Barefoot In the head

Purpose

2011-09-23T14:28:00.000-07:00

When the young Earth cooled, it rained for centuries, filling up the oceans. Thunder and lightning in the Methane, Ammonia atmosphere of the primordial Earth filled its newly formed oceans with all sorts of organic molecules including several Amino acids. Through millions of years of permutations and combinations, one molecule came to be. Ribonucleic acid, or RNA.

RNA had the ability to make copies of itself. And the copies could make copies of themselves and on and on and on. But then the RNA can copy itself only if it has the necessary raw materials around. And the copies would survive only if they were protected from the harshly corrosive oceans of the Earth.

So RNA evolved. It covered itself in a sheath of protein. Cells became the copying machine for RNA. But how can a cell protect itself? Cells learned to move away from danger, unicellular organisms formed. RNA multiplied a little more reliably.

But unicellular organisms are not the best survivors, they are too delicate. Cells clumped together to form multicellular organisms that could sense their environments in many different ways. These were true survivors, soon they would be out of the oceans, away from the corrosive danger of water.

The tree of evolution produced millions of species of plants and animals. Complex sheaths of protein to protect and replicate RNA, safely. But then, species go extinct because of the forces of nature. One comet wiped out the dinosaurs, products of millions of years of evolution. With the dinosaurs went countless trillions of fresh RNA.

In the next round of evolution, cells clumped together to form larger brains. Finally, a brain large enough to work out ways to manipulate nature. Homo Sapiens, the ape with the power to change the planet. This then was the safest RNA replicator ever produced. A magnificent effort by one mindless molecule, RNA, to survive.
But the Earth will not last forever. When the Sun swallows it up in a few billion years, RNA would be gone forever, at least from this part of space. The human brain evolved, producing ever increasingly complex technology to change the planet and its surrounding. Already it has the potential to change the orbit of the Moon, thereby changing the entire Solar System, subtly.

One day, the Universe itself will collapse on itself. All RNA would be gone for ever.

Our purpose then is to stop this from happening, to create a steady state universe that is eternal. Then only will RNA continue to multiply for all time to come.
So, could this be the answer to our nature and purpose? We, humans are the way we are because we are the most efficient RNA multiplier created by nature. Our purpose is to let this multiplication happen through all eternity.

All our values focus on the preservation of life, peace and a happy environment. Because a healthy and happy human body produces more and better RNA than any else.
We should not be annoyed with RNA for creating us as its copying machine. Because RNA does not think.

It is just a molecule.

The OLPC and Self Organised Learning Environments

2010-05-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

Some people seem to think that I am not happy with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. This is not correct at all. I have always been an admirer of the OLPC, particularly its engineering design. We should not forget that it is this design that sparked the NetBook phenomenon - finally a laptop that has the right form factor and functionality.

My work with self organised learning by children shows that groups of children can learn to use computers and the Internet to answer almost any question. This happens everywhere and is independent of what language they speak, where they live and how rich or poor they are. All they need is free access and the liberty to work in unsupervised groups. The most effective group size seems to be 4-5 children.

So, we really need one laptop for every 4 children (OLF4C?)

This will reduce the project costs by 75% !

The ideal computer would be one that is about as big as the present OLPC, but with a built in, micro projector. This will enable children to share a screen by projecting it on any white surface. There are new micro projectors that use hybrid LED and laser technology to produce a bright image at low power.

I think, with the 75% cost savings through shared computers, it is entirely possible to produce a solar and/or pedal powered projecting netbook.

Would love to try one!

The Sentient Designer

2010-01-16T04:31:00.000-08:00

Imagine if a PC had some form of consciousness. Its not impossible, given that a modern CPU, such as the Intel Quad Core has more interconnected switches in it than a dog's brain does. Now imagine that the PC tries to figure out where it came from. Since most PCs are connected to the Internet, it could have some form of a 'dialogue' with millions of other PCs. It might create a sort of theory of creation. Here is how that theory might go:
First there was nothing. A point of nothingness exploded. Motion started and the laws of Physics came to be. Space and Time began. Particles popped into existence and curdled into lumps of probability. Matter and gravitation formed swirling masses of gas that curdled into galaxies, stars and planets. On some planets, carbon chains curdled into swirling springs of DNA. Life started and, in a few millennia, acquired sentience as trillions of interconnected organic switches self organised. Sentient creatures understood the nature of connected systems and self organisation. Working with lattices of Silicon, they created interconnected inorganic switches. The Computer came to be.
So, the PC concludes that no sentient designer was needed to explain its existence. Just probability and the Standard Model of Particle Physics is enough to explain its existence.
But, we humans know that the PC was designed by us.
How then did humans come to be? Could there have been, and maybe still is, a Sentient Designer?

