November 3, 2006
Plato and the Laptop
Well, midterms have come and gone, and somehow I managed to complete my two papers on time, somewhere between San Francisco and PloneCon in Seattle.
In my class on the Social Impact of Mass Media I was really impressed with Peter’s Speaking into the Air, and wanted to revisit the Phaedrus. While reading it I was making connections to read-only/read-write culture, and wanted to explore that connection to Plato’s analysis of writing. Also, his conversation has everything in the world to do with my thinking on the effects of Technology on Epistomology itself, and Memory in particular.
Still, when I sat down to write the paper, I kept getting drawn back into conversations around OLPC, until I realized that’s exactly what I should be writing about!
Plato and the Laptop: Prescribing Educational Technology for Society’s Ills
Filed by jonah at 12:43 am under earth,ethics
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[…] I have been wondering for a while how technology and new media could play a role in saving the world and I posed this question to Jeff after the talk: […]
[…] Free Laptops: Creating, Producing and Sharing a Revolution In this essay/story I leave wise ‘ol Plato behind, and tried for a straight up, journalistic take on the project. Except there is no such thing as objectivity in journalism, so in this piece is explicitly infused with subjectivity and ideology. Conversations with Ian Bicking helped convince me that believing in this project is a ultimately a matter of faith, in which case our optimism or cynicism go a long way towards shaping reality. And our perceptions are often shaped by media, so lets start advocating for this project instead of kicking it in the shins. This is one reason I am starting to think that olpcnews should seriously ease up on the project, stop taking cheap swipes and jibes, and start offering more constructive criticism, or even better, apply for some grants so they can fix the project as they see fit. […]