[LINK] One Laptop per Child Doesn't Change the World

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

One Laptop per Child Doesn't Change the World
ARTICLE DATE: 12.04.07
By John C. Dvorak
PC World
http://www.pcmag.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=220845,00.asp

Hands Across America, Live AID, the Concert for Bangladesh, and so on. 
The American (and world) public has witnessed one feel-good event (and 
the ensuing scandals) after another. Each one manages to assuage our 
guilt about the world's problems, at least a little. Now these folks 
think that any sort of participation in these events, or even their good 
thoughts about world poverty and starvation, actually help. Now they can 
sleep at night. It doesn't matter that nothing has really changed.

This is how I view the cute, little One Laptop per Child (OLPC) XO-1 
computer, technology designed for the impoverished children of Africa 
and Alabama. This machine, which is the brainchild of onetime MIT media 
lab honcho Nick Negroponte, will save the world. His vision is to supply 
every child with what amounts to an advertising delivery mechanism. 
Hence the boys at Google are big investors.

Before you cheer for the good guys, ponder a few of these facts taken 
from a world hunger Web site. In the Asian, African, and Latin American 
countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World 
Bank has called "absolute poverty." Every year, 15 million children die 
of hunger. For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry 
children could eat lunch every day for five years. Throughout the 
decade, more than 100 million children will die from illness and starvation.

The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is 
well fed, one-third is underfed, and one-third is starving. Since you've 
entered this site, at least 200 people have died of starvation. One in 
12 people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children 
under the age of 5. Nearly one in four people, or 1.3 billion—a majority 
of humanity—live on less than $1 per day, while the world's 358 
billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of 
countries with 45 percent of the world's people. Let's include 
Negroponte and the Google billionaires.

So what to do? Let's give these kids these little green computers. That 
will do it! That will solve the poverty problem and everything else, for 
that matter. Does anyone but me see this as an insulting "let them eat 
cake" sort of message to the world's poor?

"Sir, our village has no water!" "Jenkins, get these people some glassware!"

But, wait. Think of how cool it would be! Think of how many families 
will get to experience the friendly spam-ridden Information Super Ad-way 
laced with Nigerian scams, hoaxes, porn, blogs, wikis, spam, urban 
folklore, misinformation, sites selling junk from China, bomb-making 
instructions, jihad initiatives, communist propaganda, Nazi propaganda, 
exhortations, movie clips of cats playing the piano, advertising, 
advertising, and more advertising. Do you now feel better about the 
world's problems, knowing that some poor tribesman's child has a laptop? 
What African kid doesn't want access to Slashdot?

Of course, it might be a problem if there is no classroom and he can't 
read. The literacy rate in Niger is 13 percent, for example. Hey, give 
them a computer! And even if someone can read, how many Web sites and 
wikis are written in SiSwati or isiZulu? Feh. These are just details to 
ignore.

Every time I bring up this complaint to my Silicon Valley pals—usually 
as we race down I-280 in their newest Mercedes-Benz S Class sedan while 
listening to their downloaded music from their iPod to the car's custom 
stereo—I get flak. They tell me, "It's a start. Computers will save the 
world from poverty. You are just jealous you didn't think of the idea."

Yeah, that's it. I'm jealous.

Apparently, saying anything negative about the OLPC XO-1 computer 
amounts to heresy in this community. You may as well promote NAMBLA or 
the KKK. People don't want to consider the possibility that their 
well-meaning thoughts are a joke and that a $200 truckload of rice would 
be of more use than Wi-Fi in the middle of nowhere. There seems to be a 
notion that the poor in Africa or East Asia are just like the kids in 
East Palo Alto. Once they get a laptop, there will be no digital divide, 
will there? People can say, "I did my part!"

So on it goes, with people falling all over themselves, saying how cool 
the little laptop is and how it fundamentally changes the way laptops 
work and what computing is all about. It's waterproof! So, we read long 
articles about the thing. We see an incredible deer-in-the-headlights 
Leslie Stahl puff piece about the device on 60 Minutes. No one says it's 
a crock. Instead, only the minutiae of implementation and whether Intel 
should be allowed to make a similar machine are questioned. During the 
show, Stahl makes the idiotic claim that this is the first laptop in 
history on which you can read the screen in broad daylight. So much for 
fact checking. Then there is a tremendous push to get the public to take 
part in the "Give One, Get One" promotion. "I want one!" says a cohort 
of mine in a podcast. Apparently, he is going to toss his Mac PowerBook 
and use this. Who is he kidding?

I was amused at the one critique thrown into the 60 Minutes mix for 
balance. Negroponte was asked about the devices being stolen from the 
children. He assuaged the audience by saying that the machine will stop 
working in a month or so if stolen. Oh, okay. That was good enough for 
60 Minutes. I'm thinking, "But it was still stolen!"

Some readers will just perceive these complaints of mine as coming from 
a grumpy old man who doesn't like anything. Fine. Stay optimistic. Buy 
ten. All I can tell you is that, personally, I have never seen such a 
cavalier and pompous assuredness in my life. As if this whole OLPC 
scheme is anything other than a naïve fiasco waiting to unfold. I'll 
donate my money to hunger relief, thank you.

-- 

Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Sydney Australia
brd at iimetro.com.au