[geeks] OLPCs for sale...

[Dan Sikorski]

der Mouse wrote:
>>>>> Cue Poul Anderson's _The Helping Hand_.
>>>>>           
>>>> I'm failing to find a synopsis online, although I can probably
>>>> guess where this is going...
>>>>         
>>> Quick sketch: [...]
>>>       
>> Well, I think that there's a big difference between providing aid,
>> and using the weakness of another culture to force your culture onto
>> their people under the guise of providing aid.
>>     
>
> As far as Terra's intentions went in the story, it was the former.  It
> just turned out to amount to the latter, which was largely my point:
> aid, even when given with the best of intentions and the fewest of
> strings, tends to end up remaking the aided culture in the image of the
> aiding culture.
>
>   
Well, in that case, intent would be the difference, with the end result 
the same.  I feel like this would be an extreme (and as noted, 
ficticous) example, however.  You never know how things are going to pan 
out in the future, regardless your actions or inactions, but there is a 
lot that can be done to help people without trampling their culture.  
Perhaps the people of Cundaloa would not have survived without Terra's aid?
>> If the laptops come preloaded with political or religious propaganda
>> (as far as i can tell, they do not)
>>     
>
> I suspect they do, though probably mild, covert, and not intended as
> such - I'm thinking along the lines of a Latin-alphabet keyboard, or
> Windows preinstalled, or the language defaulting to English....
>   
I don't think the laptops would get too far if everything on them was in 
a language that the recipients did not understand, however it is 
interesting that i cannot find any reference on the website to what 
languages the laptop supports...

Wait, found something here, on the hardware spec page(1), it has: 
"Keyboard layout pictures: international 
<http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Keyboard_english.png>, Thai 
<http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Keyboard%20thai.png>, Arabic 
<http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:AR-MP-v1.png>, Spanish 
<http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:ES-MP-v1.png>, Portuguese 
<http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:BR-MP-v1.png>, West African 
<http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:NG-MP-alt.png>, Urdu 
<http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Urdu-MP.png>, Mongolian 
<http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:MO-MP-v1.png>, Cyrillic 
<http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:RU-MP-v1.png>, Amharic 
<http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Ethiopic-B3.png>;"  It would appear 
that all layouts have latin characters.  I do not know if that is 
typical of such keyboards or not.

Erm...   Here's something...  interesting...  Look at the captions on 
these pictures here:  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Khairat_Chronicle  "The 
teacher explains eToys to Gayatri"  WTF?  Let's hope that's just a 
careless caption, or that the question only came up because the the 
teacher sent a toy home for someone's birthday.

    -Dan Sikorski


1- http://www.laptop.org/en/laptop/hardware/specs.shtml