ReplyGuy on wss://relay.hakua.xyz on Nostr: This was on Mastodon... But should have been here too. Jan Wildeboer on Mastodon ...
This was on Mastodon... But should have been here too.
Jan Wildeboer on Mastodon (@jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net)
Quite some years ago (2008), we brought the #OLPC AKA the 100$ laptop to Ethiopia as pilot. A surprising thing happened. The laptops were often without battery power in the morning. A thing that wasn’t anticipated. It had two reasons. One was the keyboard LED (it was removed in later series). It was used by the parents to have a light at home. The other was a bigger surprise. The parents used the mesh networking to discuss market prices for their produce. Fascinating.
With the mesh network built in to the OLPC, a local network that worked without needing a central access point (or the CPU), farmers used the chat function to compare prices offered for their produce and found out that merchants offered different prices. Draining the batteries while their kids were sleeping. This led to pressure on the merchants to pay better. The government was not amused. And mesh networking became a problem. Ultimately an inspiring story that was never told, IMHO.
Decentralisation remains an underexplored field in commerce and communication, IMHO. For obvious reasons. Capitalism relies on control and centralisation. Kind of a contradiction, IMHO. A reason why decentralisation and transparency are often touted as goals, but never really implemented.
(In a flat and open field, the mesh network of an OLPC, that didn’t need the CPU for transmitting network traffic, so still worked when the OLPC was „sleeping“ had a range of up to 4 kilometres)
(And thank you all for being kind and respectful in the comments thus far. The OLPC was (and is) a defining part of my private and professional life. I was only involved on the sidelines but I met people that ware so deeply invested into the ideas. Developers. Children. Teachers. But also aggressive opponents, lobbyists that did everything possible to kill the project. It teached me a lot. And I still feel sad it never lived up to its potential. Maybe it will. I'm still a believer)
relay.hakua.xyz
Published at
2024-09-15 05:48:33Event JSON
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"content": "This was on Mastodon... But should have been here too.\n\nJan Wildeboer on Mastodon (@jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net)\n\nQuite some years ago (2008), we brought the #OLPC AKA the 100$ laptop to Ethiopia as pilot. A surprising thing happened. The laptops were often without battery power in the morning. A thing that wasn’t anticipated. It had two reasons. One was the keyboard LED (it was removed in later series). It was used by the parents to have a light at home. The other was a bigger surprise. The parents used the mesh networking to discuss market prices for their produce. Fascinating.\n\nWith the mesh network built in to the OLPC, a local network that worked without needing a central access point (or the CPU), farmers used the chat function to compare prices offered for their produce and found out that merchants offered different prices. Draining the batteries while their kids were sleeping. This led to pressure on the merchants to pay better. The government was not amused. And mesh networking became a problem. Ultimately an inspiring story that was never told, IMHO. \n\nDecentralisation remains an underexplored field in commerce and communication, IMHO. For obvious reasons. Capitalism relies on control and centralisation. Kind of a contradiction, IMHO. A reason why decentralisation and transparency are often touted as goals, but never really implemented.\n\n(In a flat and open field, the mesh network of an OLPC, that didn’t need the CPU for transmitting network traffic, so still worked when the OLPC was „sleeping“ had a range of up to 4 kilometres)\n\n(And thank you all for being kind and respectful in the comments thus far. The OLPC was (and is) a defining part of my private and professional life. I was only involved on the sidelines but I met people that ware so deeply invested into the ideas. Developers. Children. Teachers. But also aggressive opponents, lobbyists that did everything possible to kill the project. It teached me a lot. And I still feel sad it never lived up to its potential. Maybe it will. I'm still a believer) \nhttps://nostrcheck.me/media/c28aece562af2d5d33e79775d29fe6026023e55e641bfc03e138b2066ed9113a/d0901af3068ba09dd79091b721f4aa03007e8e66e6946760591b06d56ee915ce.webp relay.hakua.xyz",
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