Manen asked me to speak at Al-Andalusa. I said no, I don't confer legitimacy on people promoting the Caliphate, and for now, I swear allegiance to the Californate on the servers of Second Life, based on the state where they are housed.
A sordid little caper is going on over at the SL Bar Association, a virtual organization that is proving itself to be as virtual in its morality as one can imagine about anything associated with Second Life. They've taken totally supine positions -- non-positions -- about Bragg, for example -- that is, it's not a group that *takes* position although its current president, Benjamin Duranske/Noble, is all over the map, lurching from accusing Ginko of being a Ponzi to creeping around in near silence about Bragg (although even Benjie had to say that Bragg getting up a lawsuit against landbots as exploiters of the land market in SL really set his teeth on edge). Of course, SLBA is really Duranske's pocket organization, merely yet another device to pump himself and his site "Virtually Blind". Elections were illegitimate without full membership and full education of members to the engineering going on behind the scenes where Duranske got himself and his cronies in and kept others in the dark.
Now, it seems that under the guise of having some thinky pontificating sort of "debate" about whether or not Chinese dissidents should be sent to the wall by Metaversal service providers or not, some sort of "moderate position" might be established or some sort of "useful light will be shed on the subject" and all the rest of it the usual faux-liberal claptrap that actually shuts down debate it purports to "host". Benjamin Sycophanske is plumping the opportunity to hold a "Symposium" for all its peacock-feather pwnage, trying to get ABA types involved and a prominent professor at Notre Dame and all the rest. Of course I'm the only one suggesting that Chinese dissidents *themselves* should be involved in the debate (hello?!)-- in fact they are well organized, and have very competent lawyers of their own in the U.S. and Europe and elsewhere. The idea that there is some sort of "balanced approach" one takes on the matter of whether to send people to jail unlawfully is very offensive -- and we need to keep sounding that note, and keep trying to pry the morality and legality of the Metaverse out of these grimy little hands.
I can't for the life of me understand what is driving this, unless of course the avatars involved -- about which not much is known -- are the Government of China, or the children of Party members in China, or perhaps principals or employees of law firms doing intensive business with China. Jessica has been a totally cunning little piece of work on her promotion of Chinese government interests, as we can see from SLBA meeting transcripts, trying to pass this effort off as "professional legal activity" -- that lawyers must be "the wet blanket" on their "clients' dreams" and that those going into virtual world deals with China need to "get all the facts" and "understand the options". Except...she has *already taken a position* and that is that her putative future clients *should comply with Chinese government requests* -- on the more rough-and-ready Herald, never read by her button-downed colleagues at SLBA, she's more frank (Ugh).
I'm all for debate, but this is so jury-rigged as to sound more like a troika than a court of law. Why? Because this "symposium" has been pushed, pulled, wangled, cajoled and pumped by an anonymous law student who has not yet passed the bar named Jessica Holyoke. Nothing is known about this anonymous avatar, and when you get to the point that someone like this is advocating that Linden Lab turn over the names of dissidents to the Chinese government, and that they advocate this position *in advance* as part of a sort of good international citizen effort to "comply with local law", you have to ask who they are, and what they're up to. Such laws are unlawful on the face of them; such control of the Internet is something Holyoke herself wouldn't advocate for whatever *she* wants to do on the Internet.
Everyone "gets it" about Yahoo caving to the whims of the Chinese government (which in fact aren't as heavily enforced as the debaters imagine); everybody understands Philip Rosedale has waffled on this in the BBC interview as I discussed in my Herald piece and as you can hear for yourself. But, even so, when directly confronted by Holyoke in an office hour, Robin Harper (Robin Linden) said she didn't anticipate that LL would be adopting such position such as to violate the privacy of their members, but essentially, they'd cross that bridge when they come to it.
I lock anti-toxic device from Toxic Gardens firmly into place at the SLBA.
Here's some excerpts, full transcript here:
Jessica Holyoke: Due to some...words with Prokofy, I put it to the SLBA and I'm pulling together, with asked for help, for what to do if a government calls on you to release resident information, including what to do if the Chinese come calling.
