Jo la Science

A Social Desk Lamp

June 13th, 2007

Your desk lamp doesn’t understand you. You wish it could be more sensitive to your needs. You wish it could move freely like an animated lamp from the PIXAR cartoon company. Well, perhaps one of these days you will put your old lamp in the trash and replace it with one that communicates with you.

Crazy? Maybe not. Imagine a lamp that would “feel” when you want more light. Sensing your needs, it would slowly bend its graceful neck, bringing its illumination closer to your page to better suit your eyes, because it “understands” your movements.

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Technology Generation

May 20th, 2007

For my generation of people, personal computers and cell phones are just routine.

We’re surrounded by technology devices and wonder how our parents got along without them back in the 70’s. A generation gap has formed: they believe that technology affects the way we build interpersonal relationships.

The OLPC mission misconception

January 3rd, 2007

On a rainy evening on January 17, 2007, Walter Bender, president for the software development at the non-profit One Laptop Per Child association (OLPC), arrives at the MIT Museum in Cambridge around 6:30 p.m. He parks his Peugeot mountain bike against the wall, on the left side of the Museum temporary door.

His yellow helmet in one hand, he climbs the stairs leading to the Soap Box event conference room, balancing his steps to the rhythm of his k-way trousers hiss. The atmosphere is convivial, less than fifty people, men, women and children joined the event, and sit in arc in front of the soapbox. While John Durant, director of the MIT Museum introduces him, Bender pulls two green and white plastic laptops out of his backpack. When he opens them, the two antennas give the laptops a frog silhouette.

Here they stand, on a tiny podium, the famous $100 laptops.

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