on technofetishism, olpc and a hole in the wall

This is the first explicit post about the things I got to know during my stay in india at the info-activism camp. I feel that I have to multiply my personal insights of this extraordinary stay and this will end as the first report of this blog, tagged with “wild international” and a full stop.

I was motivated to write a short aggregation on some interesting reports of the Computer Professionals Union, an organization which is working nearly since a decade to build better technical bridges between people with a cause, their targets and their audiences. If you’re interested in the full details of what kind of work they are doing, you can download their annual report here or visit their website at http://www.cp-union.com.

One message Rick wrote is called “There is no substitude for the real thing!” and the other on “Facebook Activism“, where I would like to cite from:

Yet as with other problems in society, the solution does not lie solely on technological fixes. If we blindside ourselves and engage in technofetishism, we lose the essential features of the problems and become embroiled in solving the problems of the technological fix itself.

I hope you haven’t found yourself in a situation yet in which you were trying to fix a problem that you actually don’t really have. Going on with another article published in the Manila Times on the 13th August 2009:

Technology does play a part in development. Saying that one should not engage in unnecessary technofetishism is not saying that one should reject technology as part of the solution. In fact, those who would want to make things better should be adept with the available technologies at hand—from the high tech to the low tech. We would like to think that technology should make production activities and daily routine easier and more meaningful but only a few can access these technologies, what value is it for the rest of us? It seems that these new technologies that could unfetter us from the daily grind is being developed not to address our own problems but more for the companies that produce them to profit from it. (.. you can read the full article here at the computer’s union electronic newspaper)

If you read the rest of the article, too, there often comes production and above all availability into play. At first I would like to address the OLPC Paragraph in the article: From my point of view the best things which came out of the OLPC Project were the small things developed within, e.g. the power concept, the wi-fi antennas, the display and definitely it’s operating system named sugar. and

just for the add; a sugar system is something which now runs on your USB Stick and was just released these days by the sugarLabs. It’s called blueberry and if you’re a geek and interested in alternative operating systems I think you should run it at least once !

Projects like hole in a wall showed off that the original aim of the OLPC project, to equip every child.., seems a bit far out (even though urugay claims now to have completet it by giving away 400 000 xo’s to school children) and for seems to can just be envisioned from a kind of “western” perspective. In my opinion it is a very strange business model if you make contracts with poor governments to get production started in your land ! But does that diminish the success of the OLPC Project in your eyes ? As a matter of fact their approach was visionary enough to gather lots of officials and volunteers who make up a pretty huge community ! I would be interested in what you think about the project. A friend of mine started an OLPC Project for pupils in Switzerland and for the german readers, you might have heard that there’s already a official registered OLPC e.V. with whom you can get in touch if you want to work with the laptop.

Back on track, talking about Rick and at next he reports from his visits at university, where discussions around educational materials, content licensing issues are held but even more important the lack of basic school infrastructure (like houses and teachers) is restraining better future development. Filipino Students also speak about an educational crisis and we might see now some similiarities to germany’s educational system and it’s crisis since the late 60’s but much more, this has to be understood as a global process and here’s another indicator for the overlong process of the capitalisation of our minds through transforming education to mostly training.

What works pretty good as others reported so, is sharing computers and access to computers in community centers and public spaces. It’s a form of social learning. This kind of self empowerment has it’s boundaries though and the somehow successful student protests here in Germany showed to me that money seems to be the only instrument working to drive change when trying to face a crisis of the complete educational system! Well I guess that’s nothing new for you, for me it was, but I won’t start to believe it just because it’s new for me. I am more likely to believe that the only instrument working when we talk about education may be to let people play/make music on their won and not solely money. In Germany the questioning about learning about musical traditions, or the singing of international songs might be a much bigger question than in south-east Asian countries like the Philippines.

The last post from Rick which I want to share with you here is where they used some data visualization techniques to point out the difference of their homelands finance policy, comparing it’s military and educational budget here.

I just hope that this year will be a time of more peace and with lot’s of good decisions in regard of all oppressing sorrows the Filipinos know today.