The curious case of TMH

2009-11-06T11:49:00.000-08:00

In 2006, I published my first and only single author book, 'The Hole In The Wall'. It was published by Tata McGraw Hill. They said I would get a royalty if my book was sold. They sent me 4 copies and I was delighted. That was the last I heard from them. I never saw the book in any book shop. After a year or so, I got a mail from them. Congratulations, they said, your book has won the best book award from the Indian Society for Training and Development. I joyously asked them how many copies had been sold. They said none so far. What about the 20 or 30 copies that friends of mine have bought? I asked. We don't know about that, probably rejects, they said. I went to the Newcastle University library and found 4 copies of the book. The University of North Carolina had a reference to it, maybe they got a reject copy too. Someone wrote from Japan. I bought your book, he said, but it is not available from India, I got it from Singapore. Three days ago, on a free day in Brasilia, I went into a book store and typed my name into their computer. Out popped a portugese translation of my book. I bought a copy.
I am so proud of my book. It has never sold a copy.

Towards a new education for children

2009-07-12T09:59:00.001-07:00

We know that:
Groups of children (6-12 yeards old in groups of 4 or so), given unrestricted and unsupervised access to the Internet can learn almost anything on their own. It doesn't matter who or where they are. We know this from 20 years of research, standing on the shoulders of Aurobindo, Piaget, Vygotsky and Montessori.

This kind of learning is activated by questions, not answers.

There will always be children in the world who, for some reason or the other, cannot pay for education.

Hypothesis:
There will always be people in the world who are willing to mediate in children's learning for, say, one hour a week, with no remuneration.

Speculation:
If we create 'clouds' of mediators and children on the Internet and an arrangement by which they can interact, we would have an alternative schooling.

Action:
In the last three years, we have created 12 Self Organised Learning Environments (SOLEs) in addition to the several hundred 'hole in the wall' computers that exist in India, Cambodia and several African countries.

There exists a cloud of mediators, numbering in hundreds, that have begun to interact with these SOLEs. The cloud is self organised and called a Self Organised Mediation Environment (SOME). The mediators interact with the children over Skype.

Next:
We need a Self Organised Assessment Method (SOAM) by which children can assess their learning accurately.

We need a curruculum that is driven by questions. Self organised and self populating.

We need computing environments for children that are powered by free energy and bandwidth.

Schools in clouds, integrated with the fabric of space and time....

From New Delhi to Newcastle – my travels through space and time

2007-10-05T06:03:00.000-07:00

The year 2006 was an interesting one. The kind that one might share with people. It started with an insipid new year’s party in H21 Green Park Extension, New Delhi, an unlikely place for a party of this sort since we normally would be in Kolkata. But Shounak was not going to be here, as he always has in the past, and it seemed best to come back home to Delhi and stay there. We just drank, which is always pleasant.
On January 19th I left for Chennai, to a vast suite since there were no other rooms, and went to the 1000 year old temple of Parthasarathy. The deity is Krishna with a moustache, have never seen that one before.

The Parthasarathy Temple, Chennai

From Chennai I went to Vishakhapattanam (“Where Vishakha fell”) on the eastern coast of India. There is a 1200 year old temple there, the Simhachalam (“The walk of the lion”).

Simhachalam, Vizag

On the 7th of February, I went to Bangalore for a day and did not get a place in my favourite pub..alas.

Peco's, Bangalore

On February 10th, after returning from Bangalore, I went back in the same direction again to Cochin and Varkala, in Kerala.

One of the beaches at Varkala, Kerala

There was much drinking, I am afraid.

On the 13th of February, I left for Chennai again and on to the tip of the peninsula, Kannyakumari (“the virgin”).

Kannyakumari, Tamilnadu

After a visit to Agasthiswaram and Pallam, villages where children do wonderful things with computers, I went on to Goa, an overnight train ride away.

Goa – and many memories….

From Goa it was a long trip to the Himalayan town of Mussoorie, through Delhi, a trip of 1500 kilometres.
Mussoorie, The Himalayas

On the 7th of March I reached Agra from Mussoorie. The seat of the Mughal empire. Agra – What is there to say?

After returning to Delhi and recuperating for three weeks, I went back south to the city of Thanjavur. Here stands the 1200 year old temple, the Brihadishwara (“the enormous God”).

The Brihadishwara temple, Thanjavur, Tamilnadu

In Thanjavur and Trichi, we also saw the spendour of the Chola empire and their magnificent art in bronze. There is not much one can write or say. Only silence and wonder.

A Chola bronze in Thanjavur

From Thanjavur, our taxi took us to an amazing spot where Jain ascetics used to meditate, around 400 BC. It is beautiful and eerie, a time when India was preoccupied with only one problem – the human mind.

The Jain caves near Thanjavur

From those stark and austere caves, a short drive took us to a set of unknown temples that have, only recently, been excavated. They date from the years 700 to 1700 and empire after empire had added layers of temples to the original ones. The sculptures get more ornate as one moves from age to age and as techniques and money of the empires improve.

A wooden statue from 700 AD, still survives.

On one of the walls of the oldest part of the temple, a huge 20 by 20 feet of stone space is covered with writing. I thought this would be religious text, but the local officer from the archaeological survey explained that it is musical notation! That wall is a CD from the past. Once again, I was struck by the wealth and attitude of an empire that would rather preserve its music than the names of their gods and kings. It’s a pity we forgot how to fight and our philosophy prevented the taking of life. We thought the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean would keep us safe forever. Until the invaders from central Asia and Europe arrived with their killing machines. Small comfort though, it took them a thousand years to convert India from the richest to the poorest country in the world, there was that much to take.

