On 11/14/2011 4:42 PM, Max OrHai wrote:
Criticism of the OLPC project is easy to find, so I won't repeat much
of it here, except to say that I find their whole model obnoxiously
paternalistic; it's based on centralized government-controlled
institutions (that is, schools), government and NGO subsidies for
equipment, dependence on foreign administration and technical service,
and a general all-too-familiar neo-colonial obliviousness of the real
needs of poor societies rather than the "vision" of a few rich
founders. A "children's computer" is of necessity hard to distinguish
from a "toy", and the line between children and adults is, I believe,
an artificial one. Enforcing this fake distinction just gives poor
kids yet another developmental dead end.
The societies of the so-called "developing world" (or "global South"
or whatever) desperately needs real, affordable, resilient IT
infrastructure, but OLPC isn't the ones giving it to them. See, for
example, the UN International Telecom Union report for 2011:
http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/publications/idi/2011/Material/MIS_2011_without_annex_5.pdf
Truly affordable and robust decentralized mesh networking is
technically attainable, but the political ramifications are pretty
intense. We tend to take our "free speech" for granted here in the
rich world, but even here all of our communications technologies
conform to government-mandated regulation and monitoring policies. In
short, the authorities can turn them off.
Together with some fellow students at Portland State, I am currently
developing a "bottom-up" approach to digital communications
technology, engineered around a hard bottom-line per-device price tag
of US$20, unsubsidized and no TV or network connection needed. We're
not trying to replace broadband, but supplement it
with distributed, persistent, self-maintaining localized message-board
infrastructure. Here are a few links to technologies and concepts
we're working with:
http://www.contiki-os.org/
http://www.eluaproject.net/
http://www.zeromq.org/
http://soft.vub.ac.be/amop/research/tuples and
http://agentgroup.unimo.it/wiki/index.php/TOTA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital
http://villageearth.org/appropriate-technology/appropriate-technology-sourcebook/introduction-to-the-appropriate-technology-sourcebook
<http://villageearth.org/>
We're still in early stages of this thing, but I'm very serious about
it. We're not publicizing it very widely at the moment so we can focus
development effort on the hardware prototypes. Once that stabilizes
somewhat, we'll be looking at starting some manufacturing co-ops and
coordinating open-source software development. If anyone here is
interested or wants to know more, please just email me.
sorry, I have not looked at all the linked info...
however, I am left thinking maybe "mesh networking" could be done, say,
with RF-based relay base stations.
then one can have a "dual-level" wireless network:
802.11b/g for LAN;
something else for WAN (say, more powerful 200MHz or 600MHz
transmission or similar).
if one could get approval (so governments allow it), one option could be
to search for unused NTSC/ATSC-band channels, and use those for network
(if no TV is detected, a device might consider using it for internet
bandwidth). or, maybe "regional base-stations" could "allocate" channels
for use as network channels (individual base stations then know they can
transmit over them because they detect a carrier signal or similar).
ideally, the whole network can configure itself more-or-less autonomously...
so, one goes and puts the base-station in their house, and it provides LAN.
then, they hook up an external/outside antenna, which provides WAN
(like, they put it on their roof, or mounted on a pole).
maybe the WAN can be Ethernet-like (listen, try to transmit, retry if
collision detected).
maybe IPv6 can be used as the WAN protocol (with either IPv6 or IPv4 for
LAN).
the advantage of IPv6 here is that it can more easily auto-configure
without needing a DHCP server or similar, but with a LAN, the
base-station itself can provide DHCP services (allowing for IPv4 to work).
connection to the normal (IPv4) internet could be aided by the use of IP
tunneling or similar...
or such...
-- Max
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 8:06 AM, Carl Gundel <ca...@psychesystems.com
<mailto:ca...@psychesystems.com>> wrote:
One very important thing the XO laptop has is mesh networking
technology,
and not just for use in the bush. A way to free the general computing
public. An alternate internet free from monopoly control. Now
that I say
it more than one would be even better.
-Carl
-----Original Message-----
From: fonc-boun...@vpri.org <mailto:fonc-boun...@vpri.org>
[mailto:fonc-boun...@vpri.org <mailto:fonc-boun...@vpri.org>] On
Behalf Of
David Corking
Sent: Monday, November 14, 2011 10:56 AM
To: Fundamentals of New Computing
Subject: Re: [fonc] OLPC related
Loup Vaillant wrote:
> So at least, you can salvage your granma's TV, making the whole
set a bit
> less expensive.
Great news! (I don't think those connectors were in the video I saw on
the site.)
Thinking over what I wrote last night, I am getting much more excited
about the disruptive educational and democratic possibilities of this
device. While the builtin sensors of the XO have the appeal of a
standard platform to develop for, I remembered that the robotics
community has a useful range of USB transducers that makes the
Raspberry Pi an interesting robotics processor. There is even this:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/USB_Sensor
David
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