On Friday 05 January 2007 15:52, Steven H. McCown wrote:
> Now, for another curiosity... Rural areas of 3rd world countries are a
> bit away from WiFi and the Internet. That will make them somewhat of a
> separate community. It will be interesting to see how groups of people
> will have used the laptops after a year or so...
Agreed. Assuming these laptops make it to the people as intended (and I'm
also expecting that at least most of them will), it will be fascinating to
see how they're used, and what the users will come up with.
It's a really interesting experiment, actually. They're giving a very
different kind of computer to a bunch of people who don't have deeply
embedded preconceptions about how computers are supposed to work. Unlike our
computers, which mostly evolved from isolated machines into networked
systems, the whole design of these laptops is focused around collaboration
and interaction in a completely decentralized, ad-hoc network. We have no
idea what kinds of uses may emerge.
If that weren't enough, these machines are also completely run on open source
software. Since most of the important parts are written in Python, it'll be
quickly accessible to anyone who wants to dig into it. Most probably won't,
but there'll be a percentage of bright, budding young geeks who'll be
fascinated by the machines and explore them from top to bottom. It will be
very interesting to see what kinds of enhancements and applications those
kids come up with, working without our preconceptions and with tools that
facilitate the development of collaborative systems.
Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I see the OLPC project as not only a great
humanitarian and educational program, but also as a huge opportunity to
explore new ideas in human/computer interaction. Best of all, I really like
the idea of poor kids around the world getting the opportunity to find the
same joy I did when I first started playing with computers.
I'm very excited to see these machines start shipping.
Shawn.
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