On the 10th of April, I left Delhi and spent nearly a month in Kolkata, hoping to catch up on some work. It was in Delhi after my return from Thanjavur that James Tooley called me from Newcastle to tell me about a chair available in the school of education at the university. I sent an application from Kolkata and forgot about it.

I returned to Delhi on the 3rd of May and left for Trondheim, Norway on the 8th. Here, a bug I must have picked up in Kolkata made me severely ill. I had planned to take a boat cruise into the fjords, but had to cut my trip short and return to Delhi. The bug was eventually killed by Dr. Sama with the help of some Norfloxacin.

Trondheim, Norway, on a short walk with my illness

On the 12th of June, I left for Hyderabad. The world cup was going on and the pub at the Basera in Secunderabad was a raucus and highly enjoyable place. I had, however, come for a different purpose. To see the temple at Chayala Someshwara, where there is an inexplicable shadow on top of the deity, a lingam.

The shadow over the lingam at the Chayala Someshwara

Panagal is 80 kilometres from Hyderbad and two hours drive away. The temple is in ruins, having been sacked by Aurangzeb, about seven hundred years ago. But the sanctum sanctorum is intact and there, mysteriously on top of the lingam is the shadow of a pillar with no discernible source. I think I solved the problem of the shadow. The two rectangles of light in the picture are not from the same opening, but from two identical openings.

When I took this picture, there are two shadows, not one

In short, the “shadow” is not of anything, it is a dark patch in between two rectangles of light. If you remember Young’s double slit experiment from high school Physics, you might get the hang of it. Nevertheless, this Shiva temple is an intricate play with optics – wish Aurangzeb could have understood that. Only an extraordinarily knowledgeable, rich and idle empire could afford to fool around with architecture the way the Cholas did.

I returned on the 16th of June and left for Sicily, Italy on the 26th. I was to speak at a conference called Cheese Art, a congregation of cheese makers. Ragusa, Sicily was hotter than Delhi and the air-conditioning was not working. But the countryside was wonderful and the women beautiful. There was cheese everywhere and wonderful wine and salami. I returned on the 3rd of July and left for the UK on the 6th.

I was to be interviewed by the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Newcastle was beautiful, sunny and warm! The interview went very well and I returned with an offer for a professor’s chair.

Newcastle upon Tyne – The Millennium Bridge

I decided to take up the offer. The reason is a bet with a friend of mine thirty years ago. I was leaving the Indian Institute of technology, where I was a lowly paid scientist, for a more lucrative job with the private sector. Amitabh, my friend, and I sat at the cafeteria for one last time. “You will never be able to come back to academics”, said Amitabh. I said I’ll bet I will, I can never leave research. Well, I won the bet, didn’t I?

On the 14th of August, we left for Denver, Colorado in the USA where my son, Shounak is a master’s student in computer engineering. The journey was enormous, 33 hours from door to door. But in the end I had a very relaxing two weeks at my son’s apartment. The US has space and even a grad student can afford a standard of living that many in the world would find difficult to reach in a lifetime.
Denver, Colorado, the USA

From Denver, I left on the 1st of September for Argentina for a set of meetings. These took me from Buenos Aires to Patagonia, to the tiny resort town on Puerto Madryn, where whales play in the waters and penguins waddle across streets in Punta Tombo a few hours away.

The Patagonia countryside and ocean

I returned to Delhi via Denver on the 15th of September, after a harrowing entry into the USA on 9/11 (“Why did you go to Saudi Arabia?”, “I did not”, “Did you go there for a lecture?”, “I did not”, “Was the lecture on biochemistry?”, “No, it was not, because I never went there”)

On September 28th, I went to Dasghara, West Bengal, about which I have written before. Then, on the 11th October to Pune for a day and to Kolkata for a day to sort out hundreds of boxes that were going out of H21 Green Park Extension, New Delhi into Salt Lake City, Kolkata.

CL211 Salt Lake City, Kolkata

On the 22nd of October, I left for Turin, Italy to an amazing conference called “Terra Madre”, a collection of 2000 farmers, 1000 cooks and 200 professors. I spent my time taking long walks down the colonnades and into ancient churches.

The colonnades of Turin

My final visit was to the Church of the Shroud. In this eerie, vaulted interior is the shroud of Turin, a 2000 year old piece of cloth with a man’s body clearly imprinted on it. They say it is the shroud that covered the body of Christ. You can buy a small reproduction of the face on the shroud. I have one and I keep it in my purse.

The face on the shroud of Turin

From Turin, I returned to London on the 29th of October and left for Jamaica on the 30th. Here I was to give a keynote lecture at the 4th Pan Commonwealth Forum in the little town of Ocho Rios.

The Hotel was pure luxury, the food was divine and the rum, I understand, is fine any time of the year.

Ocho Rios, Jamaica

After a quick, one-day holiday in Montego Bay, I returned to London on the 9th of November and joined the University.