Robin Linden: The problem is, Jessica, that I believe those situations will have to be dealt with as they come up.
Robin Linden: I don't think we can make a blanket statement about how we would address such a request.
Robin Linden: It would depend on what they ask for, and who asks for it.
You: I hope LL will stay as FAR away from pronouncements on this under pressure from unseemly corporate attorneys as they stay away from pronouncements on banks and stock markets
Robin Linden: And Jessica, I don't think we can realistically talk about guidelines beyond privacy policies and the first amendment.
Jessica Holyoke: So you haven't discussed this issue with your in house counsel already? on what to do if you face that situation?
You: OBJECTION
Jessica Holyoke: And didn't you corner Phil Rosedale prok on a pronouncement just like this?
Khamon Fate: But that'll be us taking the responsibility rather than you having to do it
Robin Linden: Honestly? Talked about what we would do SHOULD the chinese government come calling?
You: OBJECTION SUSTAINED
You: Let's hope that when the time comes for LL to face it, that it will not be Anshe Chung that they are asked to blow into the Chinese government, and that they will not cave to pressure from corporate attorneys representing corporate American interests.
Jessica Holyoke: the options, what would happento you if you comply, what would happen if you don't? back during broadly offensive you said you would fight to keep a dissident's information secret, did you not know how at the time?
Khamon Fate: Just wondering, not reporting for the Pravda
Jessica Holyoke: She's german Prok
Khamon Fate: just Pravda
You: No she's Chinese
You: and German
Aargle Zymurgy: move LL to Aruba.
You: and has vulnerable Chinese workers
You: and customers
Khamon Fate: move LL to Aruba and invite Khamon to views
Khamon Fate: yeah
You: your eageriness to send them all to jail is unseemly, Jessica. Lawyers are supposed to help people; it's prosecutors who prosecute people? Did you learn that distinction in law school?
Jessica Holyoke: I never heard that Anshe uses Chinese labor
Robin Linden: This is too theoretical.
Khamon Fate: Anshe employees people in China
You: She has an office in Wuhan with 40 people, and they are not "chinese labour" but educated and talented people not in a sweatshop, but a Photoshop
Jessica Holyoke: And prosecutors aren't lawyers Prok?
Khamon Fate: ACS has an office in Wuhan
That they'd have to adopt some awful, craven, unlawful, fellow-travelling oppressive position in sync with the Chinese government *in advance* is something only proper to the fantasies of young ladies like Jessica Holier-than-tho who didn't pass the bar yet and thinks law school is the be-all, and end-all.
Here's her comment from the Herald:
Why does anyone believe that Chinese dissidents *would* be more protected in SL or *should* be more protected in SL? If someone were to break other laws of their own country, there's no resident saying that the Lindens should not turn over that information. For example, no one that I read stated that the German players involved in the ageplay scandal should not have been turned over to the German authorities.
And here's the kind of dreadful, anonymous yessing that her awful position then evokes at the Herald (the Voice of Pixeleen):
Everyone should stick to the laws in their country, including the Chinese, and if and when LL would be asked to fork over the info to catch lawbreakers, I think they should do so. The fact that the laws in China might not be fair, is not ours to judge, or even the Lindens
I've weighed in on this discussion at the Herald, and Jessica only got worse and worse -- to see the true awfulness of her position, where she equates turning in Chinese dissidents to be tortured over Internet usage with turning in real-life child pornographers on the Internet, go here and then see my rebuttal -- and for extra credit read her truly horrid follow-up op-ed piece, which Urizenus Sklar should be skinned alive for.
And that's why anyone in SLBA thinking Jessica can be relied upon to "balance" or "moderate" in this "debate" should first read her appallingly biased and extreme position on this subject, and my rebuttals. And during the SLBA meeting today, which unfortunately I caught the tail end of, I pointed out that assigning Jessica "Chinese Government Stooge" Holyoke to the position of ensuring "balance" in this debate was inappropriate.
