Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon’s 1996 story of how and why the networked society began traces one of the defining moments back to the 1950s and 60s to Dr. Licklider of MIT. He was responsible for the project to figure out how computers could be used other than to be a massive scientific calculator, which was the computer’s first main function in society.

What was his conclusion? That computers could be linked together as a communications resource for humans to work together better faster and cheaper everywhere in the world, all at once! The net result would be a global culture of collaboration that could provide tremendous opportunities for the advancement of human civilization! Wow! That’s really what is the underpinning of Internetbar.org!

As a startup NGO, the privilege of coming up with projects for our nascent online community is in the hands of IBO’s organizers; and so, we have looked for inspiration from the inventors of this wonderful medium.

Our “Agenda for Justice” is civil society’s project to work together to solve the problem of how to bring about an online justice system to serve the needs of the emerging networked society. We decided to start our project in Africa, where the Internet’s promise is heralded, but is generally unrealized. We were first faced with the need to define what we mean by ‘justice’.

‘Justice’ means different things to different people. To the peace community, it means fair and equitable trade and investment opportunities for all. For lawyers, it means access to an efficient online dispute resolution system. Together, both meanings of justice need to be present in an online justice system.

We are building an online justice system that links e-commerce market opportunities to people in the world who are suffering, and presently do not have internet access. Anne Nyambura, our IBO colleague from the ‘peace’ world, is in Kenya, and she is researching the conditions in refugee camps, villages and the city for us, so that we can best understand what is needed to ‘cross the digital divide’ and afford people from Africa the chance to sell their goods and services online.

Ayo Kusamotu, the first chair of IBO’s Africa Committee, from Lagos, Nigeria, has been helping us figure out how our “Agenda for Justice” can succeed by working with two key figures in cyberspace lore, Nicholas Negroponte and Lawrence Lessig. Professor Negroponte, of MIT, wants to bring one laptop per child to countries in Africa, that will be connected to the internet and have its own power supply. Lawrence Lessig, of Stanford Law School and Creative Commons, has helped to create a new way to look at licensing intellectual property, that is fostering the rebirth of music, art and all forms of intellectual property. Together, both men are leading efforts that will help Africa get to the point, as US Senator Barack Obama recently said on his trip to Kenya, of empowering individuals in these countries to rise up and build sustainable economies. This is the first meaning of justice.

If IBO’s Agenda for Justice works, then creating both the opportunities and the mechanisms to avoid conflict and support the rule of law in the emerging networked society will also become necessary. It will help create secure digital identity, avoid cybercrime, and bring the rule of law to cyberspace - and thus, support the second meaning of justice.

Our pilot projects are being designed so that they can be replicated throughout the world whereever economic empowerment is needed.

>From: “ann nyambura”
>To: jaresty@msn.com
>Subject: Greetings
>Date: Sun, 6 Aug 2006 00:40:33 +0300
>
>Dear Jeff,
>I got home safely, and now am in Kakuma refugee camp until the 18th.
>I have
>tried to reach you using skype, but had no response.
>In the few days I was in Nairobi, I did make a few contacts who have
>been
>asking good questions. Some of the questions that arise for me as I
>continue
>to make more contact include:
>1. What makes a critical mass of women and youth groups, in order
>for IBO
>to partner with paypal or any other body that would facilitate the
>payment
>system over cyberspace?
>
>
>A few findings so far:
>1.The closest equivalent to the SSN is the PIN here in Kenya. It is
>not as
>centrally operated as the SSN in the US. Would it work for pay pal
>purposes.
>
>The whole concept is being easily accepted by the contacts I have
>made so
>far. I will certainly do much more once am through with the Youth
>STAR. Its
>certainly very exciting to talk about the project, so I hope that my
>finding
>will be useful to you.
>
>For now I still have many more questions being raised, but these by
>far are
>the most critical for me as at now coz it will help me design my
>targets as
>well as evaluate what is viable.
>
>All the best, and regards from cool Kakuma.
>
>Nyambura
<

Facts Everybody must know about the One Lap Top Per Child Project

written by # Ayo Kusamotu, chair, Africa Committee

I have followed the developments of this project since it was unveiled at WSIS by Secretary General Kofi Annan. I was also at the meeting of the One Lap Top Per Child Inc in May 2006 in Boston along with delegations from Brazil, India, Argentina, Nigeria, and China. So when I read the article of July 20th 2006 in the Economic Times of India with screaming headlines ‘One Lap Top Per Kid not feasible : education sect’ , I felt compelled to respond so that people may know more about this project.

1. Quote :

Banerjee had said OLPC “may actually be detrimental to the growth of creative and analytical abilities of the child’’

Neoteny and Pedagogy

1. Response:

The One Lap Top Per Child Project is an educational project about teaching children how to learn. Studies have been on going for over two decades about how computers can aid children’s learning. Professor Seymour Pappert, Professor of Education and Media Technology, Emeritus, MIT Media Laboratory, a mathematician by training and a pioneer of artificial intelligence is internationally recognized as a seminal thinker regarding computers and pedagogy for children. His collaboration with Jean Piaget at the University of Geneva led him to consider using mathematics to help understand how children can learn and think.