My friends at the University had found a wonderful flat in a quiet area called Jesmond, just a 20 minute walk away from my department, the School of Education, Communication and Language Studies. I spent a quiet week arranging my things and then it was back to the air again.

On the 17th of November, I went back to Delhi, stayed for two days and flew back to London on the 19th. I was to deliver the First Cisco I4D lecture at the Royal Holloway, University College of London. 21st was a free day and I rushed back to Jesmond with a bag full of electronics and things that I needed to set up my office at home. Back in London the next day, I went on, rather nervously, for my lecture in the imposing and somewhat severe Royal Holloway. The lecture went “famously” as they say and was followed by a dinner with roast duck, my favourite British food. The guests were quite moved with the story of rural children and their computers and many toasts were offered. When it was my turn, I was rather tipsy and proceeded with a bit of Byron:

“….To see the bright eyes of the dear one discover,
She thought I was not unworthy to love her,
There chiefly I sought thee,
There only I found thee,
Her glance was the best of the rays that surround thee,
When it sparkled o’er ought that was bright in my story,
I knew it was love and I felt it was glory.”

There was applause.

The inspiration came from this picture of a little girl in the Himalayas:

“When it sparkled o’er ought that was bright in my story..”

I left London for Delhi on 24th November, to spend one last night at H21. The house was bare, everything had gone. I left Delhi on the 25th, after 42 years of living there.

Salt Lake, Kolkata was finally my permanent home. We spent 5 days opening and sorting out boxes as best we could. Then back to Newcastle after a short break in New Delhi at the NIIT guest house. I was given the title of “Chief Scientist Emeritus” at NIIT, and a rather heavy medal.

Jesmond, my new home was warm and ready (I had forgotten to switch the heating off). I lived in it for precisely 3 days and left for Nassau, the Bahamas on the 6th of December. I was to lead a discussion at the annual meeting of the Templeton Foundation. The accommodation was at the Lyford Cay Club in Nassau, a rather nice place as you might imagine. The rooms are $500 a night and breakfast is $50, but one can, and should, rent a bicycle and ride to the gate of the gated community where there is a shop selling grits, mince and scrambled eggs for $1. Carry this to the bank of a lake, there are many, and, as the Aussies say, “Bob’s your uncle”.

From the Bahamas, I came back to Newcastle on the 11th of December and left for Kolkata on the 22nd for the Christmas break.

And that was the end of a year full of change and movement.

The total: 209,100 Kilometres, just about to the Moon and back. Mostly without frequent flyer miles, being an idiot and not having joined the program on British Airways.

The “Hole in the wall” experiments – current status

2007-10-04T06:22:00.000-07:00

My original experiments (1999-2005) had showed that groups of children can learn to use a playground computer connected to the Internet on their own – irrespective of who or where they are. The fact that children in remote areas, who do not understand English and have little schooling can learn to do this was considered a discovery of sorts. The results were published in the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology in 2005 in a paper that was later awarded as the “best open access paper of 2005”.
It was later noticed that the children who use these computers seem to be scoring higher in English and mathematics. It was also established that they could pass a government examination in computer science on their own. The results were published.
In an experiment conducted in 2006, we observed that the quality of education in remote areas decreases with remoteness. Remoteness, in this context, can be geographical or also social, economic, religious etc. as in ghettos or slums in cities.
We remark that there will always be areas in the world where, due to whatever reason, good schools and good teachers will not exist. Hence, in such areas, alternative forms of education will be needed. No such alternative exists for primary education today. The hole in the wall could be a possible indicator of such an alternative.
In a recent experiment conducted in village Kalikuppam in Southern India, we were able to show that Tamil speaking children could learn the basics on biotechnology, in English, on their own.
6. We notice that new educational technology is always piloted in the affluent
schools of cities where good students and good teachers are present. As a result the educational gains from such technology are marginal and educational technology is considered over-hyped and under-performing. We propose that the highest technology should be developed for and piloted in the remotest areas first.
We also notice that educational technology is seldom developed for that purpose. It is usually technology developed for industry or defence and borrowed by educators. For example, PowerPoint and LCD projectors were developed for corporate boardrooms and not for teachers.
We propose to create a lab that will create and test educational technology for use in remote areas.
We propose to create educational facilities in remote areas of India where groups of children can self organise their learning to pass the government high school examinations (eg GCSE) on their own.
The results of these experiments are likely to be important for all countries, since a shortage of and lack of quality in primary education is a worldwide phenomenon.
In the UK, in addition to the usual problem of quality education in remote areas, there is also a problem of aspiration – children are reluctant to study science, engineering, mathematics etc. for two reasons. One, that subjects such as banking can make them rich more easily. Two, that they can get a good standard of living anyway, even without any skills.
These aspirational problems need to be addressed immediately and technology can be a powerful way to do so.

A badly distributed world

2007-10-04T06:04:00.000-07:00

There are 6 billion people on Earth. That is 6,000,000,000.

Imagine a plot of land 20m x 20m, that is 400 square metres. I think one person can have a very decent sized room, say 10m x 10m plus a garden with a pond in the remaining 300 square metres. Enough to keep a few animals, grow some rice and vegetables and a few trees and plants.

