The second day of TED2009 was somewhat more interesting. Oliver Sacks, probably most known (if at all) by the masses for his book Awakenings, upon which the synonymous movie was based. His presentation kickstarted the day focusing on syndromes that affect people with limited vision. One symptom is the creation or fusion of vision with imaginary constructs, sometimes geometric shapes, others tokens from one’s imagination or things that the person has experienced/seen recently.

The next talk was by Olafur Eliasson. To me, It was a bit of a disappointment: I found his presentation arrogant, fluffy and somewhat pretentious and his work since The Weather Project uninteresting.

Ed Ulbrich, from Digital Domain followed, talking about the work behind the recent movie (and specifically the protagonist) (The Curious Case Of) Benjamin Button. The work was good and I was impressed by how frank he came across regarding the deficiencies of his company in this field. I can’t say I was very impressed by the result, but it was a decent presentation. While watching Ed’s presentation I thought that the work presented in this video could more or less help in the automated creation of any actor’s face, somewhat simplifying the workflow process in the future. There’s clearly a lot to be done in the field and I’m sure that Digital Domain, along with others, will play their role in this.
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The OLPC project started with the best intentions of bright people. It got hyped beyond reason, first by some of its leaders (viz. Negroponte), then by gullible politicians and — at another level — by gullible idealists that failed to see what was in front of them.

Throughout its history the OLPC was flawed; flawed relationships with corporations, flawed marketing, flawed software. The intentions may have been great, when Negroponte rejected Steve Jobs offer for Mac OS X, because ‘it was not open source’, but a few years down the road, with the OLPC project laying off half of its staff, with Sugar having become something different entirely and many of the key people behind the original laptop out of the project, with Windows XP being targeted as the de facto OS for the second version of the laptop, due in some years I guess, it seems ironic, it seems stupid, but most importantly it proves that the OLPC XO-2 will be nothing if not just another ‘netbook’ device, with no particular focus on education, the open source and free culture/information movements and so on.
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I’ve been interested in the OLPC project ever since it started in early 2005. For one it represents a great humanitarian effort that — in theory — promises to bridge the gap between the technologically advanced US and Europe and the under-developed or developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In late 2006 I wrote an article rebutting [article in Hellenic] a — largely ridiculous — claim that the leader of the Panhellenic Socialist Party made at the time whereby he pledged that if his party was elected, they would provide OLPC laptops to everyone from pupils, all the way to university students. I presented a number of arguments as to why such a statement implies ignorance of what the OLPC stands for and what its capabilities are, but more importantly how it diminishes the image of that party (and its leader, a known technophile) with regards to technology whilst at the same time offends anyone who knows a thing or two about technology, usability and the OLPC. What was especially annoying is that the claim took advantage of a good project in order to ‘fool’ those sensitive to educational matters, but ignorant about technology. From anyone even remotely following the project, it is clear that the OLPC is not intended for adults (or even teenagers). It is, after all, one of the ‘core principles’ of the programme and it is also evident throughout the hardware and software design decisions. In that article I also made it clear that I believed that while the OLPC might be an excellent educational and recreational tool that brings computing to the mainstream for millions of children between the ages of 6 and, say, 12 years of age, there should first be a review of the options available to the Hellenic Government when the time comes to procure such a tool and — equally importantly — Hellas, as an EU country, should be very well capable of providing ‘grown-up’ laptops to pupils over the age of 15 and should definitely be able to afford higher end laptops than the OLPC for university students.
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Διάβασα στο το blog του Παναγιώτη Βρυώνη σχετικά με μια συζήτηση στην οποία συμμετείχε πριν από μερικές ημέρες στο δικτυακό ραδιόφωνο του ελληνικού κόμματος ΠαΣοΚ σχετικά με το πρόγραμμα του MIT Media Lab, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). Ιδού οι απόψεις μου σχετικά.

Αγνοώντας την αρχική πολιτική φλυαρία είναι εύλογο που ασχολείται κάποιο κόμμα με το OLPC. Απογοητευτική, παρα ταύτα, η συμμετοχή του κ. Παπανδρέου, όχι τόσο χρονικά όσο ποιοτικά. Συνολικά εξέλαβα πως επιφανειακό (στη καλύτερη) είναι το ενδιαφέρον του ΠαΣοΚ και άνευ πραγματικής ουσίας η συζήτηση στο πολιτικό επίπεδο.
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