Someone else suggested getting Human Rights Watch. Rapporteurs san frontieres would be better just because they have really made the oppression of Internet dissenters a major cause. Great. I could help with that -- but the fact is, putting HRW into the picture might be insufficient insurance of a genuine debate -- it's a rigged situation for those who haven't long watched the antics of both Holyoke and Duranske inworld, their craveness, their bids for power, their fawning of those in power, their attempts to delegitimize people who question them -- the whole sordid unattractive mess. They might somehow be engineered into a position where they'd say something that might be more like Jessica would like to catch them at saying so she can ever after refer to it.
Worse, by having someone like Doug Cassel of Notre Dame parachuted into the picture, there is a very real danger that he, too, will wind up unwittingly pouring water on Holyoke's mill. Law professors who teach human rights aren't civil rights attorneys, however decent they may be; in fact, there's no special guarantee from their professor status that they will be sympathetic to Chinese dissidents -- it could well be the opposite.
In the personal case of Prof. Cassel -- who hasn't yet accepted this invitation -- he has sterling credentials, having personally witnessed the abuses of Franco in Spain and been involved personally in human rights in El Salvador. In discussing the "dueling human rights" reports of China and the U.S., he "gets it" that China is a big-league human rights abuser.
Yet like many who have chosen to spend their careers fighting the regimes of the right and the U.S. sponsorship of such regimes, he tends to find moral equivalency where others would not, and solves the problem of U.S. illegitimacy in promoting human rights around the world by urging China to keep up its bad-faith critique of the U.S. -- where it is far more illegitimate, as it has no laws or democratic civic institutions to promote human rights at home or abroad in good faith -- laws that in the U.S., are used to good advantage to challenge the U.S. on issues like Guantanamo.
Without knowing him or anything about what he might do or say, let me put a frank comment here based on my long experience of what we call "The God Box" (those adopting the positions of the left-leaning and pro-Soviet religious organizations): they can be very, very good opposing regimes of the right. On regimes of the left, they can be uninformed, uninterested, and even supportive, saying that, oh, the Chinese government gives everybody innoculations or shoes or "is trying" or is a "victim of Bush" or whatever God-boxy thing they might dredge up.
Sychophanske, of course, is being terribly coy and cautious and officiously hovering over this and exploiting it only to add traffic to his site, luster to his rep, and air time for the point he never ceases tiring of telling you -- that he's co-chair of an ABA committee on virtual worlds (this happened because either ABA was too clueless about virtual worlds to realize they shouldn't hire an IT guy who became a lawyer but is no longer practicing and is taking a year off to write a book *cough*) or because nobody else would do the committee work -- the old Stalin method of prevailing.)
The awful thing about the framing of this discussion is that at any time, for any reason or no reason, SLBA may decide that they can no longer keep their ranks open to non-lawyers, and those interested in law, even knowledgeable, may be booted "just because" to stop free debate.
They could pull rank, and say "only members of the bar can have this discussion". Of course, in real life, that would be appallingly unacceptable. The public sure as *hell* can have this discussion, and frankly one way it is having it now is through Congressional hearings about Yahoo's behaviour and Congressmen even claim Yahoo lied in testimony about its actions -- the kind of actions Holyok would support her putative clients taking.
The SLBA requires registration and membership at its site -- and there's another way the SLBA like other "people's liberation fronts" could ensure that people are locked out, censored, killed metaphorically -- and sanitize the discussion. So I can only call on every lawyer in town to join and get involved in this discussion.
A major problem of the human rights SL/RL discussion is that no normal international human rights organization, or civil rights attorney, is involved in SL -- yet. There's this kook who says he represents a chapter of the SL in California -- Little Grey -- but I most emphatically say "kook" because his sole interest seems to be in getting Noam Chomsky in to speak in SL, and advocating the shooting of weapons to solve disputes in SL as there is no contract law (!). Etc. We need the normal people to show up here and talk some sense -- SLBA meetings are like freak shows now -- Michel Manen, lately of Al-Andalusa showed up in full mufti in a head-to-toe kefiyyeh. I greeted him with an emphatic 'Hail, Mary," and asked him if he had "taken the veil" as we say in our own Church, as I think we need pluralism of religious activity in SL! I'm not at all worried about insulting Islam here, as um, the Caliphate represents the flower of liberal thinking *cough* in ancient times, and Michel himself is a white dude from Romania who wasn't even religious last year, when he ran a wierd Roman-themed hard-left sectarian sim of some sort and some group called CREEDO, which stoof for something like "People's Democracy Pretending to Be Real Democracy".
