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RE: Misguided?
By therealnickdanger on 8/8/2008 11:12:32 AM , Rating: 0
So now, when they are starving and watching their villages burn from brutal, genocidal guerilla attacks, they'll be comforted with knowledge of the history behind the conflict - courtesy of Wikipedia.

Sorry, the cynic in me couldn't stay silent.

I agree that OLPC is valuable in stablilized areas, but it does still feel a lot like placing the cart before the horse. So what is little Zubunta to do with his word-processing skills in an area with no printers or where they can't afford a ream of 89+ Ultra-Brite? How does he turn in a "paper"? The village has wi-fi, but are they sharing a 14.4k connection? Is MS Paint as flexible as Crayola? Who is going to make education software for OLPC? Will it promote a single language? Will it have an agenda? Will having an OLPC really help solve a problem in his home village or will he move away to India and answer tech support for Dell, never to return?

Where's the infrastructure to support the benefits of the OLPC?

RE: Misguided?
By lightfoot on 8/8/2008 1:02:33 PM , Rating: 4
So what is little Zubunta to do...

At a $20 price you can have the PC and the AK-47, it's no longer a choice between survival or education - now you can have both.

Starvation in the modern age is mostly related to war, not due to lack of food.

RE: Misguided?
By taber on 8/8/2008 1:36:29 PM , Rating: 2
I agree that there are some areas where this wouldn't make sense, but I could see OLPC having some worthwhile markets. If you're just sending text a 14.4k modem for a village would provide a wealth of information. With ad-hoc networks they turn in their paper by emailing it to their local instructor (or elsewhere if they have that 14.4k connection). Computers from 20 years ago were useful to us, it's not like everybody needs to start with a modern computer.

There's no guarantee that giving an individual knowledge to solve their problems will help, but I think it would help occasionally. What's wrong with giving them an opportunity to leave their village and work abroad? If someone is successful elsewhere there's always a chance they'll try to bring that success home or at least send part of their earnings home.

