[geeks] $100 One Laptop Per Child - grist for the mill

[Mike Hebel]

Thus spake Charles Shannon Hendrix:
> Sat, 18 Nov 2006 @ 16:44 -0800, William Kirkland said:
>
>> Education *is* important, though there are basic needs which have
>> priority, just so that the potential students will learn. Until those
>> needs have been addressed, one may find a tree would make a better
>> student.
>
> I hate to say it after criticizming Dvorak, but he called this one
> right, at least partly.


So a person desparate to make his life better would not work to learn?


>>From what I understand in talking to people who've worked in africa,
> almost no one would afford a $100 laptop, and few villages could come
> close to affording a $300 network link.
>
> The vast majoirty of people there have annual incomes measured in single
> digit US dollars, assuming they have any at all.


These are to be sold to GOVERNMENTS and ORGANIZATIONS not directly to the
people themselves.  In theory the people get them for free.  Produce
enough of them and the country will likely overflow with them so even the
most corrupt governments won't be able to control them.


> To me, if the people solved their fundamental problems--slavery,
> genocide, civil war, unchecked disease and causes thereof, near total
> lack of national will, and so on--and created a stable civilization,
> they probably would not need anyone's help getting laptops.


You work for the Federation Temporal Adjustment Division don't you.  Or at
least you love paradox...

One FUNDAMENTAL solution to solving the above problems you've mentioned is
EDUCATION.


> There *are* areas where good education is available, and yet it doesn't
> seem to help much in the absense of the will to use it.


Except that travel is more expensive than growing the food you need to
survive.  These things can be handed out by almost anybody.  All you'd
have to do is get them to them.  Beside corrupt government control that is
one of the biggest problems with this plan.

Making these things useful is not the issue - they ARE useful.  And useful
to even the poorest people by teaching them better ways to live and
survive.


> I think it would be nice if good technology could be provided to them,
> but lacking solutions to their other general problems of survival and
> stability, it won't really help much.


I think you're stuck in "Catch 22" mode.


Sorry if I sound harsh here but I grew up being told that I would never
amount to anything.  They told my mother that I was never going to be
anything but an idiot or basic working slave.  Now, the way I see it,
you've already decided the same thing about these people.  And that makes
me angry.


Mike Hebel
----
I forgot what I was going to say here...