One Laptop per Child is closer to reality with the Children’s Machine (CM1). One of the key features is that it “creates its own mesh network out of the box....” Each laptop will participate in an ad-hoc network with each laptop operating in a peer-to-peer fashion. This opens up a slew of possibilities for the laptops.
Why not have a TOPAZ server running in every village that could be browsed by every CM1 in the nearby network? The TOPAZ repository can contain Open Access articles published on medicine, neglected tropical diseases, etc....But the TOPAZ repository isn’t constrained to just Open Access [research] – it can contain any type of object from video presentations to textbooks.
Take a TOPAZ server and add every piece of educational material licensed by Creative Commons. Load the repository up with course material from MIT Open Courseware and Connexions Repository, textbooks, lesson plans, music lessons from Berklee Shares, museum resources, architectural solutions, agricultural information, etc. Setup a peer-to-peer TOPAZ network for information to be sent to remote repositories as soon as it is available. Put this in a village surrounded by CM1s and imagine the possibilities.
There’s talk that the CM1 will revolutionize how we educate the world’s children. The reality is that the CM1 laptops will be used by children and shared by their families. If the information is available, then the CM1 will truly revolutionize education.
Comment. This is a beautiful, attainable vision. It's true that access to OA content has to wait for bridges across the digital divide. And not every low-bandwidth bridge is good enough, since a slow or flaky connection for large files or many people can be equivalent to no connection at all. Taking advantage of the CM1's mesh network and P2P is a shortcut to serious, useful access. In principle, any kind of content could have its own node in that network, but we should make sure that OA content is first in line. Communities that can't afford stable broadband can't afford TA content either.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/26/2006 11:58:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
