In a message dated 6/22/00 6:08:27 PM Central Daylight Time,
sean@irvken.free-online.co.uk writes:
> According to The Straits Times of Singapore, NIIT, an information
> technology (IT) training institute in New Delhi, resides a few yards away
> from a slum. As an experiment, NIIT's cognitive engineering researchers
last
> year made
> a hole in their office wall facing the slum and installed a powerful
> computer
> connected permanently to the Internet. The computer was available for
anyone
> to
> use. It's just sitting there, apparently out in the open, on the street.
>
> The result was extraordinary. The slum children, many of whom had had no
> primary school education, went over to check out the computer. There was
> no instructor on call; they were left to themselves. Within hours they were
> successfully finding websites on the Internet (Disney, Hindi films,
> cricket trivia) and learning other computing skills as well (not just
> Internet related).
This is GREEEEAAAAAT! It makes me think that the idea of wiring up the less
developed world really will pay the kind of dividends we've talked about here
before. What a great story!
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
ICQ # 61112550
"We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know
enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another
question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."
-- Desmond Morris
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:14:18 MDT