Category: Information and Communications Technology

Aakash, the “iPad Killer”, Vaporware has Evaporated

Aaskash, the “iPad Killer”, vaporware that the idiot Kapil Sibal promoted, has quietly evaporated in March 2015. Hindustan Times reports “India’s low cost ‘Aakash’ tablet project closed in March”
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Information may be free but knowledge is never free. I am disappointed in you, my dear Wiki

There is a distinction between information and knowledge, which is worth keeping in mind.

As had been reported, Wiki (English language version) has done dark. This is the landing page image.

SOPA, PIPA, and Indian Censorship

Sometimes looking at the way the government does things one wonders whether the lunatics are running the loony bin. But perhaps the truth is not funny at all, and more horrifying: the people running the country are not crazy but rather they are terrifyingly smart and know exactly what they are doing and why. Their game involves controlling the masses through lies and misdirection.
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Aakash, blue skies vaporware

In the information technology sector, the two well-known categories of goods are hardware, the stuff you can hold in your hands, and software, the bits that have no weight. The third category is termed vaporware: hardware that exist only in the fevered imagination of their promoters and which will never hit the stores.
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The Age of Superfluous Information — Revisited

The Economist’s article, “Too much information: How to cope with data overload,” deals with information overload. (Hat tip Prasanna Viswanathan @prasannavishy for the link.) For a few years I have been concerned about it since I have a very low threshold for information. In 2005, I pondered the matter in a number of blog posts. I realize the irony in writing yet another blog post on information overload, but there you have it. The Economist article underlines my fears.
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First Debug the Child . . .

The topic of education is an obsession with me for the simple reason that one cannot address any development related issues without reference to education, however broadly or narrowly one defines education or development. My interest in the use — and misuse — of technology in education is a natural extension of that basic interest in development and growth. The One Laptop Per Child comes in for special scrutiny because the implications of such a program are phenomenal for a poor country like India. I have long argued that there are simpler, more affordable and more urgently needed interventions that is needed than is provided by the OLPC program. Here’s one that I recently became aware of.
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Change is Digital, not Analog

“If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” ask Clay Shirkey in a blog post “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable.” (March 2009). The full implications of technological change is impossible to foresee even by those who are responsible for the change.
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Keeping Afloat in a WWW-world

I received an SMS just moments ago: “A thirteen-year old’s day in Surat: school 7 to 2. Daily tuitions 4:30 to 7:30. Saw ICSE standard 8th textbooks. Detailed and depressing. What a state!”

No surprise to me as I have observed the same sort of insanity in the case of the children of friends and family.
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The OLPC is Inappropriate for India

I was invited to write a guest post on One Laptop Per Child News by Wayan Vota in connection with the recent news that 250,000 OLPC laptops have been ordered by two government agencies in India and one private sector firm. And I complied. Thanks, Wayan. I appreciate the opportunity. Below the fold I reproduce the post in full.
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