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Monday, January 10: Tech Philosophy A hi-tech campus and a Delhi slum share adjoining walls. A hole is poked through for a computer screen to show through on the side with the tents, the open fires, and the stench of sewage. Controls are a joy stick and a red and a green button. It all just appears one day without explanation. The community is curious. Adults look but don't touch. Kids touch. They figure out, within a few days, how to access the Internet, how to use a painting program, how to cut, copy, paste. It becomes a fixture in the community. The adults send the kids to check their daily horoscope on a newspaper site. "How do you like using the computer?" one might ask these children. "Computer?" they say. "What is a computer?" They wait patiently when the hourglass symbol appears. They have never seen an hourglass, it is not a part of Indian culture, but it looks like Shiva's drum. "What is it? Why do you stop when that thing appears?" asks an adult. "Because that's when it's thinking," they reply. I stood, disbelieving that the child in front of me was completely untrained as he opened a paint program and drew the flag of India. Other kids looked on, learning as he had, by observations and hands-on experimentation. A girl of about 5 held her baby sister on a tiny jutted hip and looked on. When the boys left she shifted the baby on her left side and took the joystick to experiment for herself. Sanjiv Kataria, VP of Corporate Communications & Marketing Services, stood in his suit and tie in these unlikely surroundings and explained it with obvious pride. The adults of the slum barely gave us notice. Why do it? That's the question I asked the creator of this project, Dr. Sugata Mitra, Sr. VP of NIIT's Centre for Research in Cognitive Systems. "I was asked that same question by my boss, but I had to tell him that if I knew why I was doing it, I wouldn't have to do it!" I must say that I am impressed by the apparent freedom of thought allowed in this unbelievably huge corporation. NIIT, National Institute of Internet Technology, has in it's vision statement the allowance for making mistakes. Interviewing three vice president today, I was struck by their enthusiasm, not only for their company and their positions, but by their contributions to society, and their far-reaching influence in the world, as the train more and more people to use technology and to create careers for themselves in technology. But more on that later. I have much to write about these projects and the three men I interviewed today - the third was Shrikant Inamdar, Sr. VP of Software Engineering Business. But for now, I introduce the Hole in the Wall project with these photos. Also see the photo gallery for NIIT and the Hole in the Wall Project RETURN TO DISPATCHES RETURN TO HOME |