<incom> OLPC presentation in Norway

[Heimo Claasen]

Hello Maya - apparently there was a demo with the thing at this last
"Chaos Computer Club's" jamboree (the renowned German hackers org) in
Berlin lately, and it got a fairly positive review; there was a picture
of it with EFF's John Gilmore typing, in the probably most serious German
'puter mag, "C'T" (#2/07, p.19): Indeed it appears a bit small, not only
the keyboard but the whole thing (though that makes it easier to take
along), including the screen, when I compare it to my old and rather
compact Toshiba with its 12"-screen.

But that one has a DIN-/ISO-normal keyboard - which is one thing I
would demand even for "kids". (When I looked for an electronic piano
lately for my 14-old daughter I took care to get a "regular" keyboard,
not one which would train finger movements wrongly.)

And for once I would aggree with Mr. Gates, on "give them the real thing".
Only that Gates is wrong again in that respect that according to
technical spec.s, the machine _is_ a "real" thing, based on a full-blown
Linux. And with (Compact)Flash cards rapidly gaining in enormous
capacity and falling in price (1 GBs below 20 USD, 8 GB already available)
I wouldn't see problems in its "scalability" of use.[*]

And that would be a salient point. Because the thingy has to compete
with the gaming machines in the internet cafe around the school's
street corner, in order to be taken seriously and accepted by the kids as
"worthy". For the same reason I'd fully disaggree with what you quote
from Lie - both the paternalistic attitude re "kids", and his talk
about the "villages": at best, the thing could be successful with urban
poor (schools).

And I'd consider this approach completely aberrant:
> "The children don't need first to learn to write with a pen.
> Every child will be able to get going with the laptop".
And:
> "We don't need to train the teachers, we pass over that stage".

Which would mean that "these kids" get their training in that internet
cafe annex gaming places - and hardly would get further than that with
the gadget. Compare it to the anti-math/-science prejudice; if there
were no teachers who achieve to convey some least insight and
motivation, there would be even less girls to not succumb to social/
environment pressure resulting in that diffuse "dislike" and stalward
abandonment of those "complicated" things.
(And I can see this with/in this 14-year old here who is quite talented
for math/science and technical things if it wasn't for this pressure.)

The alternative is indeed the (ever re-)adapting to stupid repetitive
GUI-applications - "click (or shoot), don't think", a.k.a. the Winno$
approach.

>From the various descriptions of the thing I conclude that it's fully
good for everything textual, for numbercrunching and communication (but
that's always "plain text" anyway): That would be a legitimate reason to
precisely devise it as a "school" instrument. Though even then I'd think
it meaningful to not denigrate it's use value beyond that; it should be
"worth" more - not only to be accepted (and treated by "the kids") as
"worthy"; a thingy that can run Linux can do a bit more than just adding
letters and numbers. So let it be.

Triggered by your request for remarks I re-read the collected items from
this list here as well as from some techie-lists I enjoy; which in my
view converge on two lines:
-- if it's a full-grown 'puter (i.e. not the type of crippleware M$
prefers to tout), then it's worth its 100-or-so-$$$: a good part of the
people (and definitively not only children) then will know/learn to use it;
-- to perceive of a technical gadget as a substitute for "education" is
arrogant hybris, and in developmental terms just another ripoff with
another South-to-North redistribution scheme.

Thus the question is quite well again that about the "business model"
behind the OLPC: Why do they want to "experiment" with "underdeveloped"
children ?  I'd prefer to equip my daughter indeed with one of the
thingies, instead of getting more or less forced to invest around
fifteen times that much for a "Vista"-infected and cash-gulping machine
for comsumer exploitation which they much more than less are going to be
obliged to use in our schools, here in the middle of EUROpe.

-hc

[*] Another good point seems to me that
> "The laptop is supposed to have a lifetime of 5 years."
(and I understand this to mean "at least" 5 years.)

Given its scalability and peripheral interfaces, this could make it
independent of the idiot gadget-race and of the Gateses' business model
of forced obsolescence.
(But well, well, well, if only those Linusians would not tend to go down
exactly that same dead-end road.  The latest Ubuntu wouldn't install on
that hardy 7 year "old" Toshiba - which has more "computing power" than
the whole huge mainframe had at my former univ.)