There are two articles about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) in the spring 2007 issue of بدون/bidoun. the second one (‘let them eat laptops’ (p72ff.) – not available online) is a relatively serious email discussion about the merits of the project between a couple of academics. the other article ‘glory‘ by Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina) takes the OPLC project as a starting point for a fascinating exploration into how technology is appropriated. It’s one of the best texts i have read in a long time and starts like this:

I was twelve years old, in a small public school in Nakuru. One day, the whole school was called out of class. Some very blond and very serious people from Sweden had arrived. We were led to the round patch of grass next to the parade ground in front of the school, where the flag was. Next to the flag were two giant drums of cow shit and metal pipes and other unfamiliar accessories. We stood around, heard some burping sounds, and behold, there was light.

This is biogas, the Swedes told us. A fecal matyr. It looks like shit-it is shit-but it has given up its gas for you. With this new fuel you can light your bulbs and cook your food. You will become balanced dieted; if you are industrious perhaps you can run a small biogaspowered posho mill and engage in income generating activities.

We went back to class. Very excited. Heretofore our teachers had threatened us with straightforward visions of failure. Boys would end up shining shoes; girls would end up pregnant.

Now there was a worse thing to be: a user of biogas.

… and ends with this:

There are few useful “development models” for genuinely selfstarting people. I am sure the One Laptop per Child initiative will bring glory to its architects. The IMF will smile. Mr Negroponte will win a prize or two or ten. There will be key successes in Rwanda; in a village in Cambodia; in a small, groundbreaking initiative in Palestine, where Israeli children and Palestinian children will come together to play minesweeper. There will be many laptops in small, perfect, NGO-funded schools for AIDS orphans in Nairobi, and many earnest expatriates working in Sudan will swear by them.

And there will be many laptops in the homes of homeschooling, goattending parents in North Dakota who wear hemp (another wonderproduct for the developing world). They will fall in love with the idea of this frugal, noble laptop, available for a mere $100. Me, I would love to buy one. I would carry it with me on trips to remote Kenyan places, where I seek to find myself and live a simpler, earthier life, for two weeks a year.

In-between these two parts it covers all of the subjects in the title of this post and many more. my favorite part is probably the bit about Kenyan cellphone culture.

A guy called Njoroge has a business in Nairobi’s industrial area called “Lord of the Ringtones.” They digitalize and sell ringtones, 220,000 of them a month. Cellphones are the biggest business in Kenya.

And they are transforming culture, even as they spawn new markets. In Nairobi, a student paper caters to kids from across the city’s high schools; submissions are sent in by text message, with articles written in textesewords broken into their smallest possible lucid components. Every few months or so, rumors circulate, breaking some code or other and giving free airtime or texts. Some people have learned to communicate for free with their regular clients or family by coding their ringing: one ring, I am on my way; two rings, I have picked up the kids; three rings, I love you.

When i first flew to Beirut in 2005, i was seated next to a Microsoft representative who then mentioned that Microsoft could not do business in syria, ‘because it is on the shit-list‘ (guess her refers to John Bolton’s extended axis of evil). Of course that does not mean that no one is using Microsoft products in Syria (in fact there are shit-loads of computer shops and internet cafes in Damascus if one considers that computers and internet have only been legalized in 2000). In fact you can buy the latest Microsoft products almost anywhere, the only thing that differentiates them from Microsoft products in other countries are the installation instructions:

Install Windows Vista Ultimate Without Entering a Serial Number. Chose The Option “windows vista ultimate”

after completing the installation, go to your cd drive and open the folder “crack” from there, and run the application “crack.exe” and wait until the activation process complete and you’ll se a message says: the process is completed successfully, and requesting a system restart.

after restarting system you will receive a pop message says” activation done successfully now close the message windows and start windows.

and that’s all, now you can enjoy the most complete edition of windows with no time limits, and can be updated directly from Microsoft.com

On Whitchapel road in East London:

One of the more prominent themes at CeBIT this year was the whole security/surveillance/biometric systems complex. hall 6 and 7 where full of companies demonstrating that you can stick an RFID chip on just about anything in order to then read it and know where just about everything comes from or goes to or belongs to or how much it costs. (only thing they did not show was that thanks to RFID you can now infect your cat with a computer virus).

