Gregory's ServerWith 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. 2/3
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63 comments
 (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)  Going through my archives, I notice I might have been confused. This goes back even further. This happened 2008 in the pilot in Ethiopia. Rwanda was 2014. At that time the LED was already long gone. My apologies. I have corrected the original toot. (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) Me, 2007 :)  @jwildeboer I never got to see one in person. I did get to buy a knock off from HP and installed Ubuntu on it. Used it for web development. The ideas sparked from the OLPC live on. @wtrmt Whenever you're in Munich, happy to meet and bring one or two along for you to fiddle with :) @jwildeboer wow! That is so kind of you! Regards from a fellow nerd, from far away, in Chile. I hope to go to Germany and meet you! @jwildeboer we gave away OLPC machines at linux.conf.au 2008 in Melbourne. I was also a huge fan of the program and sorry it did not reach its full potential. But I believe it changed computing. Cheaper laptops made it more accessible to more people. The eepc and chromebooks came after. I’ve lost track of what’s happening with sugar. I should revisit it all. @kattekrab "The little machine that could" will always come to mind whenever I see one :)  @jwildeboer I'm still sad on a regular basis that the PixelQi technology died on the vine. @jwildeboer I've loved learning your behind the scenes stories on the OLPC, today. The device may not be in production, but the dream behind it lives on. @jwildeboer Thank you so much for sharing this. Amazing things I didn't know.  @CGdoppelpunkt It's still around :) In total around 3 million laptops have been distributed over the years. https://laptop.org/aboutolpc/ @jwildeboer Ik herinner het me. Wat een prachtig idee was het. En hoe jammer dat het zo werd tegengewerkt. Maar wat hielp het de boeren!!!  @Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: what has become of this initiative? i haven't heard anything about it since quite some time ...
https://laptop.org is still around, though I haven’t been in contact with them since years. They distributed around 3 million laptops to children in total. Mostly unnoticed by us here in the west.  @jwildeboer The ending of Red Hat's involvement in that project was also seemingly marked by the end of Red Hat trying to bring Linux to kids in general. It was really sad to me because if things had been different, Fedora might be the reference platform for the Raspberry Pi instead... @Conan_Kudo We continued to support Sugar on a stick for many years in the Fedora community. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Sugar_on_a_Stick The main reason we didn’t became the default OS on the raspberry is that it isn’t really an open platform, IMHO. @jwildeboer wow, never knew it was that many. Thanks for giving some more background info on that project; I knew of it, bit not a whole lot about it. @jwildeboer I hadn’t realized you were involved in that - amazing! And what a great story. Thank you :)  @jwildeboer @OLPC #meshNetwork is something we should really get as default in all #laptops and #phones. I will try to keep an eye on #IEEE802.11s  @jwildeboer this story is extraordinarily stupid (as far as the government goes) because the goal of #OLPC was to improve education, and then the government fumes because their population starts to make educated decisions... @DJGummikuh It’s IMHO one of the reasons we never saw the OLPC concept being introduced in a western country. I tried at the time. But we were always destroyed by government agencies with the „it doesn’t run Microsoft Office“ argument. @jwildeboer yeah I also remember there was a huge outcry that it would destroy the mobile devices market and people should rather pay hundreds of Euros for Hardware they don't need to "not upset the market" 🤮 @jwildeboer @DJGummikuh I cannot stress enough how much I hate MS Office and MS in general, specially when we consider the vast amounts of taxpayer money that goes to that putrid hole in government hw and sw. There should be a hunting season for lobbyists, like other invasive predator species. It's impossible to get rid of them, but they can be controlled like other predators.  @DJGummikuh @jwildeboer Similar to something my kid's first grade teacher said about US education: "Yeah, they talk a lot about critical thinking, but they don't like it when the kids use it on them." @jwildeboer I think a lot about the fact that we all have pocket communicators with many different radios in them, but if disaster ever strikes, none of them can communicate with each other. The more I think about it, the more it feels like a sign of a world gone mad.  @simon Do have a look at Briar. Though it’s a shame that such functionality isn’t *mandated* for every mobile sold.  Other than the Briar Project, I know of nothing that addresses handset to handset direct comms. And no one I know is even vaguely interested in it and few, other than activisty tech types, even think the idea has value. It's maddening. castoff phones on thrift stores, wifi only even, no sim, have more computing power than most people had in 1990. And no interest in them except as commodity platforms for whatever it is we do. @tomjennings The totally weird thing is that Apple implemented such a thing with Airdrop. It was used in the Hong Kong protests to distribute warnings and calls for demonstrations. Ultimately Apple had to change its implementation after pressure by the Chinese government. @simon  @jwildeboer @tomjennings @simon Did not know about Apple changing implementation - now I wonder how long I’ve been assuming Bluetooth where there was actually an internet involved. @tomjennings  But what would have been the commercial and government/regulatory incentives to make this happen? Telcos want to be able to charge you, and governments like knowing where you are and who you talk to.  @MonniauxD @simon @jwildeboer There are some technical reasons also. Cellular networks (and coordinated deployment) are very, very efficient and can provide stable services (and QoS). Meshed networks and ad-hoc deployment work at a different operating point. @jwildeboer I was wondering what happened to #OLPC just last week. Thanks for this information.  @jwildeboer while OLPC was not really meant to be catch up, I was amazed by this technology, and mesh networking was part of it for this reason.As gov not being amused because of pressure towards merchants.....LOL  @jwildeboer I love this story. Do you have a citation? If this is a stupid question and you're somehow someone that was on the ground relating a personal narrative I apologize. @vees I am sure there are some articles about it out there that I don't have in my archives. I can only offer you my assurance that this happened. I was involved in the coordination and discussions with the core developers that solved these problems on site and beyond. So are you saying the government was part of the problem and wanted to keep the farmers in the dark? @blacklight447 They run Fedora with the Sugar UI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_(desktop_environment) @jwildeboer It's quite telling that a government "not amused" when its citizens communicate to share in more fair and equal opportunities. :) @jwildeboer I remember being in Rwanda some years ago and was tickled by the 500 franc notes. |
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. 3/3