Tag Archives: technology

Ethiopian Kids in Remote Villages: Smarter than Your Parents

Researchers affiliated with the One Laptop Per Child initiative dropped boxes full of Motorola Xoom tablets off in two remote Ethiopian villages, pretty much just to see what would happen.

Kids of around first-grade age opened the boxes. The kids figured out how to turn the tablets on. And then the kids started learning–not just about the machines (they were soon customizing their own home-screen configurations and hacking their way around the camera restrictions), but also about music and English-language words.

All without teachers or instruction of any kind.

Read the brief but fascinating story at MIT Technology Review.

(via iheartchaos.com)

lawbi #9: 3-D TV, or This Should Be Awesome For A Month

Training simulations. Architectural design. Medical tests. Mapping.

There are dozens if not hundreds of sensible, practical applications for efficient, realistic three-dimensional digital imaging technology. But slapping a pair of goofy glasses on your kid so he will shut up for a bit while becoming even more confused about reality isn’t one of them.

You understand that 3-D movies are a trend, right? At no point in the near — or even distant — future will all consumer entertainment be rendered in three dimensions. (If 1983’s immortal Jaws 3-D didn’t irrevocably turn the tide, nothing will.) No studio can afford to make all of its films in 3-D. No theater chain can afford to convert all of its screening rooms to 3-D. And no indie production company can start cranking out straight-to-Blu-Ray titles for a market of home viewers showing all the explosive growth of recreational space travel.

continue reading at CL …