Heeks sees this as an important issue for many fields including economics and the ICT4D (ICT for development) field. Heeks claims:

"Gold farming presents two things [for ICT4D]. First, a current model for earning money via an Internet-connected PC. Second, an example of a possible future model in which Internet-connected workers in developing countries produce a wide range of virtual goods and services. For both these reasons, the ICT4D field should be taking a keen interest in gold farming."

I certainly agree with Heeks that this is something that the ICT4D field should be aware of, but I do not see this as being something that the ICT4D field should be especially occupied with. First of all, as far as I can tell, gold farming is merely about making money and has little, if anything, to do with the types of impact the ICT4D agenda hopes to achieve in terms of the advancement of the knowledge economy, education and encouraging equal access to, and distribution of, the fruits of globalization. Tying up scarce computers in schools and telecenters in developing countries with dubious activities in online virtual worlds is something I hope that few would condone, no matter what the fiscal returns might be. Heeks does address some negative sides of this development, ex. when he compares it to the exploitation of Chinese immigrant workers in the US in the 19th century (hence the "quaint" title given to some Chinese gold farmers, "playbourers").

A large part of what is driving the spread of the mobile web is the increase in social web services, ex. blogs, twitter.com, digg.com, etc. In the early years the web was something that you sat down with and worked on, whether you were looking for information, making a web page or just cruising. Now, the web is a place where people share their daily experiences, not with summaries of a few days or so or pulling together a number of experiences into a coherent narrative, but with instantly communicated little tidbits. These are posted as they happen so it has become important for people to be able to access the web wherever and whenever people feel the need to communicate something.

This has some obvious consequences for the web as a knowledge repository because much of what is posted is presented in a limited context and/or is very subjective. Before these services became available, effective searches for specific topics were very likely to yield entire websites full of relevant information and references to supporting information. The type of communication that we see increasing on the web today with mobile services yield a very different set of resources - often simple "this is what I saw..." or "something I picked up somewhere" communication with little if any reference to supporting information to back up any conclusions drawn or suggested. With the spread of the mobile web this is very likely to increase. Things start to look a little more like a rumor mill than a knowledge repository.

I'm not suggesting that real valuable objective information is going to disappear off the web. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to suspect that it may become somewhat separated from the information that web users will increasingly interact with on a regular basis. There are probably several ways to address this. I think the semantic web could make a big difference if it makes it possible to evaluate and tag information contextually. But, most important is educating users about the impact that their actions are likely to have when they interact using information through a public medium like the web. I think one of the most important elements in this is that web users be aware that information always travels in a chain, i.e. source and context are as important, if not more, than the information being conveyed. To illustrate:

I think that, in general, we consider our assumptions to be strengthened if we can point out sources to back them up, i.e. "I know that ... because of ..." This needs to be turned on its head such that our assumptions are first shown to be directly derived from sources, i.e. "[Source] says that ... therefore ..." This is a very simple and almost too obvious distinction, but makes all the difference in how we communicate information. Consider this, if in both of these cases you neglect the latter part of the equation, the first (I know that ...) really says nothing other than conveying a personal opinion that we may have no reason to believe while the second ([Source] says that ...) conveys a truthful and useful statement.

The spread of the mobile web is a good thing. But, it does have the potential to considerably change the nature of the web-user experience and there there is a mix of potential good and potential bad. Attitudes toward the mobile web seem to be very positive and very little attention has been given to potential downsides. There's more of a "It's coming, it's coming!!!" anticipatory excitement but now is the time to start thinking very seriously about what this really means.

"We are in the learning business and what the operating system is underneath is less germane"

Hogwash! The openness of the underlying system is an extremely important factor given what we have been told about the aims of the laptop project. The whole project was supposed to be firmly based on Papert's constructionist theory. Running a closed proprietary system (and the inevitable software that goes with it) entirely defeats this purpose. If Windows is an included OS on the OLPC laptop the nature of the project completely changes.

The problems that OLPC are facing are not because they don't have Windows. They are due to the fact that they have utterly failed to get potential buyers to buy into the theoretical underpinnings of the project and the goals that they suggest (hardly surprising - I don't think they've really tried). People that ask for an OLPC laptop with Windows are asking for something entirely different than what OLPC initially set out to produce. If OLPC goes through with the Windows-ization of their laptops, it's just not the same project as they set out with.

