One Laptop Per Child

[Chuck Robey]

Robert Marella wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:56:34 -0500
> Robert Huff <roberthuff at rcn.com> wrote:
> 
>> 	The problem I have always had with this is computer use does
>> not exist in a vacuum; it changes, and is changed by, the society in
>> which it happens.
>> 	If I look at the countries of the "first world", I see places
>> that have walked the path from the written word to the telegraph to
>> the telephone to the computer.  At each step they've tested the new
>> technology, learning what it can and cannot do, discovering stuff
>> the inventors never even imagined, discarding ideas that are
>> techically problematic or culturally unpalatable, and adapting to it
>> as it adapted to them.
>> 	Now consider dropping 100,000 OLPC on a country where the
>> (median and mode) hardware layer is paper and ink, the government -
>> often autocratic and kleptocratic - cannot manage to install and run
>> a 1950's era phone system, and religious leaders fulminate against
>> imunization as a "foreign plot".  Even under the best of
>> circumstaces exactly what do people reasoaly expect to happen?
>>
>>
> In my opinion you underestimate the abilities of people. There is no
> need for the people of the third world countries to "evolve" as we did.
> One only needs to look at the progress made in China over the last few
> decades. People who never had a telephone, facsimile, radio or in some
> cases even books are now using cell phones, computers and televisions.
> 
> China is becoming more capitalistic, if not democratic, not because the
> government wants it to but because it has to. The people are more
> knowledgeable about the rest of the world because of the new ways of
> communication.
> 
> If only one percent of the 100,000 laptops in your above example were
> to fall into hands of some child who is awakened to a new world then
> that is 1,000 children who will grow up and help change that country.
> 
> As someone else stated, "It's my money". I have completed the "give
> one, get one" order form. I hope my laptop is sent to a worthy child
> but if not so be it. I have not decided what to do with the one that I
> receive. My grand daughter is only 3 and I think that is a little to
> young. I will probably give the laptop to one of my great nieces.

Perfectly correct, but in terms of getting the most results from your 
dollar, using this way is tantamount to purning your cash.  Just because 
you might get some vanishlingly small return from your money is simply 
no reson to waste your money like that.  No when better options exist.