1.30.08 - MARY LOU JEPSEN - 6-8pm
Categories: Design Heroix, Grand Rounds
(Part of the Grand Rounds Monthly Lecture Series, Design Heroix)
Center for Architecture, 536 LaGuardia Place, NYC 10012
6-8pm | One Laptop Per Child [OLPC]
Respondents: Allan Chochinov, Idit Caperton, Gabriella Coleman
Bios:
Mary Lou Jepson has been a pioneer in developing display technologies—from flat-panel televisions, to holography, to laser displays and day-lighting. She was most recently director of technology development in Intel’s Display Division. Previously, she co-founded the MicroDisplay Corporation and served as its CTO. Her recent emphasis has been on single-panel LCoS systems, and her leadership in this area has brought her worldwide recognition as a top innovator in the industry. Jepsen also contributed to several breakthroughs in diffractive optics and holographic display technology, including building the world’s first holographic video system, and the largest hologram in the world, one that spanned a city block (in Cologne). Jepsen holds a PhD in optics, a BS in electrical engineering, and a BA in studio art, all from Brown University. She also holds an MS from MIT, where she studied in the Media Lab’s Spatial Imaging group.
Further info available at OLPC.
Allan Chochinov is a partner of Core77, where he serves as the editor-in-chief of Core77.com, and strategist for Coroflot.com and DesignDirectory.com. In addition to his editorial work, he produces design events and competitions, and coordinates content partnerships. Prior to Core77, his consulting work specialized in product design, design strategy, and writing. He has enjoyed working on design projects in the medical and diagnostic fields, as well as in consumer products and workplace systems. (Johnson & Johnson, Herman Miller, Federal Express, Kodak, A.C. Nielsen, Oral-B, Crunch Fitness and others.) He is associate professor at New York’s Pratt Institute, where he teaches two courses in the graduate I.D. department. He has received awards from I.D. Magazine, Communication Arts, The Art Directors Club and The One Club, and has been named on numerous design and utility patents.
Idit Caperton is a pioneer in the utilization of new-media technology for promoting creative learning, democracy and globalization through Constructionist Learning theory. She founded the World Wide Workshop for Children’s Media Technology & Learning in 2004 to leverage her unique blend of award-winning research, business acumen and leadership in new-media projects around the world. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Dr. Caperton conducted breakthrough research as a Research Scientist at the MIT Media Lab. Her book “Children Designers” received the 1991 Outstanding Book Award by the American Education Research Association (AERA). In 1995, she implemented her research when she founded MaMaMedia Inc. and launched MaMaMedia.com, ConnectedFamily.com, and Papert.org. Dr. Caperton and MaMaMedia established global partnerships, and won numerous honors, including the Computerworld Smithsonian Award for visionary use of information technology in education (1999); the Internet industry’s coveted Global Information Infrastructure Award as the website that has most empowered, entertained, and educated kids (1999); and the 21st-Century Achievement Award from the Computerworld Honors Program for “visionary use of information technology” through the MaMaMedia Peace Project (2002). Dr. Caperton was honored by the Network of Educators in Science and Technology and MIT in 2002 “for devotion, innovation, and imagination in science and technology on behalf of children and youth around the world.” She holds a BA from Tel Aviv University (1982), EdM and CAS from Harvard University (1984 and 1985), and a PhD from MIT Media Lab (1988).
Gabriella Coleman is an anthropologist who examines the role of the law and new media technologies in extending liberal values and sustaining new forms of political activism. Between 2001-2003 she conducted ethnographic research on computer hackers primarily in San Francisco, the Netherlands, as well as those hackers who work on the largest free software project, Debian. In 2005-2006 she was a fellow at the Center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers University and last year was a Killam postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alberta. She is completing a book manuscript “Coding Liberal Freedom: Hacker Pleasure and the Ethics of Free and Open Source Software” and is starting a new project on patient activism on the Internet with a focus on psychiatric survivors and consumers. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including ones from the National Science Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Question for mary-Lou Jebsen:
What parameters will you judge whether the OLPC project is a success? is it whether or not the screen breaks? is it to what degree children in Brazil are familiar with the latest YouTube fad? When will you start to evaluate the success of the project, 5 years, 10 years, 50 years?