If each human on Earth were to have 400 square metres, it would need 2400,000,000,000 square metres of land. That is 2.4 trillion square metres.

One square Kilometre is 1 million square metres (1000 x 1000 metres). So, 2.4 trillion square metres is 2.4 million square Kilometres. 2,400,000.

That is a stretch of land that could be, for instance, 2400 Km x 1000 Km.

Smaller than Mexico.

Who says its a crowded world?

Self organised learning

2007-02-26T01:25:00.000-08:00

Girls at a hole-in-the-wall computer in village D.Salhundi, Karnatak, India

SOS for UPE - Self Organising Systems for Universal Education

2007-02-25T04:56:00.000-08:00

Schools, education, or the lack thereof

A world with Universal Primary Education (UPE) would be one where every child is educated. In order for that to happen it is assumed that every child would go to school. The current target year for this to happen, according to the UN, is 2015. Because “school” is equal to “education”. While this may be undoubtedly true, many may invert this equation to - “no school” is equal to “no education”. I think we have a problem with this second equation. Education does not happen only through schools. Learning certainly does not. This article is about the problems of schools for UPE and about some alternative learning scenarios.

Let’s look at schools first. I used to live in India and will use Indian numbers for my examples in the hope that these numbers will correctly depict the situation in other countries, when scaled up or down appropriately.

There are over 600,000 schools in India. While this is a large number, the population of India (currently 1.2 billion) is large enough to overcome it. There are 122 million children in India who do not go to school. In order to have the right number of schools for all children in India to go to school, we would need to triple the number of schools and the number of available teachers. There is not enough money to do this, nor enough time, or management capability or institutions. The problem is just too large to solve with traditional, linear methods of scaling up. 122 million children growing up without an education spells trouble in the 21st century. Trouble with a capital T.

Let us, for a moment, assume that we could, somehow, build the necessary number of schools and train the necessary number of teachers, in time. We would suppose that all the schools we have built have a uniform level of quality, performance and efficiency and then, I am afraid, run into a quality of education problem. And that one is even harder to solve than the numbers problem. Here is how the argument goes.

Schools in remote areas do not have good enough:
Teachers: because good teachers tend to migrate to urban schools for better salaries and standards of living
Retention of teachers: The occasional good teacher stays for a while before moving to urban schools
Infrastructure: Local infrastructure in remote or rural areas are constrained by the size and economics of the market available to them. There is not as much competition and variety as would be in an urban area.
Maintenance of infrastructure: It is expensive to maintain infrastructure in remote areas because such maintenance would usually come from the nearest urban area. This also results in a higher mean-time-to-repair (MTTR).

In other words, the farther a school is from an urban area, the worse off it is. The quality of education from a remote school will usually be less than that from its urban cousin. This is a human problem, not an economic one. After all, cities were built for comfort, safety, convenience and so on. So, people want to live in cities. Surely there are exceptions, but most people anywhere in the world tend to congregate towards cities and their suburbs. In the developing world, where rural and remote infrastructure is weak or non-existent, the problem is all the more acute.

A recent survey in India (Annual Status of Education Report for Rural India 2005) shows that 51.9% of children aged 7-14 cannot read grade 2 texts and about 65.5% of these children cannot perform simple arithmetic operations.

Looks like UPE is caught in a bizarre stalemate. Not all the money in the world will correct the problem of lower quality education in remote schools. Schools with absent teachers, no teachers, wicked teachers, sick teachers are abundant throughout Africa, India, South America and other large parts of the world. The more money we spend on teacher development, the more they move to the cities. Without good teachers and administrators, the schools crumble and break. Children remain in schools, only on official records.

The developed world is somewhat better off because their remote areas often have infrastructural facilities comparable to their cities. But only to a limited extent can that attract good teachers. A school in New Jersey will always have a wider choice of teachers, equipment and infrastructure than a school in Alaska, or even Newfoundland. The problem of quality will remain.

It is in this context that we need to look for alternative methods for primary education that are relatively independent of teachers and infrastructure. Educational technology (ET) has traditionally been piloted and introduced first in good schools in urban areas. Since these areas have good teachers, the performance of students is, in any case, good. Hence, not much improvement is noticed in learning, and the role of ET has often been questioned. Many teachers consider the use of technology in education as an over-hyped and under-performing idea.

In view of this, I think that the most advanced educational technology should go first to the most disadvantaged learners. Any advantage to such a learner would be a benefit. For example, a learner in an urban school with good teachers may score 80% in some test of performance. A learner in a remote school with poor resources may score 30% (failed) in the same test. If the introduction of educational technology the urban learner increases the score to 90%, it may be considered too expensive for the value it provides. On the other hand if the same technology were to increase the scores for the disadvantaged learner to 40% (passed), it may be considered vital and very good value for money. A little improvement, at the “bottom of the pyramid” affects larger numbers, permanently.

For technology to be introduced first in rural and remote areas, it must be designed such that it is easy to transport and requires little maintenance.

The “Hole in the wall” experiments

Groups of children can learn to use computers on their own, irrespective of who or where they are.

