World Ahead: Intel’s new development move

Intel to design a cheap laptop and put $1 billion into teacher training worldwide. Intel to Offer Its Own Plan for Global Internet Access – New York Times
At some point sometime, Negroponte, of the $100 laptop project, said that he didn’t feel that teacher training was the right way to go in a development sense, better to target the children. I agree with him up to a certain point. I wouldn’t rule out the teacher training route because I feel that to maximize the benefits of ICTs as a learning technology for a learning society they need to be integrated into the classroom and therefore teachers will be an issue sooner or later. I think that as long as people are aware of the difficulties and time factors involved in targeting the teachers they should be able to design programmes that work.
Intel’s site about the World Ahead programme is here: Intel – World Ahead.

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Who do we trust?

This article on BBC News considers how perceptions of the media are changing in an information age. Interesting read. BBC NEWS | Technology | Media holds its own in trust poll

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The UNU-IIST on open source software

Things have been very quiet around here lately. I’m hard at work on my thesis and finishing up the semester, so things are probably going to stay fairly quiet for the time being.
But, there’s always something. I came across this interesting article on open source software in the development context. Pay special attention to the last two paragraphs about linking the open source community with IT people in developing countries. This captures my opinion exactly – open source is not just (and not most importantly) cheap software for developing countries, it also has the potential to raise awareness among a huge and influential global community of developers of the needs of developing countries to make sure that the tools needed are available and appropriate.
Make sure you visit the link to UNU-IIST to get the whole picture.

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Negroponte answers critics on $100 laptops

Negroponte seems to have briefly addressed some of the criticisms that we’ve been hearing about the $100 laptop recently from Microsoft executives and others: Wired News: Laptop Detractors Shrugged Off
See also Slashdot.org for many many MANY comments.

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Internet governance

They managed to sweep the issue under the chair at WSIS, but that doesn’t mean it went away: BBC NEWS | Technology | Unease over how the net is run.

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New Global Information Technology Report

This years report has been published:
World Economic Forum – Global Information Technology Report

There’s an incredible amount of movement over the years in the Network Readiness Index. It’s not entirely clear to me what of these changes are due to actual progress in the area, changes in the way the index is formulated, or both. Nevertheless, there is some very interesting information in this generally optimistic report that specifically highlights the transformative power of ICTs.
Also check out the interactive map that comes with it. Mac users will need to use a browser other than Safari to view it because the Flash compatibility check doesn’t catch the relevant info on Safari.

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