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Forum at Open Society Institute in NYC on new media in closed societies featuring John Kelley, Evgeny Morozov, myself and others.
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Lovely piece on the need for local product design, focusing on a couple of notable case studies, like a Whirlpool washing machine that sold poorly in India as it had a disturbing tendency to shred saris. Some useful background on the rise of emerging markets and the challenges of selling to an extremely diverse range of "emerging market" consumers
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OLPC lays off half its staff, announces a refocus on "no-cost connectivity", digital books and developing the next edition of hardware. Sounds like a bad omen for anyone doing tech nonprofits in this environment, and raises some questions about who's going to take on the really hard parts of OLPC – desiging educational uses, distributing and supporting laptops on the ground.
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Excellent piece from Henry Farrell arguing that the rise of netroots around Obama suggests that we may be seeing a more involved citizenry, but that involvement may be around partisan lines, not the cross-partisan organizations Robert Putnam and others have hoped for.
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