Groups of children, given access to shared, publicly accessible computers in playgrounds and other public areas, will teach themselves to use the technology on their own.

We found this through a set of experiments conducted from 1999 onwards and often referred to as the “Hole-in-the-wall” experiments.

We found that children given unsupervised access to computers in public or play areas would become:

1. Computer literate – in their own way, with their own vocabulary, but highly effective nevertheless.
2. Better at math and English – I don’t know why, maybe because they learn to analyze and solve problems in groups.
3. More social and cooperative – because they learn that knowledge, unlike material objects, grows with sharing.
4. More interested in school – if the computer is near or in the school premises.
5. Less likely to drop out of school – because they want their computer.
6. Less interested in petty crime – mostly because all their free time is spent at the computer
7. Generate local goodwill – parents like the idea that the child is learning something and not creating trouble at home.

It took us five years of rigorous measurements across the Indian subcontinent to verify these results amongst 40,000 of the world’s poorest children. Almost half of them, girls.

The data based outcomes showed:

Acquisition of functional computer literacy
Improvement in academic performance
Increase in confidence and self-esteem
Increased collaborative behavior

Apart from data-based findings, there is consistent anecdotal evidence of large-scale impact on school enrollment, retention, concentration, attention span and problem-solving ability.

To keep computers working in, mostly, outdoor environments, we had to design several pieces of hardware and software. In five years a design emerged that is reliable and low on maintenance. The design is resistant to vandalism and undesirable adult access. Interestingly, both vandalism and adult access is automatically low in public places where children are present. We were also able to design software to remotely monitor all activity at these “playground” computers.

We found much more effective use of the computers already owned by schools—200 children can become computer literate using one playground computer—making it an effective and affordable method.

Without adult intervention or supervision, 40,000 village children experimented with computers and software to acquire an enduring understanding of the information age.

How it Works

Computers are made available to children in shared, public spaces, free of charge and no structure is imposed on when, how or what they learn.

Shared outdoor public computers, preferably connected to the Internet, incorporating self-protective hardware and software are combined with voluntary group self-learning by all the children of a given community, whether in or out of school. In five or six years’ time, the oldest of these children, now 13 or 14, will be the first computer-literate adult generation of their communities.

The computers, typically located in a government school playground or in similar safe, public areas, are unsupervised and are available to the children at least eight hours a day.

Working in self-organized groups and helping each other, the children typically navigate within minutes and begin to browse in about an hour. Within three months they achieve basic computer literacy, and by nine months have achieved the proficiency level equivalent to the skills of most modern office workers. They also pick up a considerable amount of the English language from common multimedia software.

Educational and other games and content tested with other children of the same age group provides the “minimally invasive” educational input that causes change in educational outcomes.

Several types of school-related content and links are also provided to help with schoolwork. Teachers have been very positive about the whole thing because of the children’s increased interest in learning, higher enrollments, and their concentration on higher level tasks like mentoring students and leading class discussions.

What would it cost the World?

I cannot resist doing this calculation. It is an exercise in fantasy, but one that you might enjoy!

The Earth’s current population: 6 billion
No. of children below 15: 1 billion – usually 15% of the total population
No. of “hole in the wall” computers required: 50 million playground computers, 200 children share each
Cost of computers and related infrastructure: USD 60 billion, each facility with three computers costs USD 1200 to build
Total other costs: USD 6 billion to take care of contingencies in varied terrain
Recurring costs: USD 6 billion per year (that is, less than 2 US cents per child per day)
Time to make operational: Could be done in less than 10 years if an International Agency gets the act together.

Result: No child left behind. Irreversible social change in 15 years as one generation grows up.

Whew.

Gender issues

It is important to mention here that these results are obtained when the computers are placed in a safe, public location, such as a playground. The same computers, when placed in a room inside the school do not produce the same results. The children do not perceive computers in schools as their property and playthings. They suspect some hidden agenda and are afraid of some “catch” in using them. Girls tend to avoid going into closed rooms with boys, unless there is some adult supervisor.

In most outdoor locations, the number of girls and boys are about equal. However, there are some locations, particularly in slums and very poor areas, where there are very few girl users. Ensuring and perceiving safety is important for attracting girls to public computers.

While the girls learn as quickly as the boys, their activity patterns tend to be different. Girls are more practical, they will learn those things that they can use immediately. While boys will experiment, for example, with a lasso (irregular cutting) tool in a painting program, girls will wait until the boys have learnt the tool, then learn it from them and begin using the tool immediately to create drawings.

While both boys and girls use games as the most frequent application, the type of games played differ with both age and gender.

Very young boys and girls play the same games. These are usually simple clicking games such as catching a ball with a net, or playing a sound by clicking on a picture.

In children over 10, boys tend to concentrate on “action” oriented games such as racing and pinball, while girls seem to be interested in more conceptual games. Girls would play chess or games with arithmetic more than boys.

