Communications of the ACM published a great paper in June 2009 by Ken Kraemer et al about OLPC (one Laptop per child) and the failure of the program to achieve even remotely its ambitious goals. I applauded the paper, for its thorough-going analysis of economic, political, and technical issues -- seldom does ACM or IEEE indulge in wideranging analysis of the multiple facets that go into engineering successes or failures, and this was a landmark article. See it at http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2009/6/28497-one-laptop-per-child-vision-vs-reality/fulltext
The program failure, though few like to use that epithet, is palpable: against a goal of 150 million units in five years (not exactly one laptop per child for the globe, since there are 3 billion or so), the program has delivered 350 thousand machines. Hitting 0.2% of market goals in many companies would be considered "a miss"
Oddly, the article, good as it was, did not address perhaps the most fundamental issue of the project, which in our view would be the question of whether the machine could deliver the right educational experience for the intended user. At our MediaX center at Stanford, we try hard to imagine and construct experiments to test exactly such premises. And we had presented Kentaro Toyame of Microsoft Bangalore with a great lecture last October on exactly this point. You can see it at http://mediax.stanford.edu/video/toyama.mov
So I wrote to the editors, and lo and behold, they printed my submission, which you can view at http://mags.acm.org/communications/200908/?pg10&pm=2&u1=friend
Kinda fun...
Friday, July 24, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
nice surprise
Monday nite, the 40th anniversary of the Moon Walk by Neil Armstrong, we were in Chicago at the Omni hotel for a Gates Foundation dinner. Inexplicably, I was introduced as "the birthday boy" and the emcee tied it to the anniversary for Armstrong's walk. He invited a few words about the way the TV signal came about, and I got one more of those Andy Warhol moments. Nice!
And then, the emcee went on, and said, over at the next table we have a real live astronaut, and introduced Kathryn Sullivan, the first woman to walk in space. She today is the Director of the Battelle Center for Math and Science Education Policy at the John Glenn School of Public Affairs for Ohio State University.
And as we worked yesterday (Tuesday) all day on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education issues for America, her perspective and wisdom infused the group. I marveled one more time at how privileged I am on occasion to be included with such insightful people.
And then, the emcee went on, and said, over at the next table we have a real live astronaut, and introduced Kathryn Sullivan, the first woman to walk in space. She today is the Director of the Battelle Center for Math and Science Education Policy at the John Glenn School of Public Affairs for Ohio State University.
And as we worked yesterday (Tuesday) all day on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education issues for America, her perspective and wisdom infused the group. I marveled one more time at how privileged I am on occasion to be included with such insightful people.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
and where should I go?
I had told the group -- a PostDoc cohort at the University of Utah -- that I had degrees from four "schools" -- engineering, science, humanities, and business -- plus five minors. Moreover, I had worked in five major disciplines, one of which was one of the nine areas of study. Thus, my conclusion is that you cannot, certainly should not consider your schooling to be the ticket for your career.
So what did I recommend? First, it is obvious that the world is being "connected" in such a way that every professional will need to link with others across distance, time, and culture. So learning how to use the tools that facilitate this seems paramount. Second, it is obvious that explicit learning is the least apt to brng strategic value or insight, let alone empathy or community. Thus physical travel becomes key. I rccommended three weeks in a foreign country every two years for a decade to build that visceral understanding. A decade of that, and you'd have a chance.
Afterward, a beautiful woman came forward, and said "where should I go?" I asked 'where have you been?' She'd been born in the Ukraine, traveled to London as an adult, then to California, her dream. She'd been in the US 7 yeare. I brightly said, "CHINA"! She retorted that she already knew China. I said "how?" She said she'd read books, watched documentaries, and talked to Chinese friends. I asked if she'd known about the US that same way and she nodded vigourously. But upon asking if the US was like she learned while in the Ukraine, or even London, and she replied, "oh my NO."
I was silent. Maybe a minute went by, she said YES
Nothing beats bein' there, doin' that
So what did I recommend? First, it is obvious that the world is being "connected" in such a way that every professional will need to link with others across distance, time, and culture. So learning how to use the tools that facilitate this seems paramount. Second, it is obvious that explicit learning is the least apt to brng strategic value or insight, let alone empathy or community. Thus physical travel becomes key. I rccommended three weeks in a foreign country every two years for a decade to build that visceral understanding. A decade of that, and you'd have a chance.
