Tuesday, March 24, 2009

O & X signifies the head and body of a child.

ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD.

While I admire MIT Media Labs Professor Nicholas Negroponte’s efforts to advocate the information revolution in 3rd world countries and banana republics, I could applaud him further if his empirical studies included U>S> residents who fall below the International World Bank’s definition of abject poverty. However, a peer had a hyperlink to the OLPC website where I understand now that Negropointe is not an ugly American chameleon bartering with American’s international image.

Instead, I found out he was French and that UW-Madison’s last chancellor donated funds to this non-profit to advance the concept of one laptop per child to Madison’s low-income children. This bridge in social capital was self-governed by Chancellor John Wiley; who donated $20 thousand dollars to insure under-privileged, underemployed, and underpaid Madison residents could take advantage of the new information society.

Talking with one of the sponsors, UW engineering professional development professor Sandy Courter, she explained that Madison children have tremendous capacity for learning new technology. Her, and others like her are bridging the gap of the racial ravine. Besides its durability, another remarkable aspect of the XO laptop is how one laptop can work as a satellite to other computers on its network.

This model of access has personal and social limitations without the Internet. However, software and other information can be downloaded to one laptop and shared with other computers. When Internet access is limited or non-existent researchers also discovered other, conduits of universal needs are lacking. Electricity and phone service are just two meaningful necessity’s to access 21st century information and communication technologies according to

Stratification from 21st Century good schools, hospitals, and family wage jobs is a caste system created by social engineering. This new paradigm of information is just as important as the pencil. Would you deny someone writing paper because you deem him or her too ignorant to manipulate a writing tool? Like the original users of pencils, and like our early Petroglyphs users; users of XO are naturally curious and become familiar with the operating design of the unit quite easily according to Couter. Social, cultural and educational inequalities are challenged by the philosophy of the Internet.

The philosophy of President Bush’s definition of the digital divide would have you believe that those who want Internet access have it, and those that don’t want it don’t have it. This affluent postindustrial opinion believes the normalization thesis explains why there is a generational trend to undermine the underprivileged in America. While other nation states have acted to counteract the demographics of a digital divide, Americans still pay a high price for conduit access. While Europe’s IT networks are nationalizing broadband service, its American counterparts are trying to increase profits from citizen consumers.

While the diffusion theory has empirical evidence of technological stratification, the status quo supports class cleavage of the social structure. Many of today’s occupations depend upon computer software and Internet access. This is unlike the manufacturing industrial jobs of yesteryear. Manual and managerial workers are part of the information society of service workers. While education is a determinant of connectivity, occupation is an exceptionally rich in Internet research, training support, technical backup and computer operators. Unlike robotics in industry, the service industry is too maladjusted to be done by a program.

XO laptops give children an avenue that prepares them for this new society. In Madison, children learn computer graphical and audiovisual interfaces at four convenient locations. Since state interaction is not forth coming, continued donations will help increase the strategic and informational skills of these new operators. The adoption of computers and the Internet for low-income children is essential for competing in this millennium. This new media should not wait for lassize fair capitalists to put a strangle hold on broadband like the ones they have done with electricity, telephone, and other conduits of information.


Audio about XO:
http://www.wpr.org/book/visionaries/FP_%20Our%20Computers.mp3
Essay about XO:
http://www.wpr.org/book/090322a.cfm
UW-Madison Engineering:
http://www.engr.wisc.edu/wiscengr/cgi-bin/article.php
?article=feb092009febxo

No comments:

Post a Comment