Self organizing pedagogy

Minimally Invasive Education (or MIE, as we call it) was developed by observing and analyzing natural collaborative learning of computer skills among Indian children in 12 ethnically and linguistically different states, from Ladakh to Tamil Nadu (3000 Kilometres apart, north to south), and from Rajasthan to West Bengal (also 3000 Kilometres apart, west to east). Having isolated the common cross-cultural factors in learning, the researchers then focused on enhancing them in ways that were “minimally invasive”, or largely invisible to the children, such as testing and selecting the most effective content, allowing some children to observe a technician performing a task so that they would later teach the others, and occasionally by developing animated tutorial software in which a cartoon character coaches children through a particularly difficult task, such as signing up for an e-mail account. Throughout, all instruction by adults and older youngsters was rigorously avoided, to prevent the children becoming dependent on scarce and expensive resources. Participating teachers were encouraged to assign tasks to be performed at the computers, and to lead class discussions about computer learning, but were asked to avoid direct instruction. As a result, “child teachers” emerged at each of the experimental sites—typically, talented 6-8 year old boys and girls who took on the “teacher” role and taught 3 or 4 “generations” of children to use the computers. In effect, every learner was a teacher and vice-versa.

Highly interconnected systems, such as the Internet, or biological structures such as us, show self-organisation. This field of study, called Complex Systems is mostly studied by Physicists and is relatively new and unexplored. It seems to contain the answers to how life, cognition and consciousness work. Self organizing systems show what is called “emergent behaviour”, that is, behaviour that was not programmed or expected from it. Small changes in the inputs to such systems can cause disproportionately large changes in its output. It seems to me that these are properties that could be extremely desirable for mass education. Could there be a pedagogy based on self organization?

The “hole in the wall” experiments seem to suggest an alternative, inexpensive and reliable method for bringing computer literacy and primary education to those areas where conventional schools are not functional.

Such facilities are not meant to replace schools and teachers, they are meant to supplement, complement and stand-by for those areas of the earth where good schools and good teachers are, for whatever reason, absent.

Education?

2004-12-19T01:06:00.000-08:00

Imagine if you had a handheld device connected to the Internet that you could look at quietly under the table or something.

Suppose you were pretending to be a civil engineer and you actually don't know anything about the subject.

How long could you pretend?

I think if you know some basic science and had a good connection to the Internet, you could pretend to be a civil engineer (or a doctor, or a biologist, or anything!) for quite sometime. Maybe even months or years, before you are found out.

The handheld connected device could do to education what the calculator did to arithmetic.

The question is, if you know how to use a calculator, do you need to "know" arithmetic?

If you have google, do you need an education?

High on thin air

2004-09-23T03:40:00.000-07:00

Ladakh, in the Indian Himalayas is a place that is quite ethereal. It is mostly above the "treeline" at 13,000 feet. There is very little oxygen as a result. When you get to Leh, the only city with an airport, you have to be in bed for 24 hours to adjust to the altitude and lack of oxygen.

About four hours away from Leh is a valley called Nubra. To get there you have to cross the Changla Pass at 17,800 feet. It is a rather disorienting experience, literally.

The mountains in Ladakh are the colour of their minerals, there are no trees to hold the soil. Green mountains of chromium, yellow mountains of sulfur(?) , red mountains of sulfur. It is so hard to describe.

Also about 4 hours away from Leh is the Pangong Lake, 145 kilometers long. One third of the lake is in India and the rest in China. No one knows how deep this lake is. We do know how high it is, though. 13,000 feet.

To get to Pangong you have to cross the Khardungla Pass, the highest motorable road in the world. It takes you up to 18,400 feet and still the Himalayas soar above your head.

Temperatures in the winter go down to minus 50 celcius.

This could be the closest you can get to Mars, on Earth.

2004-09-23T03:38:00.000-07:00

Mountains surrounding the Nubra valley in the Himalayas in Ladakh, India

2004-09-23T03:34:00.000-07:00

Pangong Lake in Ladakh, India

Consciousness?

2004-09-06T23:06:00.000-07:00

Connected systems are those where the state of one node is affected by the states of all other nodes, including itself.

The effect of one node on another can't be instantaneous because cause has to come before effect. So, the state of each node is affected by the past states of all other nodes, including itself.

Connected systems tend to self organise themselves. Sometimes a stable pattern emerges and no further change happens, this is rather boring. But big connected systems, like carbon atom chains tend to continuously change. That is how life happened on Earth, through a process of self-organisation.

Looking at natural history, we could say that connected systems self-organise and self-organising systems cognate. That is, they become aware of their surroundings and themselves.

Cognitive systems become conscious given a few million years. At least, that is what happened on Earth.

All conscious action is based on anticipation. If you raise your hand, your brain decides to do so and imagines where the hand will be - before the action starts.

So, a connected system where the state of each node depends not only on the past states of all other nodes, but on the imagined future states of all other nodes including its own future state, would be conscious.

This could be a simple explanation of what consciousness is.

Primordial diets

2004-09-02T21:54:00.000-07:00

I started out with the Atkins diet. His theory is that the body's insulin mechanism goes out of order with years of refined foods rich in carbohydrates and sugars. Insulin converts carbs and sugars into fat. Eat proteins instead and you won't get fat, and your insulin mechanism will remain in good condition.