Then there is the matter of cost. Microsoft may be willing to donate Windows to OLPC so that OLPC's selling price isn't effected but only because they hope to recover it elsewhere. That's just how business in the proprietary software world works. The cost of computing in general (e.g. upgrades and future choices resulting from computing=Windows indoctrination) will be higher in the long term.

Finally, a couple of links to interesting articles on the BBC web by a reporter that had his child try out an OLPC laptop running open source software and an Intel Classmates laptop running Windows. I think this speaks for itself.

OLPC laptop with open source software
Windows based Intel Classmate

Many efforts to introduce and diffuse ICTs, computers in particular, in developing countries assume that ICTs have become well-defined tools with well-defined roles and "appropriate" interfaces suited to those roles, and therefore, a "tried and true" "westernized" ideal of these technologies are promoted. In fact, there is little evidence to support such assumptions. In the past few decades computer interfaces have changed dramatically and existing metaphors (esp. the desktop metaphor) become increasingly unsuitable as computers have taken on roles that may have been somewhat unexpected by mainstream users ca. 10-15 years ago, ex. social networking, vehicles for personal commentary, media centers, etc. It would seem more reasonable to say that computers have served as a flexible platform that each generation of users has been able to shape to meet its own needs and expectations. What's more, these types of changes, or expansions, of the roles of computers have become increasingly rapid as their use has become more widespread. So, why the tendency to expect new users in developing regions to embrace technology presented in a manner so far removed from the experience of others? I think it may be, at least in part, due to a tendency to focus on anticipated general results of widespread diffusion of computers rather than focusing on the way things are done with computers and what is done with them.

From an educational point of view there are a few notable trends that can be identified where computers have achieved considerable diffusion (this is not to be taken as a claim that computers in education have been a raging success). Over the last four decades, the most notable impact that computers have had in a very general sense is obviously that the flow of information has increased, is more diverse, and has become more rapid. Over the same period, changes in thinking about education have corresponded with the impact that computers have had such that there is now a greater trend toward individual-based learning, constructivism and lifelong learning. This makes perfect sense when we consider the ways that use and manipulation of information flows has developed. For example, increased information flows have challenged existing notions of "truth" and we now generally accept that even seemingly well grounded scientific "truths" may be more relative to social and cultural norms than was previously assumed. This has become one of the primary justifications for individual-based and constructive learning, i.e. that "truth" is, at least in part, subject to individual conceptualizations and understandings of the elements involved. This in turn has underlined the importance of lifelong learning, which has evolved into a concept that not only encourages continuous learning, but also acknowledges that learning is an inherent aspect of human life, i.e. we are always learning and what, where and how we learn affects the way we internalise information that we receive in formal and non-formal interactions (I take this to be the gist of the Delors' report's definition of learning as "lifelong, life-wide and life-deep").

ICTs didn't change education overnight. We can identify trends, as I've done above, and in hindsight it may seem to us that the impact of ICTs was rapid and dramatic. But, I think that this is mostly because they have been very effectively rationalised, i.e. they have subtly changed whole conceptual frameworks, which in turn bounces back to effect ICTs. So, to get back to leapfrogging, do we introduce ICTs to promote novel forms of social interaction that may accelerate development or do we highlight the aspects of social interaction that may accelerate development and introduce ICTs to facilitate these? The ICT for development agenda is commonly referred to as ICT4D, but I'm going to make a distinction here and refer to the former path described above as ICT2D, i.e. ICT to develop - the assumption being that ICTs will spur on development, and the latter path I will refer to as ICT&D, i.e. ICT and development - ICTs can augment other development initiatives.

The question I raise above is not one that I am prepared to answer. But, I think that ICT2D carries a risk of introducing ICTs that are not relevant to the existing social fabric in the community involved because, at any point in time, technologies tend to reflect the societal values from which they emerge, and current ICTs have primarily emerged from western societies (obvious examples that come to mind are initiatives that are based on the "we need Windows" assumption). Therefore, outcomes ranging from total failure to diffuse the technology to cultural homogenization would hardly be surprising. However, ICT&D would launch ICTs in an environment where there may already be a perceived need for the types and levels of communication and information exchange that ICTs can provide, making for a more "organic" integration of the technologies into existing societal structures (examples would include initiatives in countries where they already have well educated computer scientists, like in Estonia and India). ICT&D is no less a potential "leapfrogging" path than ICT2D even though the diffusion of the technology itself may be somewhat delayed because it seeks to accelerate development in the same way as the former. The problem is that ICT2D is undeniably the easier to implement quickly and progress can be easily measured by simply counting cell phones and computers, measuring fiber optic cables, etc. (whatever that's supposed to tell us about levels of development...). I think it is this "easier" path that is usually envisioned in regards to leapfrogging development. In light of recent experiences we might want to take a better look at the other path.

