Christopher Herot's Weblog: Chris Lydon

This evening I went to a reception hosted by Chris Lydon and his crew at Open Source. I've been a fan of Chris since he hosted The Connection on WBUR, which was probably the most intelligent news call-in show of its time. Chris and his producer Mary McGrath left the show in 2001 after a much-publicized dispute over ownership, but the two of them are together again at Open Source on WGBH and have again re-invented the format. They've dispensed with the live callers - the quality of the questions wasn't as good at 7 pm as it was in the morning, and it was easier to syndicate the show when it didn't have to air at exactly the same time in all markets - but instead make extensive use of a network of more than 6,000 people who post on the show's blog. Their community suggests topics and guests, and provides questions that are used on the air. Most of the questions are compiled in advance of the show, but people do blog as they are listening and their questions get used in real time on the air. The topics range from politics to technology to poetry and through it all Chris manages to be one of the few hosts who actually reads the books and asks intelligent questions of the guests.

Olpc Walter Bender of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) was on Chris Lydon's show on WGBH radio last night. He had some good answers to the usual criticisms about whether the money would be better spent elsewhere, such as pointing out that in most of the world's schools, there aren't many textbooks either, and given how quickly textbooks become obsolete the $100 laptop may be a more effective mechanism for disseminating knowledge. OLPC is indeed a massive social experiment whose effect won't be known until it is implemented. My prediction is that putting all this computing power in the hands of people in developing counties will unleash a huge wave of talent and innovation. If you consider that intelligence (unlike wealth and education) is probably distributed evenly throughout the world's population, then there must be many budding Steve Jobs who are currently herding cattle and carrying water in the developing world. If even a small percentage of them get access to the knowledge and distribution channels of the larger world there is no telling what they will be able to produce.

Also, I wouldn't bet against OLPC Chairman Nicholas Negroponte's predictions for the future. [Full disclosure: Nicholas was my thesis advisor.] Some predictions of his that many originally scoffed at: