[DDN] Intel, $100 Laptop program form new partnership

[Taran Rampersad]

Layton E. Olson wrote:
> The $100 laptop goal (with metric of impact in aiding youth/adults in
> daily tasks in a variety of countries in which $100 means different
> things) might have other linked goals in developed and developing
> worlds, such as"
> = Free learning card (memory card, library card, digital textbook) which
> could plug into laptop, workstation or kiosks, and might cost around $10
> with appropriate personal security  
> = Free health records card, including immunization data for school
> entry, which can also be added to learning card for use for school
> registration and record keeping
> = Value-added cards for purchase of many of the above services, and use
> of
> kiosks, vending machines
>
> In Chicago, all of these are considered options for Digital Excellence
> planning in the coming year.  E.g. A Goal -- "A learning card/electronic
> library card in every pocket" ....
>   
Forgive me, but... digital textbooks are problematic. Textbooks aren't
just 'data' in the way that they are used or created. On the surface it
looks easy, but the reality is that someone has to write them and
publish them, and someone has to assure that they fit the curriculum.
Unless there is some actual work being done in creating digital
textbooks that are agreed upon for the different municipalities...
well... all those goals will do is make the need for them more apparent
to those who did not consider the depth of the problem. Some deeper
changes are required for this to work, and if those changes had been
made then there would be no need for the OLPC. Cart. Horse. Dead horse.
> What's good about these systems, is that learning/consumer behavior
> paths can be tracked and reinforced, including through multi-workstation
> computer labs or telecenters, through "outreach and awareness" programs
> and regular "town hall/consumer assembly sounding board" sessions, to
> help bring consensus on "what works" in each locality, and for each
> audiences (youth, adults, seniors).
>   
There is a danger about 'learning/consumer behavior paths'. In a world
where our digital biographies entail all matter of data gleaned from
identification numbers, purchasing and so forth... they still do not
describe the person, thus making the digital biography a mere shadow of
the real person. Reading 'The Digital Person' by Solove may be worthwhile.

The outreach and awareness programs, town hall/consumer assembly
sounding board sessions... those should be done. Those should *have*
been done. Those should be done in the future. And that, as it is, has
as much to do with the OLPC as the OLPC has to do with developing
infrastructure: Nothing.

-- 
Taran Rampersad
Presently in: San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago
cnd at knowprose.com
http://www.knowprose.com


Pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/knowprose/

"Criticize by creating." — Michelangelo
"The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine." - Nikola Tesla