Some of those Metaversal brain-uploaders were there as well -- there was a girl frankly dressed as a tart -- another lady had a purse and a get-up that must have been Caledon-related but for all the world looked like that old lady on Laugh-In. She was hawking something called...let me think...Non-Consumerism. I think that means I should take handfuls of the Honey Cheerios out of the box, eat them without milk, and use the box for lining the cat litter. Or something.
I don't mind that SL is a freak show, as many would say I'm one myself. This comment is not lost on me. But I don't wish to have the sectarian flotsam and jetsam of SL decide the fate of Chinese dissidents in advance by setting up a fake proposition for Linden Lab that they need to *in advance* solve this generically.
LL is opening in Korea this week. HiPhiHi is hot on their heels. They may get craven and wish to do more in China than have the largest land baron, Anshe Chung, privately run her own SL business there. Inviting Ginsu Yoon, *former* legal counsel who is now VP of business and is involved in all these sort of "mergers and aquisitions" as LL goes around signing up Grid meta-level accounts with companies doing localization, may not ensure the best concept for Chinese dissidents, as when Philip mumbled about this on the BBC, he said stuff like "making it possible for people to comply with local laws on servers in their countries". There wasn't any sort of big-hearted One Worldism stuff coming out of his mouth then....and when the HiPhiHi folks warble on about how we are all the world and we need world peace and stuff, it's definitely not about suspending Chinese support of the murderous Sudanese regime, freeing dissidents from jail, leaving Tibet alone, or entertaining any notion of "peace" than one featuring "Chinese hegemony".
Which isn't surprising as I'm increasingly seeing that the One Worlders and weepers over the plight of the Third World and Laptop For Every Child and all these other nutty schemes are the very first to run, not walk to gush all over old dinosaur big media and its mash-up with new media because they confuse the idea that big media is powerful and will communicate ideas if only they can get to them as "ok" as long as they are the only ones to get to them ROFL. My God, look at Ugotrade, which erased my query about whether they were getting too concerned with power and access to biggies to interview and forgetting all those basket-weaving roots.
Sigh. The Metaverse is such a not-pretty pictures at times.
SL Bar Association -- ensuring "tolerance for the Caliphate," marble floors, high-prim office furniture, before any justice gets dispensed...
P.S. Stopped by at Gwyn's much-touted e-justice center at the Sala de Espera, which to my Spanish-infused New York ear sounded like "Room of Hope," but is of course merely "the waiting room". I tried to file suit, in the matter of Ravenglass Rentals v. Hatfield, a case involving damages of L$6750 sought in compensation for terror-forming of land.
The system was all messed up, and bounced from saying I wasn't in the data base, to saying my email was illegitimate, to just chatting inanely in two languages.
I say a lot of this in more condensed forn here : )
http://legalblogwatch.typepad.com/legal_blog_watch/2007/09/second-life-get.html
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 21, 2007 at 02:32 AM
Your whole argument is that 3 different members of the SLBA have done something that we may find wrong (well, at least you certainly do and I personally partially agree with some of what you say but I think that it is much more complex and less black and white). And because of these 3 people, the whole thing is an evil conspiracy that has to be fought tooth and nail. And all that is glued together by : 'Of course, SLBA is really Duranske's pocket organization, merely yet another device to pump himself and his site "Virtually Blind".' Of course!
Poor you, you made it only to #3 in http://secondlifeherald.com/slh/2007/10/oped-the-10-wor.html. Keep ranting, maybe you'll become relevant again.
