by DemFromCT
It's the start of Yearly Kos, and some of us will be there (some of us won't). Air America will stream it if you can't be there (for ten bucks). Community building on the web (be it Daily Kos or Flu Wiki or TNH or any other active web community) is a sight to behold.
Use this as an open thread. What's on your mind?
The next dimension in community building may turn on projects like One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), aimed at distributing notebook computers priced around $100-$150 to children in developing countries. They have been releasing several announcements and developments lately, and today the user interface (called Sugar) is being reported on. One of the key features is that these machines are built not just for traditional office computing (word processing, accounting) but are explicitly designed as network computers with emphasis on wireless connectivity and peer-to-peer networking.
Some of the kids whose hands these end up in will doubtless start developing community sites, either in a formalized setting as blogs like this, or as something more transient -- something in between bittorrent and a chat room, where there is no "site" as such, just a distributed network between many computers. Also, the open nature of the software may make these computers little lab sandboxes again (like in the 80s), not just the black (or beige) boxes that they've become.
It's a project I'm excited about and certainly worth keeping an eye on.
Posted by: emptypockets | June 09, 2006 at 09:14
How about computers like that for poor kids here at home? There are many in the cities and rural aras who could use them. Not every family in the US has a computer.
Posted by: Mimikatz | June 09, 2006 at 12:17
Mimikatz, from their FAQ that sounds like not what they're thinking of:
but I agree with you that underdeveloped countries are not the only places where children don't have computer access.
in fact I can afford a regular computer myself but when I see when of these units at that price, I want to get six or seven for myself.
Posted by: emptypockets | June 09, 2006 at 14:01
Was there any discussion at the conference about the difficulty of encouraging thoughtful discussion?
One of the reasons I checked out the next hurrah was that DemFromCT and Mimikatz had some very substantive posts. Most posts on the sites I've seen are pretty lightweight. The ones that get the most active responses seem to be the most inflammatory rather than the ones with ground breaking ideas.
Is the democratized nature of the web a positive force if it optimizes for banality and mediocrity?
Posted by: JESchwartz | June 10, 2006 at 02:12
JESchwartz
Now that's a fascinating question. There's room for lots of things on the net, and that's something that does require some thought.
Cable vs PBS.
Posted by: DemFromCT | June 10, 2006 at 08:48