Dopey DOPA Language Passes House

By a really big margin (something like 400 to 15!), the US House of Representatives passed the Delete Online Predators Act today (DOPA), which has basically just deleted Web 2.0 from every school and library in America.

The act, not content with going after online predators, instead bans access to ANY community site, collaborative space, or peer-mediated/edited/commented site on the internets. Wikipedia? Gone (OK, some may cheer about that one). Digg? Gone. Naturally the MySpace and Friendster and Facebook and Xanga sites are going down. But so too are del.ici.ous, Flickr, Picasa, Yahoo!, MSN, and any other site that actually accepts incoming traffic. Blogger, Blogspot, and the others? History. Your class blog, where you post your podcasts or whatever? Unless it's on a school server behind your firewall, it's gone. Basically, if a user can put up content, the site is off limits.

This is a blatant example of over-reaction and hyperbolic hysteria. Now, rather than being able to teach our kids how to be safe on the internets, how to contribute, how to collaborate; we can't show them examples (good nor bad) of the power of interconnectivity. It's like closing down all roads and highways that aren't dead ends. To be crass, but 100% to-the-point: WTF?

If you're an activist of any kind; if you've EVER written to your representatives in government about anything, this would be a good time to do so again. Click the link, use the little drop-down menu in the top right, get to your Senator's page, and send an e-mail. The bill still has to pass the Senate, so there's a chance-- a slim, snowball's chance-- that the language can be fixed. Naturally no politician wants to look like he's soft on pedophilia in an election year, so odds are that nobody will do anything to stop this travesty. But maybe, just maybe, if we all get up our nerve and let them know, maybe they'll realize they've thrown the baby out with the bathwater on this one.

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Gates Unveils "FonePlus," the NextThing with TwoCaps and NoSpace

With their own horse now in the race, Microsoft has joined the illustrious ranks of players in the game of computing for the "poor, huddled masses, yearning to browse." Or, more accurately, "Many people, including us, have been looking at different ways to lower the cost" of computing, according to Craig Mundie, the Chief Research and Strategy Officer (CRASO?) at Microsoft. "Clearly one of the things that is just booming globally is the use of the cell phone." This according to CNet News (article here).

Chairman Gates (the reknowned champion for consumer-friendly businesses!) has said, here in this very blog (OK, he was quoted here, he didn't actually sit for an interview), that he believes that smartphones are the way to bring computing and connectivity to the masses. Now he's unveiled FonePlus, which apparently will do just that (but obviously not help with spelling skillz).

Specs are short for now, but the gist is that Microsoft is backing a play to put Windows CE into the hands of the developing world. Ostensibly a challenge to the OLPC and/or Intel's EduWise (another SuperSpeller!), the FonePlus will deliver reliable (Windows CE?!), affordable (no price announced), portable (how good is the battery?) technology to the burgeoning mobile phone community. Gates seems to feel that cellular waves are more ubiquitous than WiFi, thus making the FonePlus more apt to bring users online (are there really 3G networks outside of Bangalore?).

Time will tell whether this concept-- or any of these concepts-- will truly unleash the developing world onto the internets, but a variety of approaches is more likely to have "the" right answer, n'est-ce pas?

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Oh, SNAP! OLPC Gets Chilly Reception in India

Seems the HRD Ministry of India (Human Relations and Development, I think) doesn't like to be told how to spend their money. At least, reading between the lines of the article in the Times of India, that was the apparent message.

Apparently, the presentation in April by Nicholas Negroponte of the OLPC project failed to win him friends or influence people. In fact, the Ministry went as far as to claim that implementing computers for the subcontinent's students was little more than junk science. " It would be impossible to justify an expenditure of this scale on a debatable scheme when public funds continue to be in inadequate supply for well-established needs listed in different policy documents," the ministry said.

"Debatable scheme" though it may be, the OLPC project has garnered worldwide attention in recent months as prototype models have been unveiled. Negroponte will be returning to India for another presentation in August, for what may be a bit of windmill-tilting. This while the program is assailed by competitors, no less.

While pragmatic debate about resource allocation may doom the project in India, other countries including Nigeria* and China appear to be more open to providing a lappie to every lamb in the flock. That the OLPC program has failed to gain financial commitments in the Western world, however, seems a harbinger for India's HRD Ministry. Time will tell whether empowerment through democratization of technology is a better salve to developing nations' challenges. Mayhap some industrialized nation needs to step up to the plate and lend some cred to the diminutive device?

*POSTSCRIPT: Do 100,000 laptops in Nigeria mean more princes who need our help to rescue the millions in private family riches, if we'll only send our bank account information??

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