A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a talk
by Sugata Mitra at an event organised by the ICT
for Development Collective at Royal Holloway (where I work). The
ICT4D Collective is a body of researchers, doctoral students and people
working in NGOs and development agencies that are all interested in
trying to understand the role played by information and communication
technologies in the developing world. I am a member of the Collective
but have what can really only be described as an 'amateur' interest in
ICT4D issues. The chapter of my book on the digital divide deals with
these issues but in nothing like the depth
that Tim Unwin and his colleagues at Royal Holloway can do.
Mitra is well-known for so-called 'hole
in the wall' computers - Internet-wired kiosks that were established
in poor urban and rural areas of India in a series
of experiments during the early 2000s. He spoke about the history
and results of the project in incredibly positive and optimistic terms,
but, overall, I was left wondering about the real long-term benefits of
establishing hole in the wall style computers without plugging them into
real world educational institutions and behaviour.
A webcast
of the talk, including the Powerpoint slides, is available at the
Cisco website (Thanks to Cisco's
corporate responsbility section for sponsoring the event and doing
such an excellent job of the webcast).
Update: The 100 dollar laptop project, now
gathering pace, is in the same vein, though there are some
significant developments in terms of the hardware and software.