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3.5.1 IaaC Lectures Series: Eliminating poverty in 10 years Nicolas Negroponte

Eliminating porverty in 10 years

(IaaC Lecture Series 26 february 2013; synopsis by Jordi Vivaldi)

When nowadays someone wants to change any aspect of the world, the first thing that he understands is that design schools are best place to do so. And it is is like that because, unlike the prestigious business schools that until recently were apparently ruling the world, design schools like IaaC offer a surprising mixture of sensibility and technical complexity that becomes extremely fertile in order to face with solvency some of the setbacks of our planet. With this conviction, twelve years ago MIT Media Lab decided to start an ambitious project in order to change the world in a very specific aspect: one connected laptop to every child in the planet. Obviously, at the start this ideas seemed ridiculous, specially because there was no commercial interest in reducing the cost of the laptops to the 100 dollars per unit. Microsoft and Intel were keeping a great competence in the production of processors, and due to this fact the speed was dizzily growing although the price was neither increasing nor decreasing. However, in spite of the utopic appearance that the MIT Media Lab proposal of offering one connected laptop to every child had, the prestige of the institution and especially its credibility reaped a great interest from the press and the specialized media. During the following eight years, the project got a robust funding and the collaboration of many people interested in working on its development. And in fact, the cause deserves it. According to statistics, there is around 100 million children that nowadays are not going to any school. Moreover, depending on the age range used to define the category of “child”, this number could increase until 600 million or 700 million. In most of the cases, the main obstacle it is not that the parents don’t want their children to study because they prefer them to focus on remunerated jobs, but simply because there is no accessible school for the child to assist. And what happens when a child doesn’t go to school? The answer is that the only alternative that remains for him is to teach himself, that is to say, to become his own professor. Cover - Nicolas Negroponte, IaaC Archive Figure 1 - OLPC project Figure 2 - OLPC project 2

Figure 2 - Earth, Julius Popp

However, there is something that is absolutely essential for a child in order to learn: to read. It is crucial to learn how to read in order to later be able to learn by reading. A step that can only be implemented at the age of 7 or 8 years old, figure that has nothing to do with any cultural aspect, but exclusively depends on biological reasons: our brain needs this grade of maturity in order to properly develop this task. Although is already more than one million years that our brain is evolving taking in account our capacity to speak, it is not more than 5000 years that the man writes and reads. Due to this fact, to speak is something completely natural in the man, while this is not the case at all of any reading or writing activity. Even nowadays, there villages in some areas of our planet in which it is impossible to find any written word, beside the label of some clothes that arrived there through tourism or international observers. And, with no doubts, technology could be extremely efficient in this scheme. For now, 3.000.000. laptops have been distributed around the world by the MIT Media Lab, and due to this initiative, almost 100.000 children are teaching their parents how to read and write. In general, the

Figure 3 - Nicolas Negroponte giving deskrits to the IaaC students, IaaC Archive 4

villages that have been chosen to start this project are those that have a children population ranging among 10 and 25 children. Not less than 10 because it can be frustrating to resolve difficulties if there is not at least a certain quantity of social mass involved on it, and not more than 25 because in this case is quite probable that in the near future a new school could be built close to this location. The villages where this initiative has been implemented have experimented a complete transformation: children teach to their parents how to use the computer, they are in constant contact with pedagogical content that focus in how to read and write, the have access to movies, they learn another language, and above all, their motivation and ambition to develop themselves experiment a huge growth. In this sense, there is a very particular experience that is extremely pertinent and suggesting to explain this fact. Some years ago, MIT Media Lab dropped in a village 25 brand new laptops, accessible to 25 children. Because of a tracking system implemented in each machine, it was possible to analyze their use, and the results were absolutely astonishing. In less that 2.5 minutes, children got the way to turn on the computers. In 5 days

Figure 2 - From data to information, Julius Popp Figure 4 - Nicolas Negroponte giving his lecture at IAAC, IaaC Archive

they were using more than 50 applications per day. In two weeks they were singing and dancing songs that they got from the computer, and in less than 5 months they hack parts of the operative system. But probably, one of the most suggesting aspects of this experience was the collaborative capacity that they develop in a short amount of time. The necessity of the children to share among them their success, difficulties and discovers accomplished through the laptop, enlarged in a great way their perception of the group as a whole, discovering in it unsuspected values. One of the main projects of the United Nations, the project called “Millennium”, proposes to achieve the schooling of the 100% of the children of the world before 2050. It seems complicated to understand how this can be achieved without taking in account tools as the ones that the MIT Media Lab is proposing. However, the main problem is evident: its complete implementation has a total cost of more than 12 billions of dollars. A figure that without any doubts places the project close to what could be understood as an entelechy, but that if we analyze it carefully we can easily find completely different readings from it. For example, 12 billions dollars is the required money to keep 6 days of war in Afghanistan. Therefore, 12 billions dollars is not an impossible figure, especially if we understand education and connectivity as human rights and not just as mere private services lead by lucrative targets. Because of this reason, it is crucial to separate in between what we can understand by “mission” and what we can understand by “market”. While the latter is about investors, clients and providers, and its success is basically measured through its capacity of creating benefit, the first consists in the application of a series of actions that responds and are measured according to a set of values and tenets. Only through a clear understanding of the difference in between both worlds we can analyze and measure each one according to parameters coming from its own nature, from which we can judge to what extend the effort is it valuable or not.

Figure 5 - OLPC Laptop, IaaC Archive Figure 6 - OLPC Project in schools, IaaC Archive

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IAAC SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE:

Manuel Gausa, IaaC Dean

EDITORIAL COORDINATOR Jordi Vivaldi, IaaC bits Editorial Coordinator

EDITORIAL TEAM Manuel Gausa, IaaC Dean Mathilde Marengo, Communication & Publication Jordi Vivaldi, IaaC bits Editorial Coordinator

ADVISORY BOARD: Areti Markopoulou, IaaC Academic Director Tomas Diez, Fab Lab Bcn Director Silvia Brandi, Academic Coordinator Ricardo Devesa, Advanced Theory Concepts Maite Bravo, Advanced Theory Concepts

DESIGN: Ramon Prat, ACTAR Editions

IAAC BIT FIELDS: 1. Theory for Advanced Knowledge 2. Advanced Cities and Territories 3. Advanced Architecture 4. Digital Design and Fabrication 5. Interactive Societies and Technologies 6. Self-Sufficient Lands

Nader Tehrani, Architect, Director MIT School Architecture, Boston Juan Herreros, Architect, Professor ETSAM, Madrid Neil Gershenfeld, Physic, Director CBA MIT, Boston Hanif Kara, Engineer, Director AKT, London Vicente Guallart, Architect, Chief City Arquitect of Barcelona Willy Muller, Director of Barcelona Regional Aaron Betsky, Architect & Art Critic, Director Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati Hugh Whitehead, Engineer, Director Foster+ Partners technology, London Nikos A. Salingaros, Professor at the University of Texas, San Antonio Salvador Rueda, Ecologist, Director Agencia Ecologia Urbana, Barcelona Artur Serra, Anthropologist, Director I2CAT, Barcelona

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