Under programs like Al Gore's Leland Initiative for Africa, the US government has been working with developing countries and NGOs to jump-start the globalization of the Net. But while the projects have made inroads where macadam is in short supply, the technology itself - like much other foreign aid - has often been trapped in the bureaucratic maze. A new foundation, 2B1, under the auspices of MIT's biggest guns - including AI Lab co-founder Seymour Papert and Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte - hopes to skirt the inefficiencies by tapping the cheapest resource: kids. "We have thought of kids as passive receivers, as not being able to [teach others]," says Papert, the chief scientist of the foundation. "But very young kids seem to master technology very easily ... and they don't cost money."
2B1, the brainchild of 27-year-old Dimitri Negroponte (son of Nicholas, the Wired magazine senior columnist), assembled more than 120 activists, advisers, and a handful of kids from 60 countries this weekend at the MIT Media Lab for their inaugural brainstorming session. The foundation hopes to fund local projects to train kids technologically, but says Negroponte, the key is to avoid bureaucracy at all costs.
"We're trying to bypass the politicians," he says. "We don't want to go into Uganda and make a big to-do about the fact that we've entered." By using indigenous social workers (who were flown to Cambridge), 2B1 wants to fund - not run - small group projects to get just 10 to 15 kids online in each area. The local activists were culled from online applications at the site and the extensive network available through the Media Lab. Though their countries may not be wired, the leaders already are addicted to email, says Negroponte. "When there isn't a meeting," he adds, "there isn't a computer free."
The concept for the foundation came to Negroponte after his father exposed him to a translation software program called Dialect which could map, or represent, 28 languages through a stylized interface. Negroponte, who works for Telecom Italia, considered using the product to develop an international chat room for kids, but he realized they would first need PCs.
The foundation benefits from his dad's support, says Negroponte outright. "We're looking for money and that's where my father comes in," he says. "He's the man about town - that's his magic."
2B1's attempt to slip below government radar may prove to be a big mistake, says international consultant Bob Adams, executive director of the Global Development Center. "Anything having to do with the Net is political, and right off the bat, you have to have a clear understanding what the government policy is," Adams says. "If you go in blind, you end up with a controversy that has nothing to do with your project."
The concept of using kids as intellectual capital to train others is an "extremely American" idea that puts children in a "peer state" with adults, Adams says. Trying to circumvent their parents, however, will prove knotty in fundamentalist communities (like Mali, with its high proportion of strict Muslims), Adams adds.
Papert says a certain amount of cultural crisis may ensue when kids become far more technologically fluent than their parents. "If instability means overthrowing deeply conservative governments, yes I hope it will cause a lot of instability," he says.
2B1's target audience may not need as much training as they think. Taking their first airplane trip from Bogota to Boston, 11-year-old Raul Bertran and 9-year-old Juan Camilo say they already know more about computers than their fathers. "The Net is good because you don't use money," says Juan, who was sent to the United States by the Colombian Secretary of Education. "You use your mind."
From the Wired News New York Bureau at FEED magazine.
