4 Years ago in my first succesfull attempt at making a self programed microC (an Atmel Atmega) work. I put something up on an old Nokia 3210 screen; Hello_World. Just like the manual that i found off the internet told me to...
Nowadays i mostly forgot all about programming (not that i was ever any good) and aint that much into electronics anymore, but i remember clearly was in the position to make it work because the internet was loaded with info and how-to's to make this work. Before the internet you would have to buy a book covering the subject, do a study electronics etc..
The internet opened up a lot of possibility's for us, lucky connected people. There is so many information out there covered in websites, forums, blogs, tweets, mailings, newsgroups about all the things you could imagine (and more). Not even google is able to keep track of the amount of information that is published on the internet on a daily basis. (probably this post is one of them)
All this info is not for everyone, neglect language and you'll see that roughly 20% of the info on the web is mainstream. For everyone with general interest, particulary news sites and social communities. The other 80% is made out of niches, information and data about a particular subject, a niche. For more info see 'The long tail, by Chris Anderson'.
According to 'Jeff Jarvis', the author of 'What whould Google do?' the existence of alle these (open)- niches on the internet make for a new sort of learning. No need to spend hours going through books, just fire up google and you're ready to go and learn all about the subject. This makes for easy learning, and can be a weapon against poverty. In 'This TED talk' Hector Ruiz talks about AMD's project to increase connectivity in the world. This is hard needed and a great opportunity for projects like 'hole in the wall'. This project by 'Sugata Mitra' (video) concludes that in area's where education levels are low a single computer without a teacher can have tremendous inpact on the learning possibility's and future prospects of local children.
With the right equipment they too would be sending 'Hello_world' to an old Nokia 3210 screen and could become technical engineers without any need for expensive teachers...
Technorati tags: #poverty #TED #The long tail #web #education
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