The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project, announced at the World Economic Fourm in 2005, generated a great deal of excitement at the possibility of a “wired world” where students can use new technology to develop their creative potential and analytical skills. Access to the tools provided by the project would be a boon to social and economic development in the Global South, providing kids with unprecendented developmental resources. Here’s the OLPC project’s mission statement

OLPC is not, at heart, a technology program, nor is the XO a product in any conventional sense of the word. OLPC is a non-profit organization providing a means to an end—an end that sees children in even the most remote regions of the globe being given the opportunity to tap into their own potential, to be exposed to a whole world of ideas, and to contribute to a more productive and saner world community

But the best laid plans….

The initial aim of OLPC was to provide 150 million laptops to the world’s poorest children by the end of 2008. The program has fallen far short of its original goals, or even its more modest revised goals. As of September, 2008, there were about 660,000 confirmed orders.

What happenend? An interesting analysis of the One Laptop Per Child Project done by Kenneth L. Kraemer, Jason Dedrick and Prakul Sharma at the University of California, Irvine, points the finger at too much of an emphasis on technology and not enough emphasis on the business model:

the OLPC has been stymied by its own misunderstanding of the environment in which it is operating. First, it depended on financing and distribution by host country governments, particularly educational bureaucracies that had little experience with computers in education or resources to make such investments. Second, OLPC underestimated the competitiveness of the PC industry and its willingness to undermine or co-opt any innovation that it perceives as a threat to its business model.

The report finds that the OLPC project has fallen short of its distribution goals because other actors have stepped into the low-end laptop market to provide more attractive alternatives for developing nations. That’s all right with Nicholas Negroponte, the driving force behind the project:

From my point of view, if the world were to have 30 million laptops made by competitors in the hands of children at the end of next year, that to me would be a great success. My goal is not selling laptops. OLPC is not in the laptop business. It’s in the education business.

But that might be a post-hoc rationalization of a larger failure. Initially, the operating system packaged with the OLPC systems were customized, open source-Linux based systems. The idea wasn’t intended to encourage more market activity in this area, it seems that it challenge the market model. Indeed the decision to adapt to market realities and produce OLPC systems with a Windows operating system led to the defection of a number of project members:

Some of OLPC team members like Walter Bender reportedly resigned because they believed that the inclusion of Windows was a shift away from education goals, while Krstic argued that open source purity had become more important than the educational mission to some.

The success, or lack thereof, of the $100 laptop raises interesting questions about the role open source, non-profit forms of social production play in a market economy. Should we best understand them as vehicles that identify market opportunities and then give way to the “big boys” who are motivated by market incentives? Or is there a space for an OLPC project if the logistics are handled correctly (proper integration with local cultures, distribution through non-bureaucratic channels, etc.)?

This will be the first installment of a multi-part series.  José, in a recent blog, brought up some excellent points regarding policy, power, and capital.  So, who are these villainous characters populating the halls of places like AIG, Lehman, and Merrill-Lynch?  A bunch of capitalist MBAs, who may never have read a word of Ayn Rand prose, but act out all sorts of wild, objectivist fantasies, right?

Well, there’s been a recent battle brewing on the Harvard Business blogs on the topic of the recent financial crisis and How to Fix Business Schools.   The editor-in-chief of the Harvard Business Review wanted to start a dialogue on the very topic::

“Are our business schools up to the job? Many critics have charged that the values imparted in MBA programs contributed significantly to the ethical and strategic lapses that led to the current economic crisis. Is that fair? And if so, what needs to change? How can business schools regain popular trust?”–Adi Ignatius

Joel Podolny, a Sociologist, notes in his blog post that “Business schools provide students with many technical skills, but they appear to do little, or nothing, to foster responsibility and accountability.”  Bob Sutton, an organizational sociologist, also brings up some interesting points on the Harvard blog, as well as his own::

• “One of the root problems with business schools is that too many are infected with assumptions that reinforce and bring out the worst in human-beings. In particular, the logic and discipline of economics usually rules the roost at business schools.”
• “I have had Stanford students tell me for decades that Merrill is (or was) fundamentally dog eat dog world to live in and there is no incentive for helping coworkers and you get ahead by ignoring them, doing your work, and occasionally sticking a knife in their back.”