Afterward, a beautiful woman came forward, and said "where should I go?" I asked 'where have you been?' She'd been born in the Ukraine, traveled to London as an adult, then to California, her dream. She'd been in the US 7 yeare. I brightly said, "CHINA"! She retorted that she already knew China. I said "how?" She said she'd read books, watched documentaries, and talked to Chinese friends. I asked if she'd known about the US that same way and she nodded vigourously. But upon asking if the US was like she learned while in the Ukraine, or even London, and she replied, "oh my NO."
I was silent. Maybe a minute went by, she said YES
Nothing beats bein' there, doin' that
Carver Mead and faint praise
Flashback -- when Liesl and Cindy came to the ACM Black Tie ceremony last month, it was reminiscent of the night eleven years earlier at the National Academy, when the Smithsonian sponsored the "200 Wizards" event around a book. Something like 120 of the 200 assembled, also a Black Tie event, and I was privileged to take the lecturn to give the Allan Newell Award from ACM to Carver Mead. I made a short speech re 'knowing hin longer than anyone in the room' and his role in inventing the Cochlear implant. Vint Cerf and his wife were in the front row, and I told the story about him calling her from the White House re his Nat'l Technology Award -- one of the first telephone calls she ever heard. She was in tears, so was Vint, and Carver came forward and accepted the award graciously. I was "off the hook"
Carver is semi-famous, could have been more so since he created "Moore's Law" for which Gordon (co-founder of Intel) gave the talk that coined the name of the famous law about how fast semiconductor capability would develop.
After dinner, Carver was to give a talk at this soiree. My three daughters -- Sharon, Cindy, and Liesl -- were all there, along with Jenny; we all sat in the second row, expectantly. I didn't expect, though, to hear Carver start by saying that he had been thinking about the Newell award on the plane ride to D.C. The Newell Award is for fantastic teaching. Carver said that he tho't about how many PhD students a professor will have in a lifetime -- maximum, 400. He said that it was easy to recall the Best Ten. They knew the book cold, they could give the lecture better than the professor, they had no problems with calculations or the issues.
He went on, to say he could also easily remember the Worst Ten. The audience murmured, YES they could too! He said the Worst Ten didn't know there was a book, or they argued with it, or they never came to class, or ... The room was atitter. And then he looked at me, and said: "and one of them just introduced me"
I was stunned. My daughters all turned in unison to me, and screamed "DAD!" And what seemed like minutes went by, in kind of a daze.
And then Carver went on to say: "and the pictures in this book, and on these walls, I have found out in the past forty years, are from those in the second group, not the first. Whew!
Carver is semi-famous, could have been more so since he created "Moore's Law" for which Gordon (co-founder of Intel) gave the talk that coined the name of the famous law about how fast semiconductor capability would develop.
After dinner, Carver was to give a talk at this soiree. My three daughters -- Sharon, Cindy, and Liesl -- were all there, along with Jenny; we all sat in the second row, expectantly. I didn't expect, though, to hear Carver start by saying that he had been thinking about the Newell award on the plane ride to D.C. The Newell Award is for fantastic teaching. Carver said that he tho't about how many PhD students a professor will have in a lifetime -- maximum, 400. He said that it was easy to recall the Best Ten. They knew the book cold, they could give the lecture better than the professor, they had no problems with calculations or the issues.
He went on, to say he could also easily remember the Worst Ten. The audience murmured, YES they could too! He said the Worst Ten didn't know there was a book, or they argued with it, or they never came to class, or ... The room was atitter. And then he looked at me, and said: "and one of them just introduced me"
I was stunned. My daughters all turned in unison to me, and screamed "DAD!" And what seemed like minutes went by, in kind of a daze.
And then Carver went on to say: "and the pictures in this book, and on these walls, I have found out in the past forty years, are from those in the second group, not the first. Whew!