Posted by: Lem Skall | October 21, 2007 at 12:12 PM
Yes, it is an evil conspiracy that has to be fought tooth and nail. It's part of how people with sectarian, aggressive, nasty agendas get their way -- take over this meeting, take over that meeting, get on this committee, get on that committee. You have to be there whacking back at them at every twist and turn. It's really a dire shame that nobody in the SLBA is waking up to this and taking responsibility, especially the president-elect Solomon Cortes who just shrugs and vacillates when I ask him about endorsement of the Caliphate, for example.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 21, 2007 at 01:01 PM
The SLBA *is* Sycophanske's pocket vanity project. The elections were engineered to put in his people of like mindedness. He presides, standing like a bow-legged ass (does he understand the sliders?!) at each meeting drawing attention to himself. He's maneuvered and politicked to get himself on the RL ABA, which I gather you don't grasp as important. The other people in the SLBA are supine, ignorant, AFK, never posting on the website, etc.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 21, 2007 at 01:02 PM
I don't care if some anonymoust asstard at the Herald like Heartun or Woe Begon is writing tripe to trash me, that's hardly how I judge my social relevance : )
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 21, 2007 at 01:19 PM
From the link I posted previously ( http://secondlifeherald.com/slh/2007/10/oped-the-10-wor.html , damn punctuation):
'In the midst of mountains of self indulgent, faux-intelligent conceit and way too many words, this particular blog does its best to tackle the "controversial" topics. Unfortunately, the articles tend to come off as poorly researched at best and there are astounding amounts of recycled prose. Good thing that this means you can skip reading the bulk of the blog. The obsessively repetitive approach here relies on making completely blind claims in the hope that someone, anyone, will get offended and provide a good nugget of real news to write about. Most commenters only hang around to laugh and poke at the author with sticks - and not because she's funny.'
That is how many of us "judge your social relevance" even if it's not how YOU judge it. And that "trash" from SLH, whoever Casey Jones is, is oh so true of this particular post. I couldn't have said it better myself.
Posted by: Lem Skall | October 21, 2007 at 02:14 PM
Write a better blog if you can manage it Lem, I'm not available for makeovers.
There's nothing "self-indulgent" or "faux-intelligent" here except your own posts. I've methodically made the arguments. There's a lot of material to go over. There are many egregious problems with these power grabs in SL, and it takes a while to document and expose them.
You're not required to read my blog, and you expose yourself as a mediocrity each time you post one of these vindictive swipes.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 21, 2007 at 02:57 PM
Jebus!
It is entitled "One Laptop per Child", furthermore it might do you good to take a look at some of the people participating in this, in your words, nutty scheme:
http://www.laptop.org/en/vision/people/index.shtml
You may notice there's even a recipient of the Turing Award listed, an honour which has noting ado with being nutty.
I honestly don't think a project, like the above, deserves to be confused with some virtual bada-bing.
Posted by: Ichi Jaehun | October 21, 2007 at 09:43 PM
I think One Laptop Per Child is about the most ridiculous scheme I've ever heard. It's one of those self-indulgent feel-good faux altruistic things that old white guys think up.
If somebody is in a philanthropic mood, I think One Salary Per Adult would make a lot more sense, then they'll take care of the kids...
I don't care WHAT geeks, gods, and goofs are touting this idea. It's stupid. And I see no criticism of it, and I'm here to trash it thoroughly, sorry to rain on your spasm of patronizing Third Worldism.
It is virtual bada bing. And frankly, they can put that one laptop stuff to work right here at home in the U.S. without getting all giddy about remote kids that they never REALLY have to think about when they grow up...or what's happening to their parents, dying of AIDS, and so on.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 21, 2007 at 10:39 PM
"these vindictive swipes"
Vindictive? Nah. I'll admit you never did anything to me personally.
"I've methodically made the arguments." THAT's self indulgent.
"There are many egregious problems [...]" THAT's faux-intelligent.
You prove SLH's point even with a short comment. At least you were concise this time.
Posted by: Lem Skall | October 21, 2007 at 10:46 PM
0|1? no, what you mention are not necessarily mutually exclusive alternatives.
Should you really desire to "trash it thoroughly" as you state above, you should at least also obtain a basic understanding of what OLPC is about.
Try and learn.. it is well documented and even seriously financed now.
And whether you like it or not the field of datalogy is shaped by computer scientists. One has to look beyond the surface of pop culture to understand what this is about. Studying the recipients of the Turing Award is a good place to start.