He worked on the Maine Learning Technology Initiative with former Governor of Maine, Angus King. The initiative provided a laptop for every middle-school student in Maine. He is the author of Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas; The Children’s Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer; and The Connected Family: Bridging the Digital Generation Gap. The Maine project is on going and has been an outstanding success. At the start of the project , the majority of the teachers were opposed to putting the lap tops in the schools thinking that the lap tops would hinder the educational process. However, a few months after the implementation of the initiative, the majority of teachers were in favour of the lap tops in the schools.

Maine has now signed a four-year, $41 million contract with Apple to continue to supply the technology, training, and support to Maine’s groundbreaking initiative that has equipped all the State’s 7th and 8th grade students and teachers with one-to-one access to wireless notebook computers and the Internet for the past 4 years. More information about the Maine Project can be accessed at http://www.state.me.us/mlte/. More States have either implemented or are about to implement similar projects.

Similar initiatives were implemented in various locations and at different scales in Costa Rica, Thailand, Brazil, Cambodia and Senegal amongst others and the results have been outstanding. Some of these projects have resulted in children participating more in the class rooms, students using lap tops to collect and apply information that was not available to them before to help solve challenges they or their parents were facing and also increased the number of parents interested in continuing their education or wanting to learn to use computers.

Secretary General Kofi Annan’s observation at WSIS in November 2005 when the first prototype was unveiled was as follows :

“…..This is not just a matter of giving a laptop to each child, as if bestowing on them some magical charm. The magic lies within - within each child, within each scientist, scholar, or just plain citizen in the making…..”

2. Quote:

Laptops have not even crossed the prototype stage, the official found that hardware and functionality testing, using open-source Linux software, is still to begin.

New Product

2. Response:

Given that OLPC is creating a new product, with features that are not typical in lap tops today (such as the laptop being human powered, the mesh network, and a high resolution sun light readable display), OLPC designed and built that laptop from scratch to achieve the rich feature set at a low price.

The Laptop hardware is well beyond prototype at this stage. A-Test boards (a specific step in the manufacturing process) have already been produced in the hundreds and distributed to software developers around the world (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developers_Program#Hardware_Schedule)

Information on the Software and Hardware progress are available publicly on OLPC’s website.

3. Quote:

The price of the battery and other hidden costs, the laptops might actually cost $200

Battery Price is a fraction of the Lap Top Cost

3. Response :

The OLPC Country Agreements states specifically that the per unit costs of the lap tops will range between One Hundred and Thirty to One Hundred and Forty U.S. Dollars (USD$130 – USD$140) in 2007 , approximately One Hundred U.S. Dollars (USD$100) in 2008 and approximately Fifty U.S. Dollars (USD$50) in 2010. The battery is actually a small fraction of the laptop’s cost, and is included in the price quoted.

4. Quote:

It also needs to be checked and certified in real time whether the connectivity distance between the local server and these laptops would be 0.5 km or 3 km as claimed, the official noted.

Compare with Wifi

4. Response:

The distance even at 0.5 km would be fantastic considering that any wifi connection today does not go beyond 100-200 metres. The range will also depend on the terrain, allowing children in open areas to reach each other and the server at longer distances than if trees or mountains were blocking the view.Although, due to the use of mesh networking, the range will only be limited by the number of hops between the Laptop and other Laptops or the server. Allowing Laptops to connect at distances much longer than that of the longest wireless link.

5. Quote:

Another functional problem is that these laptops cannot be upgraded without changing the motherboard, which would entail an expenditure of nearly 40% of the total cost

What is the Lifetime of a typical laptop ?

5. Response:

Hardly anybody upgrades the motherboard of a laptop as most people have had their laptops for three to four years without upgrading. The laptops are designed to have a lifetime of 5 years minimum, which is a period in which many people use their laptops without any upgrade, except maybe for storage space , which is still upgradeable in OLPC lap tops.

6. Quote:

OLPC like project has already been started by an Indian company which has supplied 50,000 laptops to South Africa at $200

Perceived self interest may be?

6. Response:

Perhaps OLPC is seen as a rival project .Brazil, Argentina, China , Nigeria have expressed interest in this project. When OLPC is compared to other initiatives, it is important to that OLPC innovations in power supply, networking and display technology for the laptops are highlighted.

.The Brazillian Education Minister, Tarso Genro was quoted as saying

“…..It’s a revolutionary project, that compliments all the orientation we have received from the president…..”

# Ayo Kusamotu ;Esq is a Nigerian Lawyer and Fellow of the University of Massachusetts Centre For Information Technology and Dispute Resolution(CITDR)