January 30th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
What kinds of new media experiences (visual or otherwise) will provoke openness in environmental thought?
January 30th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
what elements of the design in OLPC can be applicable in consumer pcs? how can these elements change the environmental impact that disposed laptops currently have?
January 30th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Some people have been criticizing “One Laptop One Child”, saying the affordable price tag is in exchange for an oversimplified computer and there for not as progressive as the media behind the project suggests. What is you response to these comments, and how do you justify why you chose to simplify the laptop the way you did.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
where and how are the laptops manufactured? just the production alone of conventional computers generates an incredible amount of waste, and the parts end up toxic/non-recyclable. As the aim of the program is to make digital knowledge accessible to schoolchildren, the focus is both on minimizing cost as well as efficiency. can you briefly describe how you were able to produce a “cleaner” device and if there has been interest in incorporating this technology into more mainstream models?
February 6th, 2008 at 2:17 am
Inspiring that the motivator of education plus lots and lots of hard work caused the Unintended consequence of green!
February 27th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Link to Mary Lou’s page at the Design Clinic:
http://x.environmentalhealthclinic.net/profile/MaryLouJepsonCyberProxy
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Inspiring that the motivator of education behind OLPC (plus lots and lots of hard work) caused the Unintended consequence of green: Recalling Nordhaus/Shellenberger, since environmental degradation is a human problem, getting at the heart of human matters will cause more positive changes in environmentalism than dealing with individual ‘environmental’ problems/symptoms. OLPC is a remarkable example of this principle at work. Giving happiness to children along with the tools for possibility and creativity is probably THE most powerful way to positively influence the future of our world.
March 11th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
There is plenty of negative response to the OLPC project, particularly focused on the politics around the distribution and use of the computers. So, it was so refreshing to meet the OLPCs through Mary Lou Jepson’s hand in its creation, and to understand the innovation and advanced technologies that have gone into making them. Aside from the evident advancements that went into the development of the screen, such as the ability to be used in direct sunlight and to have the graphic quality of that of a laser printed document—neither quality is particularly standard on commercial laptops, OLPC’s greatest success from a technological standpoint is its modular quality. What I mean by this is usually successful computer design is associated with sleek exteriors and a discouragement of opening the laptop up yourself to reconfigure the hardware (there is a “genius bar” to fix computers for you, or you are enticed to buy the newer, thinner model). The fact that OLPCs were designed to be modular in that they could easily be taken apart and hardware updated or fixed creates an all together different, and maybe more successful attitude surrounding the technology within the laptop. The report about the girls who started the OLPC laptop hospital to perform these minor hardware adjustments is an instance of how attitudes around computer technology should be, even if not everyone is able to manipulated the physical aspects of the laptop, it is still understood that a “non-genius” will be able to do so, like the girls of the hospital. The technological advancements made in OLPCs are sure to find their ways into commercially sold laptops, but what might be more important to the current generation of computer users would be a return and refocus on the malleability of the hardware and the personal hand within the use of technology. Not to mention that it is in fact more environmentally sound to alter and update a laptop piece by piece as it is needed, than to scrap an entire computer in favor of a newer model.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:32 am
I have mixed feelings about the projected benefits of every child on the planet growing up in front of a computer screen. I think the potential for the OLPC as a learning tool is incredible, but there should be some consideration for the negative implications of learning, communicating, etc, solely through technological means. I am not against the project by any means, but it seems to be more of a technological breakthrough than a humanitarian one. Several of the OLPC features are improvements on the current laptop models which leads consumers to believe they are being charged too much for their Macbook–but I don’t think that was ever a secret. I feel that the OLPC may be a mixed blessing: that it could educate an entire new generation of children and at the same time make this Brave New World even more dependent and inextricably connected to our electronic devices.