On extremely popular sub-genre of things you can slap an RFID tag on are passports (interesting to think of what happens if your passport gets infected by an RFID virus transmitted by the cat of your host in a far away country, but i am getting distracted here…) and lots of countries showed their ePassport systems on the floor. The booth of Pakistan’s National Database & registration Authority (NARDA) was extremely entertaining not only because they had these wonderful multi identity passports to demonstrate their machines but also because they where extremely detailed in explaining their system and allowed me to take photographs of just about everything. As a good-bye present i got a bunch of brochures including one about the ‘Multi Biometric e-Passport Project’ currently being implemented in Pakistan:

The aim of this project is to create a highly secure integrated system encompassing immigration - Automated Border Control and passport issuance […] while ensuring the genuinenness of the holder as a valid Pakistani citizen. […] The system requires minimum human intervention that ensures transparency while maintaining ease of exit/entry of citizens without the ordinary people being harassed unnecessarily.

While i do not want to contribute to unnecessary harassment of the ordinary people (unnecessary harassment should be strictly reserved to criminals and terrorists who can easily be spotted because they have a beard?behave differently?will not get a passport because they are not ordinary? …??) i do have a slight suspicion that either the system minimizes human intervention so much that the operators get bored that the operators do not really regard security as their prime concern. otherwise it would be difficult to explain why a number of screen shots in the brochure reveal that next to the Pakistani passport system application the machine is running a anonymous web based chat client (see the iloveIM.com and x7.iloveim.com tabs in the task bar):

I am not sure if it really makes sense to develop a highly secure system and then have the operators IM with unidentifiable others while having access to the sensible data in plain text. On the other hand being on IM is getting a more and more important part of the social fabric and why should one not use the connectivity provided by the employer for a chat or two?

Have been hanging out at the CeBIT IT trade show for the last 2 days and that is a pretty much brain wrecking experience. Among other things this means being exposed to a overkill of stupid advertising slogans. One that especially caught my attention was on a poster at the stall of WYSE computing (the self proclaimed leader in thin computing). Obviously inspired by thomas friedman the company seems to be on a mission to flatten the world. problem is that at least in my case that can evoke unintended connotations:

[photoshop is your best friend if you are off-line waiting for the tv-screen to be taken away so you can finally leave the booth and escape the your crazy neigbours]. And yes it looks like i have a 9/11 obsession lately. Further proof can be found here and here.

Seems like everybody and his mother needs an iPod nowadays. First it is american senators who need the shiny device in order to understand that copying is not all that bad as the MPAA and RIAA tell them. Next thing you know it is the starving masses in our former colonies that demand the accessory of choice among the spoiled inhabitants of the former colonial powers. At least that is the message of stencil graffiti’s (by mantis) that have recently appeared in the UK:

Now as it is already known that people do horrible things to get their iPods, so maybe this is another incentive to try a little bit harder in keeping the have-nots out. We really don’t want them to mug iPods from senators thereby sending us to another dark age reigned by chaos, DRM and poverty – or something like this. (via gizmodo)

I almost missed my flight today. First air france offered me €150 and Hotel costs if i would consider flying the next day as the flight was overbooked. Given that it was sunny 30C in BsAs and snowy -2C in Berlin i immediately accepted their proposal. i was given a voucher for €150 and asked to wait for half an hour in case they would have place on the plane. unfortunately they had, but they told me to keep the €150 as a reward for my flexibility (my first ever experience of this capitalist mantra for more flexibility (of the workforce) producing tangible results!

