See also the Guardian just now: "Poverty-stricken Rwanda puts its faith and future into the wide wired world: A mobile in every pocket is motto of tiny country aiming to be hub of technology" http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1834623,00.html And for the political economists, this bit further down the page: "Meanwhile, the government is offering incentives to attract private investment. The home of the senate, a modern seven-storey building, is being turned into an "ICT park" for hi-tech companies that will receive free rent and utilities." ---- Original message ----
Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 11:14:09 +0100 From: David Brake <d.r.brake@lse.ac.uk> Subject: Re: [Air-l] India Rejects One Laptop Per Child To: AoIR mailing list <air-l-aoir.org@listserv.aoir.org>
I was just listening to Negroponte talking about the OLPC at the TED Talks back in February and he said to my astonishment, "When you see that kind of thing [referring to favourable reports of trials of conventional laptops after 3.5 years in Maine], this is not something you have to test - the days of pilot projects are over. When people say 'well we'd like to do three or four thousand in our country to see how it works' - screw you. Go to the back of the line - someone else will do it and then when you figure out that this works you can join as well."
I know that he has now resigned as chair of the Media Lab to run the OLPC project and he is understandably passionate about it but to say that because of a few small-scale pilots of different kinds in different developed and developing world countries, there can be no doubt his radically different design of laptop will work in any given country is just irresponsible.
I only hope this is merely hyperbole on his part and not typical of the attitude of the whole organization. It seems that Nigeria has decided to gamble that Negroponte is right (http://allafrica.com/ stories/200607120369.html).
(See http://groupblog.workasone.net/archives/2006/06/the-100-laptop- debate/ for more on the OLPC project).
Incidentally, I find I am listening to more and more academic podcasts and I am not sure how to cite them. At the moment I guess that this one should be treated as a conference proceeding - something like this:
Negroponte, N. (2006) "Ted Talk: Nicholas Negroponte". in New York, February, 2006, http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/
But that doesn't tell you it is a podcast and crucially it doesnt tell you that the part I cited is 5 minutes, 42 seconds in. This useful guide to Harvard citation http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/library/ using/harvard_system.html says BS:5605:1990 http://www.mamc.ac.in/ British.pdf doesnt include recommendations for electronic sources. Is there an advanced Harvard Style Lab somewhere coming up with standards for this stuff? What would you do? Should I just make up my own style?
--- David Brake, Doctoral Student in Media and Communications, London School of Economics & Political Science <http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/study/ mPhilPhDMediaAndCommunications.htm> Also see http://davidbrake.org/ (home page), http://blog.org/ (personal weblog) and http://get.to/lseblog (academic groupblog) Author of Dealing With E-Mail - <http://davidbrake.org/ dealingwithemail/> callto://DavidBrake (Skype.com's Instant Messenger and net phone)
_______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/