Still the Wrong Answer
Jeff Jarvis tries to dissmiss criticism of the $100 laptop project - but I have a bone to pick on that:
I love the One Laptop per Child project (David Weinberger takes one for a spin here ) and think the criticism of it motivated by PC nitwittery (’you should solve every other problem the poor have before giving them a laptop’) or competitive greed (’how dare you make an inexpensive machine with inexpensive software?’) is ridiculous, even offensive.
PC nitwittery? You mean that some other basic needs, like sanitation and electricity are less useful? You don't think that a bunch of laptops handed out to the truly poor represent nothing so much as a target for extortion? Dismissing completely logical objections is itself stupid.
There are problems with "trying to solve every other problem first". On the other hand, some of those problems might well be worth looking into. Simply dismissing them out of hand is not an argument - it's a refusal to engage.
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Comments
it is the answer for some people
[Jecel Assumpcao Jr] December 1, 2006 10:55:11.000
There are six billion people in the world and the laptop project wouldn't help the children of the two billion richest nor those of the two billion poorest. There are enough left in the middle, however, to make OLPC worth doing.
In the case of Brazil the poor will still have "Fome Zero" to make sure they have something to eat, "Bolsa Família" to pay parents for keeping their kids in school, programs to make sure they have access to electricity by the end of 2008, $2 billion sitting in a bank account (called FUST) waiting to be used to make sure they have access to the telecommunications networks and so on. So I don't see how handing out laptops will make things worse (or even the same) for the poor. And that makes it the right answer to me (I would prefer a Smalltalk computer to the Linux+Squeak solution they came up with, but theirs is far better than nothing).
[] December 1, 2006 11:51:00.000
"PC nitwittery? You mean that some other basic needs, like sanitation and electricity are less useful?"
I totally agree. That's why even India rejected this:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/26/india_says_no_to_olpc/
Two Billion in the Middle
[Wayan] December 1, 2006 12:23:53.000
Jecel has a point - this is targeted at children who already have enough food and water and need a boost in education. Its only too bad that this program breaks down when you start introducing real numbers, not the fantasy $100.
http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/price/the_real_cost_of_the.html
Then its more like $1,000 per child for laptop + implementation + support and even Brazil's $2 Billion would only reach 2 million kids. Brazil has 47 million school kids according to the World Fact Book.