machine-envy

Two reasons to drop in on openDemocracy this week. The first is a pilot podcast, 20 minutes of audio journalism that takes in Sidney Blumenthal’s view on the Democrats’ victory in the states, Alain de Botton’s view on architecture, and prospects for an independent South Ossetia, as well as vox pops from the oD team. If you’ve got time to have a listen, please give some feedback as to whether you think it is a good investment of oD’s time and resources.

The second is this excellent overview of ICT for development from Patricia Daniel, which makes clear that OLPC/XO-1/the $100 dollar laptop will not be operating in a vacuum in the developing world. David, our deputy editor, has been trying to source a piece like this for a long time - it’s a really useful summary of schemes in the Global South. What I took from it is, much ilke Web 2.0 hype in the West, the projects that work are the ones that are user-orientated, and that people want to use.