Sutton points a finger squarely at economics, which is a dominant mode of thinking in business schools (more on this later).  On the other side of the fence, Steve Kaplan, an economist, offers up “The Economists Have It Right,” where he notes the positives of economic thinking and how not following good economics leads to bad results::

“The tools economists give to students better equip them to understand the business world they will experience. In fact, one of the ways CEOs of financial services firms (e.g., Lehman’s Dick Fuld, Merrill Lynch’s Stan O’Neal and Citigroup’s Charles Prince) failed was in not understanding the agency theory and economics taught in business school. In particular, it is a simple economic point that it is a bad idea to pay up front fees and bonuses for investments or loans that have long-term payoffs.”

He goes on to state that efficiency advances due to economics has increased world GDP and well-being through businesses and capitalism.

First off, I have three degrees from AACSB business schools, but I’ve always been interdisciplinary and my training was steeped in the social sciences, as well as having exposure to the humanities at the graduate level.  My take is that many business schools have created a received-view, dare I say the hackneyed term paradigm, of solving problems.  I’ve seen and heard arguments about adding rigor through quantitative logics or a emphasis on ethics in the curriculum as solutions.  Given this, I have often wondered what type of students are we creating.  Critical problem solvers or disciples of a rational economics worldview (tempered with business ethics)?  It’s not just about how many economics courses are taken, but rather which paradigms are being used to build knowledge.  Which normative logics are being taught?

I think students pick up from business schools and the workplace HOW work gets done and how to get ahead.  There needs to be no smoking gun memo issued by a manager or a PowerPoint slide by a professor stating this.  How is this so?  It’s all about habitus (i.e., our actions are guided by our learned dispositions within a context) and doxa (i.e., what is taken-for-granted in a given context), borrowing from Pierre Bourdieu.  Business schools teach “the game.”  Pop culture depicts the habitus and doxa of the business game with overkill, but the examples are nevertheless instructive.

Oliver Stone’s Wall Street (1987) {left} has Gordon Gekko state a declaration of principles, seeming to echo the very spirit of Adam Smith himself.  “Greed is good” is declared with almost religious fervor, a manifestation of the final trajectory of Max Weber’s take on Martin Luther’s “quiet revolution.”  Boiler Room (2000) {right} has Jim Young indoctrinate the noobs* to the culture.  Now, imagine these images of hyperbole toned down and couched in lectures, cases, and war stories.  This is not to say that it’s all bad and that all that is being taught is that opportunism and guile are justly rewarded.  I will say that there are patterns based upon dominant ways of thinking about business and organizations, often based upon assumptions of rationality and certain logics (but not others).  One might just say it’s simple pragmatics.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  Sutton, in a comment response to Kaplan, notes what is being done at Stanford::

“…The bulk of the class is getting the students out and spreading ideas — they have spread (or tried to spread — failure happens!): Firefox (by building real browsers); practices for making Wal-Mart employees more aware of the environmental impact of the products they sell; hip-hop music; financial responsibility among younger people; and Facebook. In all cases, they have done these things by working among real customers and employees, and their work was judged by real executives from this companies. In other classes, we have done stuff like redesign and change an all-hands meeting in a real company.

So although the image of practical education most business schools present is the telling of war stories, our approach (which is expensive and inefficient) is to start with and weave in some general principles (including design thinking), some stories about how it works, and then to require the students to actually implement some change. This is a different model of management education than most business school professors imagine.”

Exactly.  I know that this type of approach is likely only at top-tier schools and niche programs.

I’d like to see business schools move towards giving students concepts and tools to re-think processes and practices that go beyond how things are currently done.  I’d like to see programs as incubators of ideas.  Places where students can try things and fail, learning from their mistakes.  I’d like to see business schools get students to think in terms of social systems and to incorporate practical solutions to dealing with the interface of different forms of capital (i.e., financial, social, political, cultural, natural, etc.).  In other words, stop trying to boil everything down to financial capital or over-rely upon particular disciplinary thinking.

I think there is creative work ahead for business schools, particularly given the current scrutiny, as well as the fact that the market for programs is increasingly global.  I’ll leave this installment with a Goethe quote::

“To refashion the fashioned, lest it harden into iron, is work of an endless vital activity/Und umzuschaffen das Geschaffne,  Damit sichs nicht zum Starren waffne,  Wirkt ewiges lebendiges Tun.”–Eins und Alles 

Outside the Beltway links to a new Rasmussen poll that finds the majority of Americans want to throw down over North Korea’s missile launch over the weekend.