Ironically AF’s computer system seems to be much less flexible than me: in Paris it took them about 40 minutes to turn the voucher into cash as the procedures involved where too complicated for all 8 employees present). The whole procedure (the one in BsAs not the one in Paris) had taken so much time that i had about 40 minutes left to get to the gate (through immigration and security check). Normally this is not a problem unless one is confronted with invisible argentinean technicians causing a 30 minute queue in front of the immigration control booths:

The whole sign makes me wonder of Indian technicians or German engineers would be able to upgrade their systems in a way that ensures faster throughput during the operation. I highly doubt this, as – at least in my case – the procedure was really efficient: take the passport, scan it, enter the date of departure in the computer system, stamp the passport in about 15 seconds. Can’t really see how they want to optimize this procedure. Given that the old implementation of the migration control system was supplied by the US it might take out that one particular second required to send the data to the CIA….

… is what time-out bombay calls the fortune telling robots that i had blogged a three weeks ago. They have a little piece on one of the robot operators in todays edition and their robot apparently does speak english or at least they were able to translate it:

It looks like something out of a low-budget sci-fi movie. On Juhu Beach stands a small illuminated robot with four cables and headphones coming out of its base. Put on the illuminated headphones and the lights pulse as the robot tells you your fortune. “You are spending too much money on people who are not trustworthy,” gabbles the robot in a tinny accent. “You should rather save for a rainy day. You have also been eating recklessly. This will be harmfull for your health and your family. One more thing, whatever you wish to happen will happen this sunday. Don’t tell anybody.” Total charge: 5 rupees (€0,10).

“this life is not what i want,” sighs Anil Kumar Gupta from Bihar, who runs the robo-seer, pays off local thugs for the pitch and keeps the robot tugged up with battery power. “But my brother really needs help with this. He manages three such robots. Two in Girgaum and one here.” His brother Rajiv is the brains and has been adapting toy robots into beachfront astrologers for the last 12 years. The base contains four cassette-players so that up to four people can listen to different horoscopes simultaneously. Despite his disenchantment with robot astrology, Anil makes up to Rs. 1200 (€22) a day and likes and likes making people think he is doing them a good deed. “It would do them no good knowing that it is not true. SO let them believe what they hear and stay content. It is only good advice on family, health and money. Those are the important things.”

Looks like computer controlled missiles are all the rage this weekend. first allthetechnology blogs showcase a USB powered airdart launcher that can be controlled from any mac or PC. It is being sold for 20 pounds over at the Marks & Spencer online store …

Powered by your mac or pc, you’ll have hours of flying fun with these USB air darts. Let the mission begin! Control the aim and the firing mechanism of the darts via your computer mouse! 3 darts! Software included!

… and a mere two days later the BBC reports on a ‘new tack in cyber war‘:

A new twist has surfaced in the cyber war being waged by Islamic militants.

A message has been posted to several radical Islamist – or jihadi – websites announcing a competition to design a new site for a militant group in Iraq. The prize offered is the chance to fire missiles remote-controlled by computer at a US military base in Iraq. […] The winner will be given the chance, the group says, to fire three long-range missiles at an American army base in Iraq by – in the words of the announcement – “pressing a button on his computer with his own blessed hand, using technology developed by the jihad fighters”.

Note the technical similarities: three missiles to be fired form your office chair with your own blessed hand. Makes me wonder if the jihadies do indeed develop their own technology or if the just go online shopping at M&S.

Update (04-dec-05): Looks like the contest has been announced on the 5th of november. So maybe it is the other way around: M&S nicking their x-mas toy ideas from the jihadies?

Every sunday there is a guy with fortune telling robot on the place opposite of the main entrance of russell market in Bangalore. Apparently (the guy does not really speak english) the robot is about 5 years old, was built by someone from ‘down south’ who also supplies the tapes with the fortunes on them. Against a small contribution the robot will tell fortunes in one of four 4 different languages (Hindi, Tamil, Kannada & Telgu) through headphones that are attached to its body.

I could not find out more about the function of the clock that is attached to the body of the robot. the owner just told me that it is a clock and ‘tells the time’ which makes it a truly multi purpose robot: telling both fortune and time)