I agree with you that my initial comment on Tom Hoffman's blog was speculative, unfair and unwarranted. Clearly you are not anti-American because you admire Doug Engelbart and as you say my other comments were speculative and "not based on anything (you) have ever written or said"

At any rate my off the top of my head response was not conducive to reasoned argument and you have been restrained and principled in your responses

I apologise for those unfair comments and am sorry for any hurt they may have caused

Not mentioning networking features in a case of computer is like talking about features of a car without mentioning that there are also wheels in it. In 2008 a computer without a network? hmm..

The conflict of values between me and the OLPC is very well explained in my original post. They are the points written in bold. I see those points – and the values they represent – ciritical in any educational project, and it looks that OLPC has faild in those.

It is true that the educational leaders of the project have present their worry about the possible technocentrism in educational technology project. Well, words are cheap – like they say.

Well there isn't much "peace, love and understanding" shown towards the OLPC in your original post where you seem to confuse your own values with "correct" educational values.

That the OLPC has multipurpose features of which programming is one. And that you take that one feature that you don't like (and don't critique) to condemn the whole thing in an educational sense. That you failed to even mention the collaborative networking features of the OLPC that you were aware of. That you ridiculed an education project by calling it an engineering project just because it happened to contradict your educational values. That you called it technocentric and failed to mention that the educational leaders of the project have well established positions against technocentrism.

If your original piece had explained more clearly how your values were in contradiction with OLPC values – rather than just assuming that your values are the correct educational values – then it would be more conducive to less emotional dialogue

However, I do not like comments that get personal and try to label me as "deep ecological", "anti American", "anti capitalist", or as a person who do not do his "homework" or "talk poorly researched nonsense". Actually, I am very sensitive about this kind of labeling. Especially when it is purely speculative and not based on anything I have ever written or said.

Please, see some of the comments I wrote to some blogs responding on my original post (I am the “isä” on blogger, if I forgot to sign my comment):

http://ictlogy.net/?p=678

http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2008/01/teemu-talks-nonsense-about-olpc.html...

http://www.tuttlesvc.org/2008/01/why-computers.html...

To have a dialogue you need peace, love and understanding. To have peace, love and understanding you need dialogue.

- Teemu

point 2 is nonsense on two counts. OLPC is congruent with Engelbart and Papert has criticised technocentrism. You could read John Maxwell's history of the dynabook.
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/05/alan-kays-educational-vision.html...

point 3 – you seem to "forget" that mesh networking and a community interface metaphor is central to OLPC, why didn't you mention that to the teacher in Mexico?

As trackback doesn't seem to be working fine, here is the URL to my reply:
http://ictlogy.net/?p=678

Best,

ismael.