And who knows? one day you might even be able to, not only read, but also appreciate "The Art of Computer Programming".
Posted by: Ichi Jaehun | October 21, 2007 at 11:26 PM
Um, I've read extensively about OLPC, ever since the idea was first mooted, and criticized internally at MIT and elsewhere. I've read most every major article about it. That's why I don't like it. If I hadn't heard about it or knew little about it, I might like everyone get all misty and look into the far distance and say, "oh, isn't that lovely! Think of the children..."
But I don't. Because half-educated children learning from the Internet is already producing havoc enough in the developed world without inflicting it elsewhere.
This assuption that people are stupid if they don't agree with you is truly infantile.
I don't believe that anything remotely like this makes any sense -- and I'm not alone in this opinion.
As I said, if people have funds, they have to solve the problems of Africa and other developing areas by solutions that don't only privilege children, or get all dewy-eyed about children, or get all utopian about children, cutting out adults as if they are too "complex" or "unfixable" or merely untrainable or even corrupt. These problems have to be fixed holistically.
The idea that you'd give kids laptops, and not adults, or that you'd even give adults laptops, and not salaries in critical sectors for the societies, like health and education, is just plain wrong. It infantalizes the people you are helping, and in a totally distorted way, makes it seem like you can just cream off "the innocent growing edge" of a society and only help that -- ostensibly -- with a laptop.
Laptops come naturally when there is something to hook them up to, when there is infrastructure, when people have a demonstrable need for them. Then you could help Africans go into business themselves making and selling laptops, not distributing crappy little cheap ones to kids with "serious games" in them -- I can't think of a more sectarian, politicized, and misguided thing than this OLPC.
Turing be damned. It's not about Turing. It really is irrelevant if these utopianists support this.
What's truly appalling about these awful utopian ideas coming from Americans who are naive simps is that if they were to try to pitch this idea in their own country, and get it debated openly and democratically, and voted on through their own democratic structures, they wouldn't get support. And that's why they go lurching off to inflict it on the unsuspecting third world that can't object...
Here's some good criticism of this concept, described as "friendly criticism":
http://catenary.wordpress.com/2007/04/15/a-friendly-criticism-of-the-one-laptop-per-child-project/
Not only does he raise the issues of how the money is being taken away from textbooks which make more sense in places without infrastructure; he talks about how the computers will end up on the black market, and incite hatred of these child recipients.
When I think of all the horrible violence visited on children in Africa through enforcement conscription and all the rest, and when I think of how this program could incite more violence by black marketeers against them, it makes my blood run cold.
The idea that you save societies by only focusing on the children and simply blocking from view the messy adults and their even messier kleptocratic rulers goes very very deep with naive social reformers -- and definitely needs to be challenged.
The whole sick industry of disaster porn relies on this pimping of the wide-eyed children with the distended belly, making the rest of the world think that the only thing you do to fix complex emergencies or failed states is just help a child, in isolation.
And this concept grows out of some of the child-centric ideologies of the 70s and 80s that have already produced such havoc in our own schools in the U.S.
What is ABSOLUTELY APPALLING about OLPC is that the geeky tekkie wikinistas that cooked this stuff up and support it rabidly like a cult religion and refuse to brook criticism. They lash out at you as if you are retarded, and imagine that you have to read a book on computing or else you "can't get it".
I guess I do know something about this field. And I've helped many people in developing countriesi n RL with laptops and have many, many stories about the mostly bad, and more rarely, sometimes good things, that can come out of it.
Salaries for people -- jobs, support of their salaries -- is just way, way more important. If somebody has $100 to give away to each child, they could go one rung up and give it to the adult taking care of them, not infantilize Africans, and let them decide whether they want to use it on laptops for kids or not.
Here's another good post:
http://www.devplug.net/is-olpc-really-immune-to-criticism/
"OLPC is the PC you can't ever criticize."
Oh, hell, that never stops me.
Google the terms and the word "criticism" and you'll start to get a different picture -- go outside your magic circle.
The laptop thing is at the end of the day only the physical totem or emblem by which the geek religion is hegemonically inserting itself around the world.
