http://brainoff.com/weblog/2006/08/25/1183 Mikel Maron :: Building Digital Technology for Our Planet Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:06:18 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 hourly 1 http://brainoff.com/weblog/2006/08/25/1183/comment-page-1#comment-2601 Brain Off » Lift Post-Process Tue, 13 Feb 2007 16:13:45 +0000 http://brainoff.com/weblog/2006/08/25/1183#comment-2601 [...] David Galipeau deftly, and with plenty of opinion (the key I think to a lively discussion) led a follow up panel which really challenged the audience to examine why and how they address the digital divide (back to Stowe Boyd’s discovery of Self). Sugata realized that the honest answer, acceptable to the people he was helping, is that the Hole in the Wall computers could eventually produce students for his training courses. To myself, why did I lead a workshop in neogeography for the Dominican Republic Ministry of the Environment? Because if they were making best use of the tools out there, there was a better chance of protecting those wild places, and I’d have more opportunity to experience them. However, that was a limited engagement, and the realization is that technology is not nearly enough .. it takes sustained interaction in order to enact change. Perhaps this is quite a mindset change for the Lift crowd, since we’re so enamored of our loosely coupled way of doing things .. but that doesn’t work when the culture of the technology hasn’t yet taken hold. The emphasis is on education, and the technology comes second .. Sugata Mitra was critical of the $100 laptop since it focuses so much on computer networking, rather than “should to shoulder networking”. Outside the session, I enjoyed a long discussion with Craig Duncan on all this and more in his new project, PreventionWeb. [...] [...] David Galipeau deftly, and with plenty of opinion (the key I think to a lively discussion) led a follow up panel which really challenged the audience to examine why and how they address the digital divide (back to Stowe Boyd’s discovery of Self). Sugata realized that the honest answer, acceptable to the people he was helping, is that the Hole in the Wall computers could eventually produce students for his training courses. To myself, why did I lead a workshop in neogeography for the Dominican Republic Ministry of the Environment? Because if they were making best use of the tools out there, there was a better chance of protecting those wild places, and I’d have more opportunity to experience them. However, that was a limited engagement, and the realization is that technology is not nearly enough .. it takes sustained interaction in order to enact change. Perhaps this is quite a mindset change for the Lift crowd, since we’re so enamored of our loosely coupled way of doing things .. but that doesn’t work when the culture of the technology hasn’t yet taken hold. The emphasis is on education, and the technology comes second .. Sugata Mitra was critical of the $100 laptop since it focuses so much on computer networking, rather than “should to shoulder networking”. Outside the session, I enjoyed a long discussion with Craig Duncan on all this and more in his new project, PreventionWeb. [...]

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