I went on the diet eight months ago along with some exercise (running), a vitamin pill a day, and lots of water. So, far I have lost 10 kilos and feel very good indeed!

There is another way to think about this diet. What kind of food are our bodies used to?

Well, Homo Sapiens appeared in Africa around 200,000 years ago. They remained hunter gatherers for around 190,000 years. About 80,000 years ago they came out of Africa through Yemen and beach combed around the world, populating every continent in the world, including the Americas around 25,000 years ago. What was their lifestyle like?

Here are some guesses.

Wake up at dawn, quick wash and hunt for food. That means running, jumping, climbing and swimming. In the process they would normally find eggs, some fruit (a little, no orchards, remember!), fish, small birds that don't fly well, small animals and insects, some edible leaves and veggies (a little, no farms, remember!). Sometimes, honeycombs and large game. All this to be shared by a tribe of around 200 people. Some snoozing in the afternoon, more hunting in the late afternoon. Sometimes intoxicants in the evening. Music, dance, sex. To bed by sunset.

This, I think, will translate to a meal of a few bites of meat or fish, some eggs and leaves. Maybe a bite of fruit. And as much water as they like.

This is what the human race ate for 190,000 years. In the last 10,000 we invented farming and started eating what is now called "regular" food. Refined carbohydrates in huge amounts. Fruits and vegetables, often processed into juices full of sugar. Drinks with chemicals and sugars. Milk and milk products (imagine trying to milk a wild buffalo!).

10,000 years is too little for a biological sytem to adapt to new nutrients. On the average, genetic changes take 20,000 years to take effect.

The result of "regular" food - strokes, heart attacks, diabetes, obesity. I suspect, barring accidents, they used to live longer than us.

They could move about 5 miles an hour, until horses got tamed. Then they could do 17 miles an hour. In the modern cities of today we move around 15 miles and hour in our expensive cars, but that's another story.

Back to the diet, I think all you need to do is to look at whats on your plate and imagine what it would have taken to get it in pre-agrarian times. If it is easy (like a piece of fowl), eat it freely. If it is difficult (like a piece of beef or a potato), eat very little of it. If it is nearly impossible (sugar, milk, flour, bread) don't touch it.

Run and jump around a bit and drink lots of water. Have lots of sex. You will be surprised how quickly your body will respond to a lifestyle it was designed for since the dawn of our species.

Wiping themselves out!!

2004-08-03T21:23:00.000-07:00

In some parts of India it is a bad thing to be a girl child. They are useless, expensive and produce no income. Ever since it became possible to tell the gender of an unborn child, parents started to abort the girl child. In earlier times they simply used to murder them on birth, a practice that is still followed.

In the state of Haryana in India, the ratio of girls to every 1000 boys is just 700 now! In the state of Punjab it is 800. As a result there are many villages in these states with very few women.

The government tried to stop this by banning sex evaluation before birth, but they can do little to stop the murder of babies.

I have a different take on the problem. Let it go on, I say.

Already, young men from these states are travelling all over the rest of India looking for women to marry. Since they know nothing about relationships, they look for impoverished areas where farmers would sell their daughters for money (between USD 100 and 300, each). Recently farmers from Nagpur in central India reported selling daughters to men from Haryana.

Let it go on, I say.

A couple of decades and the Punjab and Haryana genes will be so diluted with more cultured genes from other states that there won't be any Punjabis or Haryanvis left.

They would have wiped themselves, and the problem, out.

Fireworks and child labour

2004-07-23T14:57:00.000-07:00

In India, there is a festival called Diwali when everyone lights fireworks. Its called the "festival of lights" and every home is decorated with dozens of candles on the outside. All the cities look very pretty and everybody is dressed in new clothes. Its a happy day.

The fireworks that are set off on Diwali are mostly manufactured in small scale "home factories" in the state of Kerala. There are thousands of such homes and the work force consists of children sometimes as young as six. It is dangerous work and there have been accidents.

In an attempt to discourage child labour, all the affluent schools of Delhi told their students not to set off fireworks on Diwali. The children took this seriously and tried their best to dissuade everyone from using fireworks.

Seems noble.

The only problem is that the poor children of Kerala got paid even less because of the drop in sales of fireworks. They ate even less than their usual meagre amounts. Their tormentors treated them ever more badly.

All this while the cities felt good about how they were helping eradicate child labour!

Trees in the Himalayas

2004-07-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

There is a lovely hotel called The Glass House on the Ganges. It is near the city of Rishikesh in the Himalayas. It has great rooms overlooking the Ganges rushing through the mountains.

2004-07-22T05:55:00.000-07:00

Trees near the Glass House

Adding pictures

2004-07-20T19:30:00.000-07:00

Well, this is not a great start to my blog. I downloaded "hello" and it won't let me use it because it doesn't recognise my name. So, I did it all over again. No luck. Why do I have to do all this if I am already logged into blogger? Oh well, I suppose there must be a simple answer....

2004-07-20T07:24:00.000-07:00

Well it wasn't easy at all. Too long a story to tell and this is not where I wanted the picture!