It's part of this sappy religious doctrine that goes like this:
"World peace through the elimination of poverty through education through learning."
But...peace doesn't eliminate poverty; jobs do and many more complex things like democracy and freedom. Peace can be achieved by oppressive governments -- that isn't prosperity. Education by itself cannot end poverty if there is no opportunity coming out to meet it. Learning isn't only provided in schools, but in communities, that need to govern themselves, and not passively serve as the recipients of some first worlders' dreams of looking good handing out stuff.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 22, 2007 at 12:00 AM
The essential keywords are: parallel and A not THE project.
I think the author of the blog you linked to presents his arguments courteously, albeit the crucial ones have already been addressed by the OLPC. Like his concern about textbooks:
“It's an education project, not a laptop project.”
— Nicholas Negroponte (Chairman of OLPC)
If fear of black markets and what have you, were to keep us from advancing, where would we be?
Also the thought of the $100 Laptop being used as a vehicle for porn, has actually never crossed my mind, personally I think there's more relevant and interesting features about it. Like Squeak for instance, an environment which has already been, not only used by, but also developed with children for educational purposes.
A statement like "you can’t ever criticize OLPC” found in your second reference is just stupid, a project like this can only benefit from dense scutiny. This is the basis of any sound science and probably goes for most things.
Which brings us to: "This assuption that people are stupid if they don't agree with you is truly infantile."
Which of course is wrong. All that is required is constructive criticism, even if it should prove some aspect of a project futile.
For instance this other remark of yours simply goes to show, that you have no clue as to what this machine and the software it comes with is capeable of:
"not distributing crappy little cheap ones to kids with "serious games" in them"
Hence it is void of any meaning and can be discarded.
The other thing you seem to be concerned with is, as far as I can tell, politics. As should be evident from the quote by Negroponte, above this is a project with one specific goal in mind. It is not about exporting democracy or assisting in governing foreign countries.
As a supplement to your dystopian viewpoints allow me to add this:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Peru/Arahuay
Posted by: Ichi Jaehun | October 22, 2007 at 02:51 AM
Excuse me, but what part of "I do not support this project" do you not get?! It's not about finding the right key word in Google! My God, there have been a gadzillion articles about it all over, and one can read about it EVERYWHERE. I CONDEMN IT AND DO NOT SUPPORT IT and absolutely NOTHING you can "Google up" is going to change my mind on this. You'll have to accept that I will not be conforming to your tribal diktat.
"You can't criticize OLPC" is a statement coming out of one of the many articles about it -- one that in fact is *critical* even while appreciating the idea (unlike me -- I don't appreciate it, and expose it for what it is -- phony altruism and hegemonic geek religion).
I am not *required* to present my objections "courteously," especiall given the horrid piousness and smug self-righteousness with which this proposal is vaunted constantly.
It's not an education project. It's a geek religious evangelical project with a totemic, symbolic object that zealots are disseminating.
The machines *are* crappy. If they weren't crappy, you'd be using one right now *shrugs*.
Of course a project like this is HEAVILY political. It's all about claiming that the Internet educates people and that geek globalization gods supervise such education. It's all about undermining people's own resources in their own cultures and countries to organize their own education and evolve to the point where they can manufacture and disseminate whatever tools they need.
It's a horribly misguided idea that you can just dump a tool and that fixes every human problem, that tools rule people, not that people use tools.
The dystopia comes in this idea, not in my opposition to it. The dystopia comes in the idea that there is something called "technological Internet education" that is somehow "progressive" when in fact it is profoundly conservative. It's all about sealing religious domination with totemic symbols, not about any real progress.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 22, 2007 at 07:49 AM
"It's not about finding the right key word in Google!"
Exactly, it is about clearly defining the topic at hand, so as to enable a productive debate.
Furthermore the only relevant mention of Google would have been, if you had discussed why and how it is they support OLPC. When you mention criticism you could also have brought up a major player like Intel, which as a matter of fact now too backs up OLPC. However, instead of presenting valid arguments, all you seem to do is indulge in ignorant and selfcentered discourse. You embody what Naur, another recipient of the Turing Award, has described as the noise of the internet.