BLACK TIE(d)
ACM is a wonderful professional society, even if it is a little snobbish about who all can join its ranks. I joined once, when I migrated from EE hardware design to CS software design (only to discover that "purists" {e.g. ACM'ers} only count 'real' software, not microcode or machine code)
So, I un-joined, and something like eighteen years later, Gwen Bell saw me on a cross-country airplane ride and persuaded me to run for President of ACM, to which I didn't even belong. I rejoined, and won somehow. At my first SIG meeting, though, the irascible chair of SIGADA bellowed out "what qualifies you to be President of ACM?" One minute into a perfunctory opening speech, this outburst brought me up short. And directly, I had an out-of-body experience, one of those things where you kinda look down and see your lips moving, but you have no idea what they're about to say...
I heard the following utterance: "you, sir, have the wrong question. The question is, 'why didn't you have anyone qualified out of sixty-two thousand members?'" Hal Hart, the impertinent questioner, didn't ask any further. When I finally figured out that he too worked in industry, for TRW instead of "my HP" (our best customer in fact for years), and he too lacked a PhD, and he was consigned to work on ADA by his company's military mission, I actually felt sorry for him.
That kind of arrogance seems inbred to some of these groups. Eric Sumner, long-time Bell Labs guru, had a similarly smug salutation when I joined the IEEE Executive Committee. No question that Sumner was talented, even brilliant, at what he was good at, but civility and manners were missing in his curriculum. Sort of like Barney Oliver at HP. One wonders how much more they might have accomplished if they had been able to tolerate help, never mind encourage it.
So, on this night in June 2009, I'd been invited to a soiree, to receive acknowledgment as an ACM Fellow. Jenny came, as did two daughters -- Liesl and Cindy. I stood beside Alan Kay, in a cohort that included Pat Hanrahan (Pixar and Stanford), and Bill Buxton (Alias Research, GUIs) so it wasn't exactly like I was the last one admitted. It was satisfying, and much appreciated!
Odd, though, I'd have thought that somewhere along the way, maybe in the past thirty-six years, that ACM might, just might, have come to appreciate that Logic Analyzers and Microprocessor Development Systems are the reason that 99% of computing systems today are not mainframes or mini's, but are instead micro-based such as PCs or even micro-controller based such as the automata that open our doors, calculate our fluctuating gas prices on the pump and control our traffic signals. Never mind the micro's that run our cellphones, PDAs and iPODs
No... the award wasn't for any of that, nor for the Moon Monitor. It was "for service to ACM" by which they meant "served as ACM President without sullying the office" and helped later (sort of ) with the mnority report on job migration (how should I have known that the purpose of the report was to endorse outsourcing and offshoring?).
It didn't mention the ACM Digital Library or Project Argus for ACM itself, the first widespread semi-integrated Computer-Conferencing / Video Conferencing / Data Conferencing system deployed at HP, the code coverage work that helped secure Honeywell's processes from 'boomettes' (think of Union Carbide and the Bhopal, India disaster), done at Veritas, or the secure fail-safe kernel OS that was the underpinning for Los Alamos and the "traveling defillibrators", plus of course the original Palm Pilot. Each of these was useful, meaningful, unique software. But no, I didn't write the code. So, what's to honor?
Nonetheless, the award felt good. I was not as chary as Groucho Marx, and his famous remark that he wouldn't accept an award from any group dumb enough to give him one. It felt actually just great.
So, I un-joined, and something like eighteen years later, Gwen Bell saw me on a cross-country airplane ride and persuaded me to run for President of ACM, to which I didn't even belong. I rejoined, and won somehow. At my first SIG meeting, though, the irascible chair of SIGADA bellowed out "what qualifies you to be President of ACM?" One minute into a perfunctory opening speech, this outburst brought me up short. And directly, I had an out-of-body experience, one of those things where you kinda look down and see your lips moving, but you have no idea what they're about to say...
I heard the following utterance: "you, sir, have the wrong question. The question is, 'why didn't you have anyone qualified out of sixty-two thousand members?'" Hal Hart, the impertinent questioner, didn't ask any further. When I finally figured out that he too worked in industry, for TRW instead of "my HP" (our best customer in fact for years), and he too lacked a PhD, and he was consigned to work on ADA by his company's military mission, I actually felt sorry for him.
That kind of arrogance seems inbred to some of these groups. Eric Sumner, long-time Bell Labs guru, had a similarly smug salutation when I joined the IEEE Executive Committee. No question that Sumner was talented, even brilliant, at what he was good at, but civility and manners were missing in his curriculum. Sort of like Barney Oliver at HP. One wonders how much more they might have accomplished if they had been able to tolerate help, never mind encourage it.
