Education4site

iPhones and $100 laptops – Innovation is alive and well and looking toward a bright future

Posted on January 9, 2007 by Tryggvi Thayer

Apple finally announced its long awaited “iPhone” today. To tell the truth it’s a pretty snazzy gadget. Although many have attempted to accomplish similar technological convergence, Apple, as so often before, seem to have anticipated users’ needs and wishes to create something that is new, usable and desirable, and in so doing they may be once again leading a pardigm shift in how we use technology. This last point is what I think is most significant about the iPhone. It reminds us that we have not, nor should we assume to have, come up with the ultimate design for technology and the way we use it. Yet, there’s always a persistent group that considers divergence from current computing paradigms, such as Microsoft’s Office suite, a valid criticism against new technology. As delivery of the OLPC’s (One Laptop Per Child) “$100 laptop” nears, the project has received a lot of criticism on exactly this point, ex. “It doesn’t look like anything that’s being used in the business or computing world today, therefore it’s misleading, and at worst, useless.” I have a few responses to such criticisms and Apple’s bold new venture proves my point(s) in so many ways:
1. Given that the OLPC laptop is intended for young children, how do these critics know what computer use in computing and business is going to look like when the laptop users enter these fields? I’ve been using computers for over 25 years and have not witnessed the kind of consistency that these critics seem to expect from computers in the future.
2. The OLPC laptop is to be delivered to young people in many areas where computing is relatively new. Is it unreasonable that these new users, coming from a very different background, will be able to point out to more complacent longtime computer users different and better ways to accomplish tasks? Remember, it was Heddy Lamarr (actress) and George Antheil (musician) who came up with the idea of “frequency hopping”, on which modern mobile telephone technology is based. They didn’t hook up with experienced engineers until they started going through the patenting process.
3. Why do these critics think that OLPC laptop users will want to use the technology to do what they themselves have done with it for the past half century? Computers are not collections of software, even though that’s how most of us use them today. Computers are essentially workbenches for creating tools to do whatever a creative mind can come up with and young people tend to have very creative minds.

Posted in ICTs, Information Society, Leapfrogging development | Leave a comment

Microsoft invents IT language for Mapuche Indians in Chile

Posted on November 26, 2006 by Tryggvi Thayer

The story about Microsoft’s translation of its software into Mapuzugun, a language spoken by about 400,000 indiginous Mapuche Indians in Chile, has been raising a lot of attention on the net. The Mapuche Indians want to take Microsoft to court for using their language without having consulted them to get their permission. The big question being raised concerns ownership of a language, i.e. can Mapuzugun be considered the intellectual property of the Mapuche Indians, and this is what the Mapuche Indians would like the courts to decide.
I suspect that the Microsoft translation project is related to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s plan to increase accessibility to ICTs in several developing countries, Chile being among them, by supplying public libraries with free computers and Internet connections. Of course, for such a project to be successful, they can hardly set up a bunch of computers with interfaces in English or other common languages, that are not commonly spoken by the anticipated beneficiaries of the project. But, and here is the other issue in this and the more serious one in my opinion, that computer software would be translated and localised without consulting the people concerned borders on the outrageous. It’s like if Microsoft would suddenly tell francophones that the French word for a computer will henceforth be “le computer”. Imagine the ruckus that that would cause!
The problem here is that the IT lingo, which I assume was lacking in the Mapuzugun language, is not being allowed to emerge from the cultural consciousness of the Mapuche, but is rather being imposed on them. This becomes a question of equity, meaning that if the language comes from the outside it is reflecting the knowledge and understanding of a foreign culture, and thereby, limiting the sense of ownership in the concept(s) being promoted, in this case of the Mapuche Indians and ICTs. Hence, ICTs are presented as a concept of outside origin to which the Mapuche Indians have to adapt rather than as a tool which the Mapuche Indians can adapt to their own needs. This simply goes against everything that ICTs are intended to promote in the context of development for a globalised knowledge-based economy.

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UNDP-APDIP’s “e-Primers” open-sourced

Posted on November 8, 2006 by Tryggvi Thayer

People over at the UNDP’s Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (UNDP-APDIP) have caught on to the brilliance of Wikis. They’ve released a bunch of their “e-Primers” under a GFDL license onto Wikibooks. What this means is that they are free to be edited by YOU, me and everyone else.
Somewhere I read that 1 ICT year is roughly equal to 3 real years. So, if an e-Primer was published 3 years ago, that means it’s at least 9 years outdated! But, now we can all go and update them to our hearts’ content with examples of good/bad practice, new developments, etc., and, of course, I expect us all to do exactly that. Obviously, you’ll most likely find me hangin’ out around the ICTs in Education primer, although I’m sure I can find some other topics of interest in the vast amount of material available.
It would be great to see some other organisations do this.

