2007-02-25
Exit office
About a month ago Microsoft launched its newest version of Windows. Vista is the new mastodon ready to drown you. 100 more ways to go astray. "It’s like a digital candy store", states Microsoft. That’s an appealing thought for technicians, but what about the 99% of the normal people? My mother, my nieces? They will make a mess of the system in a few days if they are not already lost within a day. I don’t believe that it’s the revolution we’re waiting for. Well, what happened with other dinosaurs?
Maybe the real revolution is near. Last month I wrote about the One Laptop per Child project. They are not only reinventing the laptop. They are creating a new device with a new interface. They have left the desktop, office, managers and other administrative analogs. Children don’t live in offices. Creative thought is not stimulated by offices.
The new concepts of OLPC interface are the neighborhood, journal and activities. Exit desktop, exit file system, exit applications. Hey, is this revolution not already going on? What are the main activities of most people on a PC? They browse on the internet, communicate with friends (chat, mail, msn), write weblogs, and share pictures and movies. They do this in interactive environments like hyves, MySpace, flickr. Wikipedia is another example of a collaborative environment where people share their knowledge, without being bothered by an administrative hierarchy.
On top of these concepts OLPC placed education. Education is their prime objective. They want to challenge children. Not only discover and communicate. Creativity should go beyond expression in text and images. Children should be able to create their own activities. Invent their own games, to stage their own stories, like they do on the playground. So, not unsurprisingly, some ‘scripting’ environment is being provided as well. On an OLPC children can play with eToys. Squeak Etoys was inspired by LOGO, PARC-Smalltalk, Hypercard, and starLOGO. It looks like LEGO is a digital virtual world.
Digital LEGO? That reminds me of LEGO Mindstorms. The idea of the ‘programmable brick’ originates from Mitchel Resnick’s research group at the MIT Media Lab. Yes, the MIT Media Lab is where several OLPC people come from and Resnick is one of the advisors of OLPC. Resnick is also the designer of starLOGO and author of Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams(1994). I’m reading this book.
Resnick’s research group is called ‘Lifelong kindergarten’. That’s a nice vision for the future. No more offices. Just kindergarten!
Maybe the real revolution is near. Last month I wrote about the One Laptop per Child project. They are not only reinventing the laptop. They are creating a new device with a new interface. They have left the desktop, office, managers and other administrative analogs. Children don’t live in offices. Creative thought is not stimulated by offices.
The new concepts of OLPC interface are the neighborhood, journal and activities. Exit desktop, exit file system, exit applications. Hey, is this revolution not already going on? What are the main activities of most people on a PC? They browse on the internet, communicate with friends (chat, mail, msn), write weblogs, and share pictures and movies. They do this in interactive environments like hyves, MySpace, flickr. Wikipedia is another example of a collaborative environment where people share their knowledge, without being bothered by an administrative hierarchy.
On top of these concepts OLPC placed education. Education is their prime objective. They want to challenge children. Not only discover and communicate. Creativity should go beyond expression in text and images. Children should be able to create their own activities. Invent their own games, to stage their own stories, like they do on the playground. So, not unsurprisingly, some ‘scripting’ environment is being provided as well. On an OLPC children can play with eToys. Squeak Etoys was inspired by LOGO, PARC-Smalltalk, Hypercard, and starLOGO. It looks like LEGO is a digital virtual world.
Digital LEGO? That reminds me of LEGO Mindstorms. The idea of the ‘programmable brick’ originates from Mitchel Resnick’s research group at the MIT Media Lab. Yes, the MIT Media Lab is where several OLPC people come from and Resnick is one of the advisors of OLPC. Resnick is also the designer of starLOGO and author of Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams(1994). I’m reading this book.
Resnick’s research group is called ‘Lifelong kindergarten’. That’s a nice vision for the future. No more offices. Just kindergarten!
