Skipping over the OLPC implementation plan realities for a moment, imagine a world where many students have a Children's Machine XO. A world described by Eben Moglen in his Plone Conference Keynote Address and transcribed by The NewsCloud Blog:
"What is journalism like when every village has a video camera and is on the net? …As part of the OLPC-enabled content overload, there would be an amazing opportunity to reshape the public discourse with an unprecedented level of inclusion.What does it mean if the next time somebody starts some nasty little genocide in some little corner of the Earth the United States government would prefer to ignore, that there's video all over the place all the time in every living room?
What does it mean when children around the world are networking with one another over the issues that concern them directly without intermediation, everybody to everybody?"
Opportunity because One Laptop Per Child cannot guarantee such openness. As China proves with its successful censorship, yet denial of that very censorship, open technology does not equate to actual openness of expression.
Still, a solid OLPC cultural integration plan could go a long way to enabling such citizen journalism revolution. The ultimate crowd sourced CNN.
Imagining that CNN, what would you want to watch? What would you want to know? Why would you tune in to OLPC Nightly News?
I think Moglen should shut up about this until OLPC's are actually distributed widely and governments with nasty tendencies towards genocide can't put the kibosh on the whole project. Then maybe we can talk about how kids with laptop video cameras can become the primary news providers of the entire world.
Oops, sorry if this is a double post, I think I forgot to re-enter the "are you a human" letter after previewing last time.