Testing Technology on a Veritable Army of Children? [Slashdot]
Could something like this actually change the world? Imagine a dialog between a kid in a Joko club in Dakar and a suburban American kid with a fast computer & cable modem at home.An example project that is being seriously discussed is to equip each child with a PDA that we will design from scratch, implement, and manufacture in quantity. (Think Neil Stephenson’s ‘Diamond Age’) The organizers/funders (to remain unnamed until the event is publicly unveiled) have every intention of ‘changing the world’…The idea is to bring together children ages 10 to 15 years old from around the world at 8 or 9 centers scattered about all continents except Antarctica. The children will congregate at these centers for two days in 2005 to participate in creative technology workshops both virtually between centers and hands-on at their particular center. There will be a heavy emphasis on community building and shared information, in many ways similar to Slashdot. The entire event and all the projects it entails are designed to live on after the kids go home when the two days are up. How this will be done is as of yet uncertain, but will most definitely involve net connectivity to some extent (whether through the village kiosk’s 28.8kbaud line in Cambodia or the living room broadband line in NYC).