♫♫Rising Voices♫♫
Well, my name is Pablo Flores. I am a computer engineer.
And I have been involved in the Ceibal project in Uruguay.
that is about giving computers to the children
at this moment I'm on sabbatical.
I am traveling through many countries.
And in some of these countries I'm taking the time ...
to interview some children
and I am going to work with some schools
in some countries where there are OLPC projects.
I am also working on the Blogging Since Infancy project
that is a project with Global Voices about encouraging children
to create blogs.
What are your impressions of Ars Electronica?
Unfortunately I couldn't go to many lecutres
but I was in the symposium about cloud intelligence
and I think it was really inspiring.
The things that we were talking about so naturally
in this symposium is like a shared vision of the future or where we are going to
That there is a group of people who have this vision
and it is good to be together and see them all together.
Because in some places you find that you are talking about strange things
when you talk about sharing information or making a kind of intelligence by working with people around the world
Here it was very well explained
in a very natural way.
At some point ... it's like there is something very interesting happening in cyberspace.
That at some point it goes to the real world.
And that is what is very interesting.
Like the CouchSurfing project, for instance
It's a virtual network, but it's of real people and, using it, you can change dramatically
your way of traveling. How you experience your travels.
So, it's like the virtual world giving real truth to the real world.
And I think that what it's all about
Not just having tools for having fun in cyberspace
but for changing your way of doing things in the real world.
What is Ceibal Jam?
We make meetings from time to time
to develop software for the children's computers.
So the goal is to make applications
that go to the real needs that we find in our country.
There is a lot of imported software.
But teachers and children and their families ...
are all the time asking for particular things they need
and sometimes it's not so hard to make it.
So we are trying to build a community to help with this.
And at the same time get the knowledge for how
these computers work. And how to make them better.
In my country it is very normal for people to not have ...
much free time.
So that's one of the things we try to respect ...
when we do the Ceibal Jam.
If you don't have time, it's ok, but if you want to collaborate ...
and you can come for one Saturday ...
or two Saturdays every three months, which is when we make the meetings ...
it will be very helpful.
♫♫ Rising Voices ♫♫