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Barrett addresses education in his first recommendation. Conspicuously missing here is any mention of students. The gist of Barret's first recommendation is "Train teachers to integrate technology into the classroom". This is pretty obvious, but he goes on to say, "Computers aren't magic, teachers are." In light of recent spats between Intel and OLPC project (esp. Intel's teacher focus vs. OLPC's kids focus), one has to wonder whether this is Barrett the UN GAID chairman or Barrett the Intel chairman speaking here. The thing is that there is an abundance of research that gives us reason to question the effectiveness of entrusting classroom teachers with the spread of ICTs. Numerous studies have shown that even after receiving special training many teachers are hesitant to fully integrate ICTs into their classroom activities. They are far less likely to attempt to do something innovative with ICTs, choosing rather to use familiar off the shelf products, the most common being word processors. Meanwhile, ICTs have been shown to be truly transformative in very unpredictable ways when put into the hands of users, even when those users have little previous experience with them. Put simply, there is plenty of evidence to support a claim that computers may be more magical than teachers.

Barrett's other point that raised my attention is his fourth recommendation, "Competitive telecommunications markets are necessary to allow for affordable Internet access." Again, this makes sense up to a certain point. Competition certainly has brought the cost down, but only if there is a market to work with. Telecommunications markets have not seemed eager to seek out new markets where the most costly parts of the infrastructure are missing. East Africa remains the most poorly connected part of the world and it doesn't seem like the telecommunications market is exactly knocking at their doors with an adequate submarine cable in hand. We even have a rather dismal situation here in Iceland. Infrastructure within Iceland is very good (except for several rural areas) but the country is connected internationally by only two submarine cables, only one of which is for commercial use. Internet access outside of Iceland is metered (except for the most expensive services and even then there are limits) and quite expensive (not to mention the all too common outages that occur when something happens to that one cable). This will gradually get better, but still, it's a few years off. If Iceland's progress in this area is any indication of what can be expected for East Africa, they'll be waiting for quite some time for the telecommunications market to get around to building up decent infrastructure there.

The results are quite interesting and show very different attitudes and experiences in different countries. Especially interesting is that people in developed countries tend to be more negative than people in developing countries. Negative attitudes in developed countries tended to be related to the unequal distribution of the fruits of globalisation. However, in several developing countries there was a common belief that globalisation would bring about more equality in their countries.

I have been a proponent of the UN Millennium Declaration's (UNMD) aim of promoting globalisation as a positive force through inclusive dialogue on globalisation. These results make me wonder whether the UNMD and related dialogue on globalisation might be giving rise to false expectations. Not that I think there is anything wrong with this dialogue, rather that this dialogue is not reaching the economic heavyweights behind the spread of globalisation, i.e. primarily the corporate forces. The question then is, how do we take the dialogue to these parties that need to be involved? And I think that this is not just a question of how we reach their ears and get their input (because many of these parties are certainly involved in dialogue at some level), but more importantly, how do we ensure that the dialogue is centered around the values (for example...) that will make globalisation a positive force and that participants in the dialogue recognise these values?

Reminds me of my family's first home computer when I was at the tender age of 11-12. That was almost 30 years ago so obviously we weren't discovering the Internet, but I was very quick to pick up on programming with no instruction at all. Kids just figure these things out and often even things that no one had anticipated. Does this surprise anyone?

Interesting... except that they are not transnational. At best, we could say that there is a net-layer that aspires to transcend nationality - but that is not the reality. Territoriality is very much alive and nations do impose their conceptions of "rights" within their domains. The issue of rights is therefore not an Internet issue, it is a general issue that should be, and is, addressed at a territorial level.

Game producer Electronic Arts has donated the original SimCity to the OLPC project (read more here). A GPL'ed open source version will soon be released under the name "Micropolis".

