Fri 30 Dec 2005
That was the quip my cousin and Reason assistant editor Kerry Howley said to me over drinks at our Grandparents house. She was only half seriously responding to the fact that my company Red Hat works on the One Laptop Per Child initiative. She had written an article pretty much bashing the effort.
We had a fun little debate and I’m not going to put words in her mouth here. You can read her side in the article. She has the one little weakness in that for some reason she respects me and my views. I guess it comes from her and I being the black sheep in the family who pursued careers outside the medical profession. I do wish however she had spoken to a few people within the project though I doubt they would have changed her views.
In any case I could only argue the fact that while there are many things third world countries could use more than inexpensive laptops, this is a way for people with a ceratin skill set to contribute to a solution. I for one don’t know how to solve world hunger but I can write programs that could teach kids motor skills or teach others how write programs for their needs. Anyway, that is beside the point since I am not directly involved in the project and even though there is only a thin partition separating me from the OLPC team at Red Hat, I really have no idea what they are up to.
All I really know is a lot of smart people are working on this project. Trying to predict its impact, success or failure at this point of the game is really not the point. It is a project with a plan and people who have the wherewithal to execute that plan and for me that is a huge first step.
One thing it has already accomplished is to get people to again debate ways to combat poverty and lack of education around the globe. Is it a silver bullet? No. But it is much better than sitting around twiddling our thumbs and ignoring the problem while saying the free market will cure all the world’s ills. I tend to think it is good when people attack a problem from different angles, even if some of those angles are top down solutions. That is because there is no hard fast rule about anything.
My cousin and I enjoy engaging in these little contests of wit. It spices up the usually boring, what have you been up to, conversations that go through typical family gatherings. For most people, politics at the dinner table is an instant drink in someones face type of faux pas. But for us it is just par for the course. Till the next gathering.
[read this post in: ar de es fr it ja ko pt ru zh-CN ]
December 30th, 2005 at 5:42 pm
Is it wrong to mention that your cousin is totally hot? And a libertarian to boot? - awesome.
While I agree that trying to do _something_ is good, I remain unconvinced that free laptops are going to be any sort of panacea - computers aren’t required for learning and there’s some evidence that they get in the way. The OLPC plan likely won’t hurt anything, but I suspect the major impact will be to make the contributers feel better. Still, one does with their time and money what they choose - arguably, there is no bad charity (provided it comes without strings attached).
-b
P.S.
And it’s “faux pas” (’false step’)
December 30th, 2005 at 8:41 pm
OLPC is an educational project. The machine’s will be delivered through the local school board, to kids who are attending school, as a kind of modern version of a text book, except better, cause the kids will own the computers. Is your cousin suggesting that it would be better to take these kids out of school and put to work in a factory or farm someplace, so that they can buy food for their families?
December 31st, 2005 at 10:33 am
I think what people overlook in the “3rd world kids don’t need laptops” position is there’s not a binary poor/not poor divide out there. There are shades of poverty, and the extreme forms we see on our TV aren’t all there is to it.
In some places, particularly latin america, many people aren’t engaged in a desperate struggle for survival. They have a somewhat stable life, enough food, clean water, education etc. Look at the Mexico school incentive programs for instance. These people can definitely benefit from cheap laptops as they’re starting to emerge into the developed economy, and IT is one area where (much though us western code jockeys dislike it) poor people can compete very easily to improve their own quality of life.