[Air-l] India Rejects One Laptop Per Child

[elw at stderr.org]

It seems to me that a set of the side-effects of OLPC, even if no child 
ever uses one of the physical machines, are the improvements that are 
being made to the software to wedge it onto the OLPC hardware.

I'm hopeful that at least *some* of that software will make its way back 
onto "first class" desktop machines - hopefully with usability and 
edu-theory-happy improvements.


--elijah




On Thu, 27 Jul 2006, Chheng Hong wrote:

> Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 19:44:36 -0400
> From: Chheng Hong <cho5 at buffalo.edu>
> Reply-To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> Subject: Re: [Air-l] India Rejects One Laptop Per Child
> 
> In my opinion, technological empowerment and basic living fulfillment
> are both valid argument, while "one laptop per child for a poor country"
> is a more unrealistic one.
>
> In fact, not all children in India are equally, poor. Children in rich
> families don't need your old-fashioned laptop with only 128MB DRAM,
> while poor children will probably be more willing to sell this "useless"
> machine in exchange for something s/he needs more. Who will actually
> bring this laptop to school and learn it? It needs further investigation.
>
> In addition, I cannot speak for Indians, but I believe children in Asia
> are relatively not treated as individuals like Western countries.
> Therefore, you must make sure that their parents won't take over their
> children's "property" once the laptops are given to those children.
> Well, maybe this project will have another unexpected result "one laptop
> per father."
>
> Wojciech Gryc wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> Just to make it clear, I still support the OLPC project, and thought the Times
>> of India article, though short, made some valuable comments. I do not
>> necessarily agree with them nor am I qualified to judge them (I am not a
>> doctor or expert on the health effects of computers). What is important to
>> me, though, is it's providing a new point in a debate that we've been having
>> here, as well as in other places.
>>
>> With regards to Heshan Sun, I agree that a project focusing on providing
>> health supplies, nutritious food, or similar necessities to every child
>> would be important. And to let you know, I have actually spent time working
>> in rural India and rural Africa, and like to think I'm not ignorant. I said
>> that developed countries lack the foresight in some cases, not that
>> developing countries do.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> Technology can be a beneficial tool throughout the process of achieving the
>> MDGs or promoting development in general. Through the use of open source
>> software to develop free newspapers (which is what Five Minutes to Midnight
>> does), one can obviously promote literacy, not to mention many indirect
>> benefits. Furthermore, to say that "development" focuses solely on "poor
>> countries" is not necessarily correct. One comment we've heard on this list
>> a few times is that Western (mis)perceptions towards developing nations can
>> be a problem. Indeed, non-profits could take it upon themselves to educate
>> interested Westerners about the intricacies of development, and how many
>> "development solutions" can and do fail. This is what Five Minutes to
>> Midnight does through the use of the internet and open source software, and
>> we specifically target youth.
>>
>> We've done our homework and have found a niche, much like many other
>> non-profits working in technology and development.
>>
>> Thank you,
>>
>> Wojciech Gryc
>>
>>
>
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