Scott VanDenPlas

My local alderman, Manny Flores, has announced his candidacy for the 4th Congressional District. This seat currently belongs to Luis Gutierrez, who is retiring his position in 2009.

Manny has done a lot of good for our Ward and our City. It will be sad to see him go, but it is hard to fathom a stronger candidate or a politician that reflects the political views of our community more than he does. Good luck in the campaign.

It does appear that there are a couple of other alderman looking for the position, but whoever takes the nomination for the democrats is getting the seat. Our district only voted 20% for GWB last time around.

Maybe Alderman Van Den Plas in 2008?

I have read a lot this morning in reaction to the OLPC episode on 60 minutes, and I think there needs to be some clarification.

Yes, Negroponte is pissed off at Intel, it doesn’t take a lot to get there. The problem is, he is NOT afraid of Intel because of competition, he is pissed off at Intel because they selling machines at a loss to gain market share.

The OLPC project is reliant upon large numbers of machines (the $175 price tag is expected to drop to the $100 range within the next few years depending on demand). OLPC is building a program, not just laptops, to support a different approach to education. Intel is trying to sell more chips, and is a little peeved that OLPC uses AMD.

Intel’s approach is not to build a cost effective, self supporting program. It is to drive the competition out of the market, and in order to do this, they are selling their machines _at a loss_. Intel cannot sustain this approach, and hopes to drive out OLPC (a sustainable approach) to increase it’s market share. Ultimately, Intel will have to raise it’s prices (even higher still, to compensate for early manufacturing losses), whereas OLPC will decrease it’s prices.

This is why Negroponte is mad. Their approach harms the longevity of ANY laptop education program, not just OLPC. In the end, Intel is looking to make as much money as possible off their machines whereas Negroponte is trying to build a model that will continually decrease in price the more they are manufactured. Intel will not put more laptops in children’s hands, they will slowly strangle more money from third world governments with a broken and predatory manufacturing model.

Can we stop analyzing this now?

A couple of years ago, when the .tv domains launched, I tried to get the perfect domain. It turned out that 4 letter .tv domains were premium domains and they wanted a premium price for it. I couldn’t pay, and scot.tv would not be mine.

It just stabbed me in the heart, but this is just twisting the knife.

In the run up to the 2008 presidential election, an extremely interesting trend seems to be emerging. The 2008 primary contest, for both the democrat and republican sides, has put a spotlight on the digital divide in American politics.

Ron Paul is a recent phenomenon, and by all rights, traditionally would not be that big of a contender in the republican competition. He is, however, bolstered by a dedicated legion of online supporters. His supporters are raising awareness for their candidate by taking over online polls and check him out on MySpace, Technorati, and Digg. His online presence is unprecedented for the Republicans.

If you think that is impressive, it is minor in comparison to the support that Obama is getting. Last I checked, he was nearing 80,000 friends on MySpace, his online fundraising is nearly unstoppable, and the internet grassroots are on fire to support him.

These two candidates may be trailing in the traditional polls and somewhat in the traditional media, but they are excelling online. I’m not quite sure what this says about the leading candidates, or the power of the internet. Paul’s surge seems to be more manufactured, based on rigging the democratic systems of the web to return results favorable to the supported candidate. Obama’s support has more of an organic feel with power in numbers.

Who knows what the landscape will look like in a year, but Obama and Paul certainly are not in a _bad_ position with their online support. It does prominently point out that the traditional machine is still more successful with the traditional media, but it may also be a sign of the end times for that machine. Get ready, this is the last election of television and newspaper.

(And what’s in Ron Paul’s hand in that photo? I don’t know, you tell me.)

The video is up on YouTube now, the part of the conversation I’m speaking about is toward the end with just over a minute left.

I have long thought that the biggest blunder made by Negroponte from the beginning of the One Laptop Per Child program was the name itself. I’ve brought this point up before, but calling the machine a laptop brings back an unwelcome and misguided familiarity with the program before you know anything about it. As I have spoken to friends and family about OLPC, the first question that they always have is “Do poor people really need a laptop?” I think that the best way to reply is “No, but they do need education. This is not about the laptop, it is about the program to disseminate a learning tool.”

The language calling the XO a laptop is harmful to the goal of the project. It allows people to dismiss the project early on as unnecessary, and act as if the goal of the project is the first world injecting forced technology into the third world. It damages the image of the project.

It also allows hardware manufacturers compete with the project by undercutting the OLPC with a similar “laptop” sold below cost. The competition is often a fully featured laptop computer, lacking the educational program structure and support of the OLPC program. 60 Minutes covered OLPC last night, and they spoke specifically to Intel attacking the program by attempting to sell cheap computers to the same countries, but at a fraction of the manufacturing cost. If the focus of the program was access to education and a revolutionary education program, rather than the hardware itself, this would take away the power that the competition already holds.

Here’s the video of the 60 minutes episode from last night:

I just caught Marc Rudov on Fox News making the most incredible argument I have ever heard. I’m not going to link to him, or to his really lame websites, but I will summarize his argument. He was speaking to Lis Weihl, and she brought up the point the women still make 80 cents on the dollar to men. His reply was creative, it went something like this:

“Have you heard of outsourcing? Do you know why businesses outsource? Because they are cheaper. If it was true that women have the same qualifications as men, and are paid less, then they would be getting all the work.”

