I’m not big on so-called ‘social experiments’. “Let’s introduce X (a drug, tobacco, chocolate, socialism, TB, etc.)” into a fledgling society and stand back and watch the results. Many times these things simply don’t end well.
Never Yet Melted recently blogged about an experiment wherein a corporation dropped boxes of solar-powered Motorola Zoom Tablet PCs into an isolated Ethiopian village. A village without electricity or even written words. No books, no street signs, no streets. The boxes weren’t even opened. And they sat back to watch what would happen.
As reported at the EmTech MIT conference last week…
“We left the boxes in the village. Closed. Taped shut. No instruction, no human being. I thought, the kids will play with the boxes! Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, but found the on/off switch. He’d never seen an on/off switch. He powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs [in English] in the village. And within five months, they had hacked Android. Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera! And they figured out it had a camera, and they hacked Android.”
There is innate curiosity and intelligence in human beings. At least those not lulled into the crass commercialism of fashion, gadgets and style. These folks eke out an existence; they don’t have everything handed to them. JDZ of Never Yet Melted suggested we do this with American inner city public schools. I’m thinking the children therein are probably too jaded by school age.
I’d like to believe I’m wrong, though…
The human brain – if not completely stunted – is an amazing tool. There’s no incentive for American yutes to be so curious, since they’ve been told from toddler up how wonderful/smart they are … and to just wait on Big Gummint to hand over the free candy.
We watched the former U.S.A. commit suicide last night. It was a great experiment, while it lasted.
Posted by Rev. Paul | November 7, 2012, 9:51 amDon’t lose hope, Rev.! If anything, the administration will continue down the same course, giving those who love freedom, privacy and non-gov’t interference more to respond with next time!
Posted by guffaw1952 | November 7, 2012, 9:55 amI haven’t lost hope, Guffaw; it’s more like it focuses the mind wonderfully and now we know what we must do next time.
Posted by Rev. Paul | November 7, 2012, 11:17 amAgreed. And thanks!
Posted by guffaw1952 | November 7, 2012, 1:37 pmThis is the sort of thing I’d like to believe, but my BS meter is quivering at half-scale. What are the chances this is just self-inflating puffery by the program creators, fishing for their next big grant?
Posted by Henry Bowman | November 11, 2012, 12:43 pmAnything is possible. It occurred to me as well. Great story though!
Posted by guffaw1952 | November 11, 2012, 10:53 pm