Fifty-seven percent (57%) of U.S. voters nationwide favor a military response to eliminate North Korea’s missile launching capability. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 15% of voters oppose a military response while 28% are not sure.

On its face, this is shudder inducing. The implications of an attack on North Korea has serious spillover implications for South Korea, Japan and puts us in an uncomfortable position vis-a-vis China. I though the public would have taken from the Iraq war that military action is fraught with complexity. It seems that the “Axis of Evil” framing is still deeply entrenched in the collective American psyche.

Of course this also highlights the limits of survey research. Here was Rasmussen’s question:

“If North Korea launches a long-range missile, should the United States take military action to eliminate North Korea’s ability to launch missiles?”

I’d submit that this question is priming a military response. It’s pretty logical to finish the sentence “North Korea launches a long-range missile” with “at us” rather than “that fell harmlessly into the ocean” or “into space” or wherever. It’s easy to draw a conclusion that the public is reactionary and incapable of informing foreign policy. However, without proper contextualization, who wouldn’t want the U.S. to intervene to prevent North Korea from launching a strike on the United States?

I’d like to see a poll that asks the question differently.

Here’s one I’ll put away in my ever expanding “future research project file.”

Via

Recently Google began selling location-specific advertising on its search pages. Nancy Scola at TechPresident blogs on what she calls ambient advertising the use of location-specific ads by the AFL-CIO in the debate over the Employee Free Choice Act

Google ads now has a location targeting option, allowing advertisers to either drop a pin on a map or type in an address, and then set a radius within which their ads runs. (Google doesn’t set a minimum circle of influence, but suggests drilling in no closer than 20 miles.)

Scloa notes that the ads have been targeting readers in Maine, the home of the Senators Olympia Snoew and Susan Collins (a.k.a the moderate wing of the Republican party) with passages like “78% of Americans support workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life.”

My question is whether Internet advertising of this form is a medium that lends itself to formal political appeals. The theory would be that people who searched for something related to the legislation would already be cued into wanting to know more about the bill and would thus be predisposed to click on a link to content related to the bill. Makes sense, but we know little about the political behavior of this population of “potential ad link clickers.” Is the group that would break the divide between legitimate link and Google Ad the same as the group that would not link to a Google ad under any circumstances. Are “ad link clickers” more or less disposed to be politically active.

On it’s face, one would think not. But I suspect there are differences between those who reject direct political appeals (i.e. they won’t click on a banner ad) and those who see no distinction (will happily click a banner ad). I’m in the former category. Not exactly sure why, other than most of my friends in high school became car salesemen (as did I for a short time).

Like I said…one for the “to do” file.

Southern California’s unique settlement patterns makes it easier to concentrate the spillover effects of modern life, what economists call externalities, on low income communities. No where is this more apparent than with air quality. According to a study conducted for the united Church of Christ, who for some reason has become the driving force behind bringing this problem to light:

California has the nation’s highest concentration of minorities living near hazardous waste facilities, according to a newly released study. Greater Los Angeles tops the nation with 1.2 million people living less than two miles from 17 such facilities, and 91% of them, or 1.1 million, are minorities. Statewide the figure was 81%.

This figure is so staggering in part because low income communities are concentrated in valleys east of the 405 Freeway in the City of Angels. These valleys trap toxic emissions from the large volume of driving that occurs in this region.

How would you address this policy problem? Is it your responsibility as a Californian to do so?

I think I’m being converted.

For a good part of my intellectual life, I’ve been skpetical of Neo-Marxist understandings of power. As an urban politics student in graduate school, I rejected the views of urban scholars like Harvey Molotch, Ira Katznelson and David Harvey that claims that the dictates of capital proceeded unabated in urban space. The zeitgeist at the time was that urban power (an power in general) was a more open, fluid process. The capital accumulative class might have strong advantages in the U.S. policy process, but the process was open and by no means was the state simply a handmaiden of capital like neo-Marxists might presume. Policy was a contest, the outcome was not predetermined.

Then AIG happened.

