Waiting for the OLPC

Cyrus Farivar has a piece on Slate today titled “Still waiting for that $100 laptop?“. He writes: “Negroponte’s plan to heal the world with laptops is well-meaning but fundamentally flawed. What good is a laptop in the middle of rural Thailand when electricity, much less Internet access, are spotty at best? Rather than getting laptops into the hands of every schoolchild across the world, why not start with an intermediate step? Probably because One Blackboard per Child or One Teacher per Classroom just doesn’t sound as sexy.”

You know, I have been a great believer in the “One Blackboard per School” idea myself and written about it here. Well, as it happened, Cyrus stopped by my place in Santa Clara yesterday afternoon and we had a brief conversation about OLPC and other matters. Today he has a brief report on BBC’s “The World” program on Public Radio International. Near the end, I explain why the OLPC could increase the digital divide. Listen here.

In Mexico

For the past few days, I have been in Mexico. On Monday, on my way from Mexico city to Queretaro, I took a detour and visited the pyramids at Teotihuacan (wiki). I uploaded a few of the pictures of the pyramids.

Yesterday I spent time visiting the school Instituto Thomas Jefferson’s Queretaro campus and a little tour of the city center during the day. Later in the evening, I spoke at a meeting with parents, teachers, and some government officials. The title of my talk was “Education in a Digital Age.” (Will upload the presentation later over here.) The talk was live-cast to the other two campuses of the school in Mexico city and Guadalajara. As half the audience did not follow English, the talk was simultaneously interpreted into Spanish. Pictures of Queretaro and ITJ are here. (Note the announcement poster on the first picture? 🙂 )

Happy Ganesh Chaturthi

That image is from a site in Roundwood, Co. Wicklow, Ireland. The caption to it says: “When Hindu Lord Ganesh came to Ireland he decided to go native, as indeed, he had done when he went to China and Japan. He is accompanied by his servant, the rat, the latter playing the bodran and enjoying a pint of Guinness. The sculpture is 6’4″ high and weighs approx. 4 tonnes.”

Have a pint and enjoy Ganesh Chaturthi. More images from the site below the fold.
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Strange Link

I am tickled that the National Knowledge Commission website has linked to a post on this blog. This page entitled “Governance” (?) lists an article as “The Better, Faster Way to Help Rural India (Perhaps the answer to India’s rural development woes lies in creating cities instead).”

Heh heh!

Power, Scarcity, and Corruption

Education in India is generally in dire straits even though some people mistakenly believe that it is excellent from the successes of some ex-IIT non-resident Indians in the US who made piles of money. It is not hard to figure out what is the root cause of the distress of the educational system in India: the near-monopoly control of the system by the government.
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Sept 11, 2007

San Francisco Bay Area

It feels good to be back to the place I called home for much of my adult life. After just a few days it feels as if I had never left the San Francisco bay area, even though I have been living in India for the past four years. Certainly I visit this place frequently enough. Even then the fact that I can pick up a car right after a 12-hour flight and drive 100 kms to a friend’s place is a testament to how much at home I feel here. Driving a good car on excellent roads is a pleasure denied to one in most of India.
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Hello from Paris

The problem with the typewriter monkeys has been solved. An entirely new crew has been hired because the older bunch were slackers and did not produce enough posts. I am back on the road, vagabonding in Paris today. Here are some pictures of my afternoon in Paris with my friend Courtenay. Tomorrow I leave for the San Francisco Bay area.

Needless to say the new crew of monkeys are going to be hard at work while I am away. Posts will be regular and well considered — none of the low quality stuff we had been seeing of late.

World IT Forum 2007 — Part 2

Although it is true that I went to Addis Ababa to attend the World Information Technology Forum 2007 as a speaker, it is a hollow claim to say that I visited Ethiopia, or even Addis Ababa. I did land at the Bole International Airport early morning on 21st Aug and departed late night on 24th, but for all practical purposes, I might as well have been elsewhere. The airport terminal was the generic glass and steel tubing terminals you see around the world. The Addis Hilton was just another Hilton. And the UN Conference Center where the conference was held was, well, just a UN conference center which could just as well have been in NYC. The only thing that I was surprised by was the weather. I had expected Addis to be hot; it wasn’t. Temperatures were around 20 degrees Celsius and even though it rained frequently, it was not humid.
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World IT Forum 2007

If you were wondering what happened, wonder no more. I am in Africa. To be more specific, I am in Addis Ababa attending a conference called World IT Forum 2007. Yesterday I made a presentation on “Information Technology and Economic Opportunities.” Went off OK.

Lots of interesting things going on. Will get in touch later. Bye for now.