The OLPC In Review

I take the time today to return to key interests of mine - technology and education in the developing world. In fact, whilst perhaps I have not mention it here earlier, I was accepted on a PhD programme in the field and due to start at the beginning of this year (having deferred from the year before), but the fees made this non-tenable at the present time and like many things in life, I am thinking about what I do next. 

The subject of this posting however centres around whether one ed tech approach - the OLPC - is still relevant today. Interestingly a couple of years ago, the OLPC featured in a thesis I wrote, at a time when there was considerable debate about whether it was idealistic to expect full saturation of laptops (one per child) in the developing world. Additionally, I have blogged about this on several occasions.

One of the blogs - OLPC News - that I have followed on the subject announced its 'closure' last month and today another blog - Educational Technology Debate (also previously mentioned here) - raised the debate about whether, in the face of the rise of mobile devices and tablets, the OLPC project too had also run its course.

Of course the OLPC is rooted in Nicholas Negroponte's endorsement of a Constructivist ideology - the idea that children can create their own knowledge and educational content with the right tools - in this case - a small open source laptop - that has been designed to be a low power robust machine that can creates its own peer network - ideal for communities that do not have reliable power or internet connections.

Is the OLPC still relevant?

Wayan Vota, writing for the Educational Technology Debate asks the key question, that if we were to replace laptops with today's technologies - mobiles, handhelds and tablets and had full one-to-one saturation (i.e. every child in the developing world had their own device) would this be ideal? Could we instead instead share tools and equipment for the same results? Negroponte would argue that since children have their own pencils, they should have an entitlement to their own laptop. 

The crucial question around meeting the need for enabled and adequately-paid educators is one that continues to remain important, especially in large parts of the developing world. Often low teacher and high student ratios place additional stresses on already burden systems. Negroponte aimed to address the gap through the laptop programme (read that to mean that children can 'educate' themselves).  The Educational Technology Debate article also asks if this is wise or indeed the moral thing to do. 

5.4 Million Primary Teachers Required

According to UNESCO there is a global shortage of trained and motivated teachers and in particular in primary education. In order to meet the Education For All goal of achieving Universal Primary Education by 2015, 5.4 million primary teachers are needed. UNESCO's Institute for Statistics suggest that one solution is to harness the power of mobile technologies in meeting this need - both in supporting teachers and their professional development, and in retaining existing teachers.

This continues to remain an interest of mine and UNESCO are due to report back on four projects that they will implement with teacher training organisations in Nigeria, Senegal, Pakistan and Mexico in 2012 to further explore and understand this area.

A.I. Super-Toys Last All Summer

In several direct references to events that run parallel to the Pinnochio narrative, the 2001 film, A.I. Artificial Intelligence by Stephen Spielberg tells the story of a robot who wants to become a real boy and be loved by his mother. The events in the film stretch over a 2000 year span and highlights a state of emotion in robots that would otherwise - by today's standard of computer machinery - be considered irrational. Even with artificial 'intelligence' the robot-child is unable to understand his design purpose and the emotional 'need' - in fact part of the programming that has been unlocked by code - would be described as singularly obsessive. Ultimately there are clear limits to this version of artificial intelligence if the robot cannot self-realise. See this for a further commentary on the film.

The film is based on the Brian Aldiss short story entitled Super-Toys Last All Summer Long. Both the film and the short story take an interesting look at the subject, and highlight the ethical aspect around how desirable it is to try to build complex 'emotional' responses into machinery, and whether this is always likely to be fraught with shortcomings. Click here to read the story.

Robots of War

I begin with an extract: 

Imagine the face of warfare with autonomous robotics: Instead of our soldiers returning home in flag-draped caskets to heartbroken families, autonomous robots—mobile machines that can make decisions, such as to fire upon a target, without human intervention—can replace the human soldier in an increasing range of dangerous missions: from tunneling through dark caves in search of terrorists, to securing urban streets rife with sniper fire, to patrolling the skies and waterways where there is little cover from attacks, to clearing roads and seas of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), to surveying damage from biochemical weapons, to guarding borders and buildings, to controlling potentially-hostile crowds, and even as the infantry frontlines.

These robots would be ‘smart’ enough to make decisions that only humans now can; and as conflicts increase in tempo and require much quicker information processing and responses, robots have a distinct advantage over the limited and fallible cognitive capabilities that we Homo sapiens have. Not only would robots expand the battlespace over difficult, larger areas of terrain, but they also represent a significant force-multiplier—each effectively doing the work of many human soldiers, while immune to sleep deprivation, fatigue, low morale, perceptual and communication challenges in the ‘fog of war’, and other performance-hindering conditions.

