[Air-L] help on africa and computer donations

Scott MacLeod helianth at gmail.com
Mon Aug 27 18:28:28 PDT 2007


Hi,

Here's the keynote address by MIT Media Lab's Nicholas Negroponte
about the One Laptop per Child or XO-1 initiative at Harvard's Berkman
Center for Internet and Society this year on May 31 -
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mediaberkman/2007/06/17/nicholas-negroponte-keynote-at-internet-society-2007-2/.
In it , he tells how the initiative is proceeding, that this laptop
will cost about $130, that it is basically ready, that they are
targeting about 8 countries, and that one company built a new factory
for them due to the scale of the project. It is primarily an
educational endeavor. They'll use a mesh network that  will work in
remote locations. I'm not sure how they'll approach the language and
literacy questions, from a partly engineering orientation. All of the
Berkman Center for Internet and Society's media at Media Berkman is a
rich resource. The scale and implementation of this project is
impressive.

Scott MacLeod

See also wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_laptop_per_child





On 8/27/07, nativebuddha <nativebuddha at gmail.com> wrote:
> This student is looking for help. Any suggestions?
>
> -robert
>
> -----------------------------------------------
>
> Hello,
>
> I am Alok Kotecha, a Computer Science major at the College of
> Charleston. I am working on a paper for my English 102 class that is
> based mainly on donating computers to the developing nations of
> Africa, mostly Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Mozambique & Zambia.
>
> My main argument is that developed nations donate technology such as
> computers to these counties with the aim of technologically advancing
> the nations, however they do not consider the fact that donating
> computers is not the main thing to be done at this stage.
>
> Below are some other arguments that I address in my paper:
>
> 1. Lack of infrastructure e.g. very few people have telephone lines
> and this will stop them from connecting to the internet.  (Wireless
> connections are out of question in most places due to the high set up
> costs and regular maintenance required.)
>
> 2. Security would be a concern - High crime rates might mean that
> high security would be needed in order to protect computers from
> theft.
>
> 3. Language would be a concern as well - Operating a computer that
> interacts in English my be a problem for many people.
>
> 4. Health Care - Many people die everyday form malaria and other
> diseases. In these cases it is always a good idea to save lives first
> by providing better health care and medical services rather then
> donating computers.
>
> Currently I have based my paper on statistics from UNDP and NYT
> articles, but because this is a very recent issue I am currently
> having problems finding more scholarly articles and I would
> appreciate any suggestions you can provide.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Alok Kotecha
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-- 

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