Posted in Development, Education, ICTs, Information Society, Internet, Knowledge development, Leapfrogging development | Leave a comment

Voices on the Internet (some shout, some whisper)

Posted on November 7, 2006 by Tryggvi Thayer

The Reporters sans frontiéres (Reporters without Borders) revealed this years list of “Internet enemies”. The list is somewhat predictable, but with some interesting changes. Most notable perhaps is Libya, who is now off the list after Gadaffi’s somewhat surprising acceptance of the Internet. Gadaffi has also signed on for the so-called $100 laptop for children in Libya and is even considering buying some for children in neighboring countries.
Meanwhile, the popularity of blogs continues to increase at a flabbergasting rate, and the interesting thing is where they are proving most popular. David Sifry, the man behind Technorati maintains an interesting blog himself where he is chronicling changes in the blogosphere, as tracked by Technorati. His newest report, complete with fancy graphs and all, shows that most blogs are in English, but at a close second and third are Japanese and Chinese. And this even though China enforces one of the strictest censorship policies on the Internet. I guess you could say that while English speakers are shouting louder and louder in the blogosphere, the sheer number of Chinese whisperers is making quite a noise itself.

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Recent news – Internet governance, China-Africa Summit and more

Posted on November 4, 2006 by Tryggvi Thayer

There seem to be so many things going on these days. Maybe it’s just that time of year or maybe I’m finally awaking from semi-hiatus. Either way, I’m probably going to cover a lot of news in this post.
Two of the more promintent items “du jour” are, of course, the China-Africa Summit and the Internet Governance Forum. Intriguing happenings on both fronts. Both of these, along with other not-as-visible things, underline the types of changes we are seeing, and will continue to see in the near future.
The China-Africa Summit is one more embodiment of what has been talked about for some time now, i.e. the changing relations in the global sphere being brought about by the rise of “new” economic powers, especially China and India. This summit makes it quite clear that China is looking to build economic ties with African countries to strengthen their position (although not only – I was recently at a meeting here in Iceland with a delegation of 30-35 people from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education that were on a world tour stretching right around the globe to build educational and business ties. Talk about thinking big!). Hopefully this is good news for Africa, but there is a justified measure of scepticism concerning the reputation of the benefactor. For instance, it would be great of the budding relationship between Africa and China would result in better telecommunications connections for Africa, but hopefully their use would not be managed the same way China manages its own communications infrastructure.
The Internet Governance Forum is in my opinion very confused. Governance involves the the exercise of authority to manage a consistent societal structure. I don’t see this as being applicable to the Internet as such. The issues that are increasingly being raised under the auspices of “Internet governance”, eg. access,
diversity and basic rights, are not exclusive to the Internet. These are issues that need to be addressed outside of cyberspace. We are not nearly “virtual” yet. Therefore there is no sense in trying to govern a space that is not inhabited, per se. For the time being, Internet governance should focus on the things that we can hope to govern, i.e. technical issues such as interoperability and domain management.
Several different points of view on the Internet Governance Forum’s inaugural meeting.
Another interesting thing worth mentioning:
Potential car of the future?
This is so cool! The sad thing is that it seems that each time one of these breakthrough ideas that will radically change energy consumption emerges, it seems to quietly disappear and things go on as before… (I remember reading about a revolutionary alternative to washing machines many years ago that was said to be on its way to the market shortly – never happened.) They can’t all be bad ideas, can they?

Posted in Development, ICTs, Information Society, Internet | Leave a comment

Internet governance and the Internet Bill of Rights

Posted on November 1, 2006 by Tryggvi Thayer

An “Internet Bill of Rights” has been proposed at the inaugural meeting of the Internet Governance Forum. While I can see the rationality behind wanting to ensure some basic rights for Internet users, I just don’t see what sort of impact a bill of rights is expected to have. And furthermore, introducing this under the auspices of “Internet governance” underlines how weird (in my opinion) the whole “Internet governance” thing has become.
If my memory serves me right, “Internet governance” became a prominent issue (i.e. if it was around before, not many people were aware of it) around the debate concerning the ICANN’s management of top-level domains and a handful of other fairly obscure technical issues. Most of these issues remain unresolved. Meanwhile, the notion of “Internet governance” seems to have taken on the elasticity of a well chewed wad of bubble gum. All of a sudden “governance” is taken to refer to everything from freedom of speech to basic issues concerning access and multilingualism.
These certainly are real issues worthy of attention, but grouping them with the technical issues that “Internet governance” used to refer to is confusing. At least there are real forseeable ways to resolve the old “Internet governance” issues, i.e. management of top-level domains etc., but these new issues seem to require something of the Internet that just isn’t there.
For example, let’s say that we do draft an Internet Bill of Rights. It’s not difficult to imagine what would be in it, basically the same stuff that’s in the universal declaration of human rights. Maybe in slightly more techy language, or what? Then, who is going to monitor and/or enforce the protection of those rights? And how?
The thing is that, as yet, Internet societies (that’s another problem, there’s not just one) are not separate from terrestrial societies. Yes, individuals may be able to distance themselves to some extent from their terrestrial existence by going on the Internet. But, at the end of the day, they remain tethered to their terrestrial roots and are ultimately subject to the rules and regulations set by the relevant territorial authorities. If those authorities are not willing to acknowledge the political supremacy of an “Internet governance” body, an Internet Bill of Rights is likely to be little more than a noteworthy statement on a piece of paper (or a webpage).