This is an interesting addition to the growing collection of OLPC software. I played SimCity way-back-when and enjoyed it immensely. It certainly has educational potential in areas such as civics and citizenship. However, I'm not quite sure that I agree with Slashdotter Zonk that it is "the epitome of constructionist educational games".

Papert's constructionism builds on Piaget, et al's constructivism. One of the key factors of constructivism is that knowledge is cumulative and adaptive in that it builds on previous experience and knowledge ("scaffolding"), and let's face it, a lot of the intended OLPC users will be children from poverty stricken areas and not the have-it-all-and-be-happy cities that SimCity promotes. While SimCity does make it possible to play the bad politician, as I recall this generally led to a chaotic unmaintainable city. In many parts of the world, this doesn't entirely jibe with the reality that people are faced with. Quite the contrary, poverty is quite carefully maintained through the wielding of political power. So, to provide a relevant context, will it be possible to carefully engineer and maintain poverty in the OLPC version of the game?

Initially, the plan was that these laptops would run on Mandriva Linux, as announced by French Linux distributor Mandriva. Meanwhile, it seems that the Nigerian computer provider, Technology Support Center (TSC) (note the "Our values are openness..." under "Who we are" on TSC's webpage), decided that they would replace the Mandriva Linux system with Windows XP before distributing the laptops. Yet, they were still going to pay for the customised Mandriva distribution previously agreed to. Mandriva understandably complained and, finally, the government has stepped in and it appears that the initial plan, to have the laptops run on Mandriva Linux, will carry on, as reported in the ComputerworldUK article linked to at the beginning of this post.

Although I've not been able to find any explanation of what happened and why TSC was going to replace the operating system, it can't be ignored that Microsoft has been known to employ questionable tactics when faced with the possibility that competing operating systems may be widely deployed.

In the end, I think the Linux decision is a good one. Open source solutions give developing countries far more power to adapt technology to their own needs and contexts. What's more, the possibility to have an impact on the global ICT community is far greater with open solutions, which is something we all can benefit from.

The problem, as I see it, is that a closed platform will be controlled by, and fed by, institutions. Institutions necessarily generalise, simply because they cannot feasibly gather data that would be truly representative of all the imaginable levels of locality that are involved with their projects. Open platforms have shown that they are able to give individuals and communities a voice in a larger global community. We see this daily on blogs, wikis, social bookmarking sites and other open platforms. The sort of granularity that an open platform could provide would be far more interesting in a project like this.

For example, take a look at the Google Earth (American Cell Tower Density) visualisation posted here. That's some pretty interesting info. However, the visualisation is broken down into sectors. So, we don't know about cellular blind spots within those sectors, which might be very helpful. But, far more helpful and informative would be visual representations of the actual signal strength on a granular localised level. Then we might be able to look and say, "There are a lot of people in that spot right there that say they don't get a signal. Why not?"

But, even more importantly is that communities and individuals can develop their own data representations, telling the world what they want them to hear, rather than what one of many international institutions decide to collect data on.

In their abstract, Foth, Oldendaal and Hearn say, "We argue for the development of an epistemological model which takes into account and values transitory, informal, soft, implicit, contextual and tacit forms of knowledge, and its sources and utility outside the hard sciences." On the one hand I would say that, at least in philosophical epistemology, this view of knowledge is increasingly accepted. I think that this is quite clear from the abundant literature that the authors were able to draw on for this paper. What's more, I don't think that there are many philosophers today that would have a problem with this (except maybe some of the fine details, but that's just how philosophers are, right?). The big question for me, that this paper does not answer (and perhaps was not meant to answer), is how this notion of knowledge gets transferred into educational practice (education here is meant to refer to any activity that facilitates learning whether that is an anticipated result or not) or any other useful activities?

There is one thing that bothers me about the paper. In their conclusions the authors ask, "How can this ‘other’ knowledge be trusted? How is tacit or informal knowledge justified, or what kind of justification will distinguish it from opinion, convention, religion, tradition or politics? " It seems to me that they sort of missed the point here. I think the relevant question, that follows from the authors' proposed definition of knowledge, does not concern the justification of "this 'other' knowledge", rather, what knowledge is embedded in the 'other' knowledge and how was it formed and what function does it serve? I'm sure some will say that this is merely a loquacious description of "justification". But my reason for putting it this way is that I believe that the authors' proposed definition of knowledge suggests that knowledge is not necessarily justified (in the traditional epistemological sense), rather it is reinforced. Hence the role of context. It would be more difficult to make a case for "contextual justification" than for "contextual reinforcement".