"The machines *are* crappy. If they weren't crappy, you'd be using one right now *shrugs*."
Apart from supporting a modern OS, a modern implementation of Smalltalk, realtime DSP and so forth, one can also download and read texts which describe one type of program, that you've labelled as "serious games":
http://higheredbcs.wiley.com/legacy/college/silberschatz/0471694665/appendices/appa.pdf
Should you at least for once try to read a reference supplied by a thirdparty, you will also realise that the internet and a piece of computing machinery can in fact be used for educational purposes.
Posted by: Ichi Jaehun | October 22, 2007 at 12:16 PM
Jaehun exemplifies many of the problematic tenets of the geek religion.
It's nearly impossible to talk sense with people like this as their zealotry goes so deep.
If a $300 laptop or a $100 laptop for the third world is so wonderful then...why don't they distribute them in U.S. schools? These are the obvious questions to be asked!!! Charity begins at home *cough*.
Gosh, the Internet and a "piece of computer machinery" are obviously able to be used for education. Duh. That's literalism for you! Imagining that my concern about the Internet-educated-illiterate is somehow a failure to grasp a literal technical truth that sure, Internets are used in the schools. Of course they are. And...we need to push a little further and ask if the results are as sterling as die-hard evangelists ilke Jaehun think.
My objection is the results we are seeing from Internet surfing culture which is the chief form of knowledge for many kids -- people randomly and stupidly educating themselves on the Internet are pretty alarming -- legions of people thinking falsely that the Jews blew up the World Trade Center or that there was no Holocaust, or that Bush ordered the explosion. Legions of people thinking all kinds of falsehoods and half-baked theories. The "education" that people get at Wikipedia is really cause for concern by any sincere educator who himself isn't a product of this dumbing down of wikification.
One is that they always get to define the discourse, that if someone else points out there is a broader discussion needed, not only by technicians, but by others in other walks of life directly affected, they scream "technical illiterate!" lol (hey, let's start with the people themselves in the Third World, their government officials and their citizen leaders! never heard much from THEM about this, do we?!)
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 22, 2007 at 03:41 PM
You lack focus, this is what we were talking about:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Peru/Arahuay
This is also incorrect:
"One is that they always get to define the discourse..."
I already posted a link to some information on one approach to software engineering somewhere on this blog, I suggest you read it.
Posted by: Ichi Jaehun | October 23, 2007 at 12:50 AM
Um, as I've indicated, the problem and issue isn't "software engineering" and the other holy sacraments of the geek religion.
It's the totemic "cheap laptop for winsome third-world children that will help them become footsoldiers in our crusade". I'm suggesting it's misguided to step on adults, parents, people who need salaries, and award children totemic symbols.
You lack perspective.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 23, 2007 at 01:34 AM
Scatterbrain at large.
Footsoldiers? This is yet another grotesque and empty statement.
Pointless like this:
"Here's another good post:
http://www.devplug.net/is-olpc-really-immune-to-criticism/"
When we could have talked about learning:
http://www.squeakland.org/school/HTML/essays/essays.html
I think it best that you go back to referencing the project by a wrong name again, this way one is at least able to recognize your perspective for what it is at face value:
⊥
Posted by: Ichi Jaehun | October 23, 2007 at 11:16 AM
One Bad Idea Per Adult
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | October 23, 2007 at 01:13 PM
"Everyone should stick to the laws in their country, including the Chinese, and if and when LL would be asked to fork over the info to catch lawbreakers, I think they should do so. The fact that the laws in China might not be fair, is not ours to judge, or even the Lindens"
is not a quote by Pixeleen but by me. Just to be clear.
Posted by: D. B. | November 06, 2007 at 09:42 AM
Everybody gets that DB. But...it's the Voice of Pixeleen, nonetheless. As he/she never counters these bad statements with any kind of upholding of truth and advocacy of free speech.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | November 06, 2007 at 02:26 PM
Everybody gets that DB. But...it's the Voice of Pixeleen, nonetheless. As he/she never counters these bad statements with any kind of upholding of truth and advocacy of free speech.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | November 06, 2007 at 02:28 PM