So, on this night in June 2009, I'd been invited to a soiree, to receive acknowledgment as an ACM Fellow. Jenny came, as did two daughters -- Liesl and Cindy. I stood beside Alan Kay, in a cohort that included Pat Hanrahan (Pixar and Stanford), and Bill Buxton (Alias Research, GUIs) so it wasn't exactly like I was the last one admitted. It was satisfying, and much appreciated!
Odd, though, I'd have thought that somewhere along the way, maybe in the past thirty-six years, that ACM might, just might, have come to appreciate that Logic Analyzers and Microprocessor Development Systems are the reason that 99% of computing systems today are not mainframes or mini's, but are instead micro-based such as PCs or even micro-controller based such as the automata that open our doors, calculate our fluctuating gas prices on the pump and control our traffic signals. Never mind the micro's that run our cellphones, PDAs and iPODs
No... the award wasn't for any of that, nor for the Moon Monitor. It was "for service to ACM" by which they meant "served as ACM President without sullying the office" and helped later (sort of ) with the mnority report on job migration (how should I have known that the purpose of the report was to endorse outsourcing and offshoring?).
It didn't mention the ACM Digital Library or Project Argus for ACM itself, the first widespread semi-integrated Computer-Conferencing / Video Conferencing / Data Conferencing system deployed at HP, the code coverage work that helped secure Honeywell's processes from 'boomettes' (think of Union Carbide and the Bhopal, India disaster), done at Veritas, or the secure fail-safe kernel OS that was the underpinning for Los Alamos and the "traveling defillibrators", plus of course the original Palm Pilot. Each of these was useful, meaningful, unique software. But no, I didn't write the code. So, what's to honor?
Nonetheless, the award felt good. I was not as chary as Groucho Marx, and his famous remark that he wouldn't accept an award from any group dumb enough to give him one. It felt actually just great.
Friday, July 17, 2009
YeeGawds a BIG birthday
A lot of people key on BIG birthdays, like 16 or 21 or 50. I've gotten to where I think any of them is a key milestone. My own pending big day is "69", sometimes considered phallic or prurient, but by this age, some of that thinking seems... well, mostly thinking. Feeling, emoting, sensing -- all seem better than thinking on occasion, and this feels like one of those occasions.
On my 29th B'day, Neil Armstrong strode confidently onto the Moon's surface, and an editorial in today's San Jose Mercury-News lamented that within another sixteen months, America will have foregone the opportunity to keep that technological capacity. It is a good editorial, by Charles Krauthammer. See http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_12852490
I was impressed, of course, on July 20, 1969 that we were able to SEE the foot land on the moon. Until 4 months before, the plan had been to do a radio broadcast, not TV, but the HP1300A with a modified 20MHz z-axis amplifier enabled space video transmission. This is the semi-famous box that earned me the dubious honor of The Medal of Defiance from Dave Packard, awarded a mere thirteen years later.
Question -- since we learned today also (front page story) that NASA erased the Moon Walk video some years later (seems they were too broke to buy new videotape, so they erased 200,000 tapes and started over) ; see the story titled "Oops, we erased the Moon Landing" -- how significant was this event? How many people watched it? How memorable was it?
What compares with it for audience reach? Would it have made as much impact if only radio?
On my 29th B'day, Neil Armstrong strode confidently onto the Moon's surface, and an editorial in today's San Jose Mercury-News lamented that within another sixteen months, America will have foregone the opportunity to keep that technological capacity. It is a good editorial, by Charles Krauthammer. See http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_12852490
I was impressed, of course, on July 20, 1969 that we were able to SEE the foot land on the moon. Until 4 months before, the plan had been to do a radio broadcast, not TV, but the HP1300A with a modified 20MHz z-axis amplifier enabled space video transmission. This is the semi-famous box that earned me the dubious honor of The Medal of Defiance from Dave Packard, awarded a mere thirteen years later.
Question -- since we learned today also (front page story) that NASA erased the Moon Walk video some years later (seems they were too broke to buy new videotape, so they erased 200,000 tapes and started over) ; see the story titled "Oops, we erased the Moon Landing" -- how significant was this event? How many people watched it? How memorable was it?
What compares with it for audience reach? Would it have made as much impact if only radio?
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