Hardwired for the Web

I recently came across the wonderful "Hole in the Wall" project, run by Sugata Mitra, a computer scientist in New Delhi. PBS has an eight minute video segment you can watch here. It's well worth watching. Yes, the sociological implications are significant, but its also just a wonderful, heart-warming story of some impressive young kids realizing their unlimited potential.

Flips and leapfrogs: Evaluating new technologies

Harvard Business School professor Andrew McAfee has a thought-provoking post, A Technology Flip Test, in which he discusses a useful new framework for evaluating technology. Imagine a world in which the new emerging technology trend (e.g. software as a service) is actually the incumbent technology. Would the current incumbent technology (e.g. traditional enterprise software) make inroads against it? Seems to me that is a useful construct for evaluating technology trends in general, and for leapfrogging trends in particular.