I have to give him credit, that is some decapitating logic. It nearly blew my head off my shoulders.

Thanks to emdot for the picture.

The OLPC program has officially stated the while the initial plan and long term goal is to benefit third world and impoverished countries, the only qualification for the laptops to be rolled out in a region is government buy in. One of the largest issues that the program has to overcome is to avoid or mitigate the problem of a black market forming around the machines. There is a lot to overcome in third world societies, and I fear that there will be too much time spent overcoming the problems and focus will be shifted away from the furthering of the program. It takes a long time to establish an education system, but a large number of machines can be sold into the black market in a matter of days. The loss of inertia for the program could be devastating.

There is a small push to introduce the program to the United States. I believe that this should be taken even further, and there needs to be a much larger installation here, in Chicago, with political support and a low amount of corruption. I think there could be potentially a huge cost savings for the Chicago schools overall, and more of a democratic approach to distribution of public school resources.

As I mentioned before, Google has an interest in developing a city wide network. I believe that offering the Chicago Wifi contract to Google (or another interested party possibly) in return for subsidizing the OLPC Chicago program has a massive amount of potential. Google not only gains the right to build the network in Chicago, but they also gain a much larger built in user base by supplying connectivity to the schools. What is now consolidated in the OLPC server system could just as easily be hosted at Google, by Google.

Chicago could reduce their costs by using Google’s wifi network as their school connectivity. They would get low cost machines for the students (and possibly even free depending on the depth of the subsidy) and free internet access for residents.

I think there is some hope here. I can see this as a big step forward for the OLPC program, and a good way to maintain a strong image in the face of many challenges.

Read the OLPC-Chicago mailing list thread here:

http://mailman.laptop.org/pipermail/olpc-chicago/2007-May/000035.html

A few weeks ago, my good friend Harper got his hands on an OLPC XO-1. Its a great little machine, and I think very well designed and engineered. On the tech side of things, I like the simplicity and focus of the machine, but I am most interested in the networking capabilities. I think the project is really poorly named though, they really need to ditch the idea that these machines are laptops. They are a learning tool that happens to resemble a laptop, and that word is poisonous to the overall goal of the project.

I think the politics and policy behind the program are much more interesting than the hardware and software of the machines themselves. As with any good design, that should be invisible to the user (and hopefully eventually to the designer). I have a feeling that the program is headed the way of the Segway right now though.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea behind the Segway. To the user, it is an incredibly simple tool. It solves an interesting problem… it is stupid for me to drive my car to go get a cup of coffee. Dan Sturges points out that it is absolutely insane for me to take my car, that weighs 50 times what I weigh, for such a short distance. It makes much more sense for me to take a Segway, that weighs half my weight, to run on short trips. Dean Kamen is not trying to build a competitor to cars. Just as a car doesn’t compete with a plane, the Segway doesn’t compete with the car. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for me to drive from NYC to LA, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense for me to drive from my house 2 miles down the road spending 20 minutes in my massive car waiting in traffic.

The problems for the Segway started with the hype. I remember a lot of big names saying how it would change the world, and cities would be planned around it. I remember hearing it would be hydrogen powered, or it was some sort of flying machine. Then when it came out, it was a self balancing electric scooter. A slow, kind of dorky looking, overpriced scooter that I couldn’t legally ride anywhere. It came across as one of the most over hyped products in my recent memory, and suffered a tremendous loss from this tarnished image. My bike goes faster, never needing a charge, and I only sort of look like a tool riding it. Oh yeah, and it was a tenth of the cost.

I fear that the OLPC program is coming up on a similar moment in history. The hype is enormous, but I am not entirely sure there is anyway the program can live up to it. I don’t see anyway to avoid these machines being sold into a blackmarket to serve more immediate needs of the people they are trying to help, like food, clean water, and shelter. It is an incredibly smart design, but the fault is not in the machine, it is in the supporting systems around it.

If the OLPC program succeeds, it will not be in the third world first. The program needs to leverage the attention of the first world, flood the United States with the XO’s and develop out an incredibly strong infrastructure with a minimized threat of corruption and a black market. Then export that program to the third world.

I would like to see the Google and the City of Chicago team up on the laptop program. Chicago is still in the RFP process of building out their public wifi network. Google is busting heads in wireless spectrum auctions and is clearly looking to expand its networks. The OLPC program has ramped up to the 3 million machine mark to roll out the program full time.

Why wouldn’t the City of Chicago grant Google the wireless contract for the city in return for subsidizing the OLPC program? I think it is a fair question to ask.

Occasionally, we get to take part in some fun politics related activities, and tonight Beth and I got to meet Hillary Clinton!

It was great! She was introduced by Terry McAuliffe, and it was a little strange to see him as her lead man… he kind of came off like a lead in comic that gets the crowd all riled up. Then came up and gave a short speech. I am really excited for the 2008 elections, I think that no matter who gets the nomination, there is a strong field of candidates. Her speech was great, and I think it set a good agenda and tone for her campaign. Now bring on the drama!