Matt Taibi has a particularly effective and scathing piece in Rolling Stone that guides the reader through the impenetrable minefield of new terms that help us unpack the crisis we face: collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, The Glass-Steagall Act, Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Taibi lays the blame for the credit crisis on the combination of a lax regulatory system that allowed companies like AIG to become “too large to fail” and a risk-taking culture within the financial service industry that rewarded immediate profit above all else. As Taibi points out, the state could have stepped in a brought order to this chaos before it was too late, but they demurred:

There’s this notion that the regulators couldn’t do anything to stop AIG,” says a government official who was present during the bailout. “That’s bullshit. What you have to understand is that these regulators have ultimate power. They can send you a letter and say, ‘You don’t exist anymore,’ and that’s basically that. They don’t even really need due process. The OTS could have said, ‘We’re going to pull your charter; we’re going to pull your license; we’re going to sue you.’ And getting sued by your primary regulator is the kiss of death.

All of this could simply mean the “capture” of the state by the financial system. A good public policy scholar would tell you that in the 1990 the financial regulatory system had been “captured” by an iron triangle of interest groups, congressional staff and bureaucrats that agreed on a laissez faire approach to the financial services industry. Not unusual…nothing to see here.

But a good public policy scholar would also tell you that that policy capture is not permanent. A good shock to the policy system, a punctuated equilibrium if you will, would re-open the policy space the include new actors and ideas. Once a major catastrophe happens, policy areas are subject to major shifts. The cessation of constructing nuclear power plants after the Three Mile Island accident is a classic example of a radical shift in the policy space.

So what happened with the financial services equivalent of Chernobyl…. Taibi calls it Paulsonism:

The state is now being asked not just to call off its regulators or give tax breaks or funnel a few contracts to connected companies; it is intervening directly in the economy, for the sole purpose of preserving the influence of the megafirms. In essence, Paulson used the bailout to transform the government into a giant bureaucracy of entitled assholedom, one that would socialize “toxic” risks but keep both the profits and the management of the bailed-out firms in private hands. Moreover, this whole process would be done in secret, away from the prying eyes of NASCAR dads, broke-ass liberals who read translations of French novels, subprime mortgage holders and other such financial losers.

Rather than open up the policy space for a broader consideration of policy alternatives, our response to the financial crisis has been significant bailouts of investment firms with few strings attached. Sure there are some rumblings about the need for new regulation and overblows assessments of our current political climate, like Newsweek’s silly presumption that “We’re all Socialists Now.” But in the main, our policy discourse space remains firmly neo-liberal, even with a seemingly progressive president.

I don’t know about you, but I’m dusting off my Urban Fortunes and City Trenches Social Justice and the City. They have more to tell us that we’ve been willing to hear in urban studies and policy analysis for quite some time.

So it’s time to admit it: We’re fools, protagonists in a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity. And the worst part about it is that we’re still in denial — we still think this is some kind of unfortunate accident

One of my students blogged about not being able to watch ABC’s Lost while studying abroad:

 “Interestingly enough, ABC was the first network to set up a deal with iTunes ‘to seek out alterative distribution venues for its show…’ I personally love that you can watch shows on online form ABC.com. Sometimes, I think its even better than watching it when it originally airs because the commercials are only 30 seconds and I can conveniently watch on Mac while I’m cozy in my bed. iTunes is also great though because when I was studying abroad in South Africa I had no television and ABC.com wouldn’t work outside the country, so I had to resort to buying shows online. I loved the fact that after I bought each show they were saved in my library and I could watch them whenever I liked, without any commercials.”

I’ve run into not being able to watch US content in Canada and was really frustrated when there was no legal way to watch shows like season 3 of The Venture Brothers, as they were being aired in the summer of 2008.  {There’s a possible workaround that I mention in my blog comment above.}  Canadian content in the US, such as the Trailer Park Boys (above) is a thornier problem, as one will need a Canadian web proxy for viewing.  Neither of these shows were available for purchase on iTunes when I was wanting to watch them.

I’m often asked, why is web content being geographically restricted?  A big issue has to do with intellectual property (IP) rights.  Here’s an exchange I saw on CBC about why the Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC) and the Stanley Cup cannot be available online to overseas web surfers:

“O: I have to ask becuase I have a [l]ot of friends who live overseas…

Every time I talk to them they ask me why they can’t watch the Stanley Cup online

AL: One of our most common complaints, for sure.

O: Oh really?

AL: Sure. Our agreement with the NHL is for Canada only. NBC and Versus wouldn’t like it if someone in Boise was watching an HNIC broadcast online, eating into their customer base. Ditto for someone in Sweden (although I don’t know who’s broadcasting competitively there).

