[Air-l] air-l Digest, Vol 24, Issue 25

[Eduardo Villanueva]

Mark, it is interesting that your point of view regarding the OLPC project
is so different from the stated objectives by the promoters, like
Negroponte, who insist that OLPC is not a computer project but an
educational one (as stated in their project wiki). My opposition to OLPC, as
I have stated before (macareo.pucp.edu.pe/evillan/shdf.htm), has to do with
the educational perspective and the way governments are suppossed to heed
the higher knowledge coming from "there", instead of developing local
answers to local problems. While I would certainly cheer for lower cost
hardware in my country, I do believe that OLPC will bring, in the long run,
too many problems to make the cost-saving aspects worth anything at all.


I support the OLPC project because I basically see it as an
> additional low-cost hardware alternative.  I'm all for computer
> equipment becoming cheaper and more accessible, rather than
> exclusively targeting the high end market.  To be honest, even though
> I see other aspects of technology implementation, such as teacher
> development or curriculum development, as crucial, it never bothered
> me that OLPC didn't provide these, because I never saw OLPC as a
> single be-all, end-all, or any kind of total integrated package, but
> just an additional hardware alternative.  One of the positive
> benefits I predicted from OLPC is that it would put downward pressure
> on the computer price market, and I think that has already occurred,
> through sparking other laptop and desktop projects targetted at
> low-income groups in developing countries.  OLPC also appears to be
> developing some innovative design features that again might be more
> broadly useful beyond this particular product (see the most recent
> issue of Wired).



Wojciech,

I will not get into a debate on development theory here, but I believe my
> organization should be defended. There are different stages of
> development,
> and to say that all we should do is provide people with nutritious food is
> to ignore the complexities of development and the needs of society as a
> whole. This is why there are eight Millennium Development Goals, and not
> one.


I cannot agree more with you. And precisely, OLPC reduces everything into
one sole objective. That's wrong.

For instance, regarding the comment on "one glass of milk per child": it has
more or less happening here in Peru since the eighties, and good as it is,
it has just solved one aspect of one problem (a specific kind of
malnutrition) and has brought many others, like corruption and dependence on
hand-outs when they are no longer needed, especially in urban areas where
income has risen. So even specific solutions have to be retooled in the long
run, to avoid creating newer problems.

Sorry for the drift.

Eduardo