Comments on: You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself

By: Mike Hearn

Mike Hearn — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 14:33:56 +0000

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.

By: Alan Pater

Alan Pater — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 00:41:14 +0000

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?

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 21:42:25 +0000

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’)