I understand the frust[r]ation, though. We’re sending this online to a population that can watch it on main net and in HD.. why give them online? But it’s the way of the future and our numbers were, I’d say, solid for a first-time, and for games that were played in the evening (not online’s prime time by any means).”

The Balkanized Web

So, if you’re in Sweden & want to watch HNIC, you’re out of luck, despite the fact that you{and hundreds of others} watching in Sweden may have effect on revenues, since there’s nobody broadcasting it.

The contractual obligations are keeping the web content geographically bound, despite the web being decentralized and global.   The marketing limitations are keeping content from being legitimately purchased on iTunes {and sites like it} or through pay-per-view/video-on-demand via the web or cable/satellite means.  Geographic restrictions are frustrating audiences, leaving revenues on the table, and limiting the building of global audiences.

It’s clear that broadcasters are keenly interested in revenue streams, but still don’t get it, in many respects.  This Globe & Mail article really shows a lack of creativity in terms of addressing the “what should be online?” question.

“Even in the U.S., where NBC and Fox launched Hulu.com to showcase their programs online, the ad revenue generated from that business is still a mere fraction of network TV revenues, Mr. Eiley said.

In Canada last year, online advertising revenue from TV shows was about 1.6 per cent of total TV advertising revenue. The trend is troubling for broadcasters, since audiences are increasingly demanding online programming. Mr. Eiley said the networks are left with unattractive options for online content – either pack more commercials into Internet shows or charge for content.”

There are several issues going on.  Content as IP is being treated as an asset that must generate revenues, but what about trying to get more people interested in that asset in order to foster future revenue streams.  The networks aren’t always being creative about using Web 2.0 to help build buzz and audience.  They should be trying to leverage Web 2.0 to build audience, but how can you really do this when so much of what is being produced and aired is pure, mind-numbing kife.  

Over the holidays, I saw CBC really hyping Being Erica {see trailer below}, which {to me}, when I saw it in February was like watching a slightly less neurotic Ally McBeal being inserted in a sort of Coen Brothers-esque time-traveling world of suspended quirky disbelief.  Sort of.  The network used a prequel blog and Facebook, making it seem like they were really pushing to not just get the word out, but to get people hooked on the idea of Erica, because they know her.  Plus, even if you couldn’t watch the shows on CBC online, you could purchase episodes of the entire season on iTunes {above}.  

The ratings are so-so for Canada, high 500Ks down to 511K, and it looks like it will get another season, albeit with fewer episodes.  This type of support is a luxury that wasn’t afforded to Douglas Coupland’s jPod.  Not that I’m bitter, CBC.  Not at all.

1. What are your thoughts on TV content on the web?
2. What are some creative ways to use Web 2.0 to deal with IP issues and revenues?

Love or hate Bill Maher, but give him credit for pairing together people that you never ever see together. This last installment has Mos Def in a debate with Christopher Hitchens over Iran’s Nuclear Program. While Ta’ Nehisi at the Atlantic thought Mos Def came across looking paranoid and intellectually lazy, I think Hitchen’s comes off like an oaf, but I think he always comes off that way. While you won’t see Mos Def at the Oxford Union, he is posing questions that require answers.

Read Ta’ Nehisi’s post. Good food for thought.

Aside from my family (and reviewing journal articles), my two great passions are soccer and hip-hop. Both are languages spoken throughout the world with distinct accents, inflections and tones. Here’s an example of soccer’s universality

The Soccer Project from Rebekah Fergusson on Vimeo.

and hip-hop’s:

Open Culture has links to a series of procrastination inducing archival footage from The Mike Wallace Interview.  The archive at the University of Texas has interviews with noteworthy people from the 1950’s.

This interview with Ayn Rand (every twenty year old’s favorite philosopher) is riveting.  As a regular attendee at my campus Objectivist Club as a freshman, it is fascinating to both see and hear Rand’s austere philosophy.   For those who arent’ familiar with objectivism, it’s an elevation (some would say fetishization) of rational self-interest and individualism to the level of virtue.  The philosophy suggests that other-directedness and altruism are forms of enslavement.

Looking back, I can see why this philosophy is so attractive to young people.  It has an empowering muscularity that serves as an intellectual scaffolding for a more emotion based will to power.  It provides an excuse for those who prefer not to engage in the messy business of other people’s emotions and desires.

I particularly love (sarcasm) the part where she discusses how people without “virtue” are not entitled to love.  Sounds like someone had some unresolved daddy issues…

The archive also has an interview with Salvador Dali.