn't irrigate fields, and does not cure that many diseases. That's not it's job. It's job is to (exponentially) accelerate learning of more important things and make as much knowledge as accessible as possible. A smaller public library (for a population of, say 5,000 people) is rarely of any real use to anything but lowest level schooling and a lot of useless propaganda or similar literature. A computer, even without Internet access, can be much better in that aspect.
We are past the times when you had MIR publishers in USSR that published most of world's up to date textbooks and expert literature at really low prices in most languages (Western languages, USSR languages, 3rd world languages, etc.). Similar attempts of either lower price printing or donating books is commendable, and it definelty doesn't go against the ideas of OLPC -- they're not complementary, but are targeted at the same goal -- creating an enviroment for modern development, perhaps skiping some steps of industrial and educational development. The only problem is that unlike MIR's publishing focus -- mathematics and similar, these foundations concentrate on humanities and social sciences -- and these aren't anywhere close to the real need.
Let me explain the "great civilisational" illustration a bit. It might have sounded like I was trying to educate "savages on trees", but I was reffering to a historical precedent on an importance of a certain concept that may be, especially in poor countries, below the level of elementary geometry as known to the Egyptians (how to contruct a right angle, a certain distance, etc.). There are currently far too many people even in developed countries that don't know such elementary and important geometric concepts.
Why do I keep insisting on geometry, you might ask? Not only has it had the most profound effect on the development of any civilization, it is by far the easiest way of introducing people the idea of formal reasoning (after all, "the axiomatic method" was originally called "the geometric method").
There are so many ways of teaching history. And so many histories to be taught. Materialist, nationalist, this-ideology-based, that-ideology-based, conforming-to-our-dear-president's-work, our-enemies-were-our-enemies-for-centuries-based, we-are-at-war-and-have-always-been-at-war-with-eur asia-based... As a saying goes "God found out that he can't change hitory, so he invented historians." We had many of these histories recently taught in Croatia -- you (probobly) know what that led to -- a war. Of course, not just that, but the main claims were centuries of waiting for a state, nationalist romantic ideals et cetera. Facts were a lot more on the side of economy and some corporate interests.
I agree, one has got to be exposed to many historical fact in order to fully appreciate his/her present situation. But a critical mind is not developed through teaching or learning history -- it's, after all, history that taught us that noone ever learns from history. If we help develop a society like a 1930ies Germany, 1990-Yugoslavia or something worse we will lose. We will lose all our effort. Our effort becomes entropy, or worse -- bloodsheds.
"Our" goal here is somewhat like that of an University according to E.W. Dijkstra -- not to give what the society (replace with poor countries), but rather give what the society (replace again) needs.
Now, for your points on disadvantages of laptops:
1) price:
Are there currently technologies to produce laptops in such massive amounts? No. There are technologies to produce laptops in somewhat massive numbers, but this is an order (or even more then one) of magnitutde larger. OLPC is here to create a somewhat aritificial demand so that such technologies might develop. The end result: lowering of price and new
I am perhaps a bit more interested in people learning how to think, rather then filling people's minds with loads of unneccessary data. Radios do that. Books do that. Radios give one-way line of communication. Radio HAM is far too expensive and doesn't quite do the trick. What can people learn by using laptops that can't be done with books? Well... geometry -- compare textbook geometry to the touch and feel of computer geometry systems. And guess what? Great early civilizations learnt geometry first, then became great (not ONLY because of geometry, of course). Other "experimental mathematics" is the holy grail of learning that the computer might bring to people. It develops the analytic mind, unlike the modified and adopted history textbook or radio news that complies to the govermental intepretation of the past. Programming and other structural thinking is also a neccesity that made civilizations great. So, a laptop has all the benefits of a library, plus gives people the opportunity to learn how to think and then to help themselves in a way that doesn't seem to reach them. And all that is done without the Internet. Now, with the Internet, you also have means of communicating and trade. Summing up, the laptop: 1) is a compact library 2) teaches people how to think and analyze, better than anything yet invented 3) enables people to test their ideas on various things, once they've learned how to use it 4) makes communication and trade a LOT easier. Think about it. 'ave fun! Sinisa