The extract above is taken from this report and it demonstrates that militarily, at least, there is a push to engage with new technologies. Given that Artificial Intelligence like many emerging technologies almost certainly has military patronage, is it feasible to ask if robots programmed to identify and 'fire' on the enemy combatants are one day developed to 'think' intelligently?

Whilst some of this sounds a little like Skynet from Terminator, I do have a serious question. Can we predict the future directions of 'intelligent' technologies? Are people always in 'control'  or could there be a type of artificial intelligence that eventually develops its own reasoning and consciousness and in the process choose break free of control?

Digital Technology: Diffusion and Revolution

continued from previous posting

Technology: Diffusion and Revolution

In 1996, 80 percent of the population in 50 Muslim countries did not have regular access to a telephone. By 2006, this proportion had dropped to 20 percent. The diffusion rates for other information and communication technologies are also high, generally higher than those in non-Muslim developing countries: between 2000 and 2010, the compound annual growth rate of internet users was 32 percent, compared with 24 percent for the rest of the developing world. See here.

Consider “doubling time,” a figure used by demographers to refer to the amount of time it takes for a country’s population to double. Applied to technology diffusion, this reveals rapid trends: on average, since 2000, the number of internet users in Muslim countries has doubled every 8 months.

Understanding technology diffusion in Muslim countries offers some insight into why current political leaderships are being challenged. Mounir Khelifa, a Tunisian literature professor, speaking to Reuters, explains that the uprisings were made possible by the emergence of a generation raised during this information technology age. Both the Internet and Satellite Television undercut the propaganda of state media, creating  the opportunity for people to develop their own consensus on their rights. 

The recent uprisings in the Arab world began with the death of Mohamed Bouazizi, a protesting Tunisian shopkeeper who self-immolated, which activated a cross boundary network of people exhausted by authoritarian rule. Within weeks, digitally-enabled protesters in Tunisia had deposed their dictator after a series of strikes, protests and a mass civil disobedience movement called the Jasmine Revolution. Satellite television and the social media allowed the trend to spread across the Middle East.  Even President Obama has identified technology as one of the key variables that enabled average Egyptians to protest. True, digital media alone didn’t oust Mubarak, but it did provide the medium by which calls for freedom have cascaded across the region.

Technology: Politics of Change

And what of the sands? Where will they settle? It is difficult to know but what is already being called the Arab Spring, it is likely to lead to more political casualties. I remain cautious about what happens next - the western media is rather formulaic in its response and seems to feel that tomorrow the Arabs of the middle east will wake up as free citizens in fully established democracies or that militant theocracies will manoeuvre quick take-overs and send forth an army of radicals.

Nothing is quite certain and in no way am I ambivalent towards what is happening. I live here; I see it through a different lens and in particular, I think solutions need to be local.

There is much to be learned from this. Right now, I feel like I know two things. Firstly, in the modern world that we live in, we should not underestimate the will of people and the power that they have in tapping into the technologies available to them. Secondly, long term, brutal regimes and autocracies cannot survive; change will occur. The sands will continue to shift.

For further reading on Information Technology and Political Islam follow this link.

Fall of the Pharaoh: Umm Al Dunya

Umm Al Dunya

 

And so the Pharoah in Egypt falls after a 30 year grip on power. I may be forgiven for referring to Hosni Mubarak as a Pharoah, but see a Pharoah, was NOT just a despotic Emperor King who was considered a deity. The word Pharoah referred to a Great House. Does the Great House still hold power? When a House falls, crushed by the weight of its age and ruin, another one can be built in its place. But in Egypt do we see a  rebuilding or another Pharaoh King moving into the Great House? Right now the military has moved in so not much changes; later, perhaps, the old house can be demolished and a new one built by the will of the people.

The Egyptians call their country Umm Al Dunya - Mother of the World.  An ancient cradle of civilisation, social order, technology and writing. There will be many who in years to come will look back at how in 2011 the Egyptian Pharaoh of Old was brought down by a technology and social media of new - Twitter/Blogger/Facebook and the like. Now here's where I do get to see close up what is happening - I know people and have spoken with them, both in person and through electronic communications that this Egyptian revolution is an e-revolution of a kind.

I wonder about the transferability of the UAE model - it's a "minus democracy" model that isn't perfect, but evidently people coming in see prosperity, internationalism, relative freedom and hope. In many ways this is what the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions were about right? Hope itself? That, I pray, is the message that the people in our Arab neighbourhood carry in the months and years to come.