In my classes I try and pose the “surrogate brain” model…it helps that certain sites are blocked…but I usually unlock those sites anyway because it is the social network sites that are the actual surrogate brains and parents of these teens.

(This was a great blog post. More blog posts in general would be ever-so-nice for the non-security hangers-on.)

I believe that if a more family oriented ownership model is promulgated, the likelyhood of parents supervising computer use is increased. Neither giving the children giving the children complete freedom nor allowing oppressive parental restrictions would be conducive to the children’s growth, but the only people who have a right to regulate that balance are members of the family themselves. Domestic freedom should be considered a form of individual freedom.

These devices should most likely be the property of the family, and there should be a large amount of flexibility in terms of cultural choices about ownership. The English philosophy of property has certainly caused enough poverty over the last four centuries to justify a healthy, if not goodly, amount of caution in this area.

Fascinating. I find it particularly interesting that, despite educational software from the Ministry being available to the parents in the voucher program at no cost, few appear to want it or install it, and few children report using what educational software was provided.

I should think the reason for this is obvious. You pointed out, quite correctly, in Sic Transit Gloria Laptopi that people, especially ordinary or computer illiterate people, need or at least want software that just works. They cannot be expected to install software themselves — even if it is free of charge and its use is promoted by a government entity.

Oddly enough, this is really where Windows falls short of the goal line. I think it is safe to say that anyone reading this imagines a whole software environment when Windows is mentioned. Unfortunately, this is not the way Windows comes. Unless the computer retailer installs a bunch of “unlicensed” software or adds a lot to the price of the computer, Windows is pretty much useless out of the box.

True, nowadays Windows comes with a web browser and IM software, but these cannot be used to write a paper for school or build a website. Almost all the software in the Windows “ecosystem” comes separately from Windows itself and usually for an additional charge. Even drivers must be installed — I frequently forget this until a friend needs help with such an activity (One incident when I spent two hours trying to make Nokia driver work to transfer files comes to mind. . . In the end I had to copy the files to my Linux phone — which of course just works, except for RealPlayer — and send them over BlueTooth).

For readers who do not agree with this, try it out yourself. Go buy a copy of WinXP Home (if they still sell it), install it, and see if anything productive can be done with the basic install. There will be no office software, no image/photo manipulation software, no email software, no IM except for MSN Messenger, no programming software, no PDF software, no archiving software, no ebook reader, and only a few well known and hardly educational Windows games.

Linux, in contrast, can and often does include out of the box all the educational, office, or other necessary software at no additional cost to the distributor — and without the risk of BSA knocking in his door and confiscating his merchandise as “evidence”. The EeePC, for all its shortcomings, comes with a large amount of educational software at purchase time. Ubuntu users are used to having all the essential desktop software available the first time the computer is powered up. This is a much better example of “it just works” than the Windows empty room model.

In short, most people cannot or will not install software on their computer. They will maintain the software environment that came with the computer at purchase time. An “upgrade” will be a replacement computer. How can governments expect kids and parents to install their educational software? Answer: They can not. This is why educational computers have to be educational from deployment. Just as it cannot be expected that power will be available, it also cannot be expected that children or parents will have the interest to do the kind of maintenance that Windows users have grown accustomed to.

For this specific problem, however, there is a solution. Installation of the educational software should be required to take advantage of the voucher. In this way, the vendors would do the install to sell a comliant computer and the educational software would be a permanent part of that static digilith of a home processing appliance.

There might be a flaw, the experiment relies on there being a gradual continum of socioeconomic characteristics on either side of the breakpoint. When you examine parent education or gender, this assumption holds true. When you look at parent year of birth, the low income group is not a gradual continum. There is a distinct group at near zero income which is not part of a continum.

Looking at educational outcome, the low income group appears to have different characteristics to the high income group, possibly because the low income group is composed of two distinct populations. The two lines of best fit appear to have different gradients. There is less of a discontinuity at the breakpoint than different income trends in the two populations. Indicators show more of a U curve than the expected sawtooth. This may invalidate the technique of using a discontinuity in the line of best fit.

The presence of a near zero income group, with totally different characteristics, may be tipping the line of best fit into an unnatural gradient and creating an artificial discontinuity at the voucher breakpoint.

Needs more analysis.