First I searched for "Millennium Development Goals" in 2003. The results show a slight emphasis on poverty reduction and capacity building. However, overall a number of themes are evident, including health, education, gender equality in addition to discourse on the MDGs in general.

Next I searched for "Millennium Development Goals" in 2007. This time the results were very biased toward health related issues. In fact, of the first 40 hits, only about 4-5 concern non-health related issues.

As I've mentioned, this can hardly be considered a scientific experiment, but the results do raise questions about the attention given to the different MDGs. It is especially interesting to compare these results with recent reporting on MDG progress. In the UN's 2007 Millennium Development Goals Report, many of the positive examples of the impact of the MDGs would fall under the poverty reduction, education and gender equality goals, while most of the current "key challenges" would fall under the health related goals. However, the report does acknowledge that while progress has been made in poverty reduction, education and gender equality, it has been spotty, at best. So, I wonder whether the form of reporting on the MDGs may have the inadvertent effect of prematurely diverting attention from some issues leaving them unresolved in the most problematic areas. I might even suggest that the tendency to focus on progress concerning specific goals, rather than adopting a more holistic view of the MDGs, exacerbates the problem. But, I would only seriously do that if this was a rigorous scientific experiment. But, still there's that nagging feeling...

When Negroponte and the MIT Media Lab started talking about their plans for a "$100 laptop" they never ceased to remind everyone that this was first and foremost an educational project and not a technology project. The project was well grounded in Seymour Papert's "constructionist" theory of learning, an expansion on constructivist theories' notion of "learning as creating meaning" to emphasise the conscious activity of creating, i.e. "constructing" as opposed to "having been constructed". However, the primary target audience for this revolutionary educational project, children in developing and under-developed countries, presented the project members with considerable technological hurdles, ex. how to overcome limited access to electricity and the Internet, how to ensure that the computers can endure harsh environmental conditions, etc. Although it was clear that, if successful, the project would deliver many technological innovations, the claim was that the primary focus was always on the educational aspects of the project.

Critics quickly came crawling out of the woodwork. Many criticized what they felt would be a waste of development funds that would be better used to provide the poor with food, water, medicine, etc. As the project moved forward, we finally started getting glimpses of what the computer would look like, and even got hints of how it would actually work. That's when the criticisms started to get confused. Many criticized the "non-standard" interface (and here) and the decision to use a Linux-based system, presumably based on the assumption that anything that isn't Windows (or at least Windows-like) isn't preparing users for a realistic future. Some even attacked the computer itself, claiming that it was too "cute", too "gadget-like". Even some big-wigs, like Bill Gates and Intel's Craig Barrett (who, by the way, heads the UN's Global Alliance for ICT and Development (GAID)) were delivering low blows, claiming that the $100 laptop would never amount to much more than a toy, all the while scrambling to introduce their own products to compete with the OLPC project (Barrett and Negroponte seem to have made up since).

Somewhere along the way, I think the critics managed to put OLPC on the defensive and directed attention away from the initial educational goals to technical and other aspects of the project. Negroponte lost his cool - lashed out at Intel for competing with his non-profit, started making unfounded claims. He played right into the hands of the critics and the critics seized the opportunity.

Although the OLPC project continues to receive considerable attention, very little is said about the initial educational goals of the project (ex. this BBC piece). Almost everything is about the technology, which, while certainly noteworthy, is really more a means to an end than a goal in itself. There is little if any mention about the nifty "activities" (why should a "desktop" metaphor make sense?) and software being developed.

I think that the real value of the OLPC project is in the educational goals of the project and the foundation that they are built on. These certainly are not above criticism (Robert Kozma has done a good job of shaking things up), but they are what will make or break the project in the end. With delivery of the machines apparently right around the corner, the OLPC project should put more resources into these educational aspects. In fact, they should never have stopped doing so. Kozma's criticisms of the theoretical assumptions of the OLPC crew are perfectly valid. The OLPC project could have spent a lot of valuable time testing and refining these theoretical aspects.