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Uhm, yeah, a street kid needs an iPad to learn that a local shelter is open...

How many gringos do you think are there in Mexico? I live in Xalapa, which has a population of about half a million people and I stand out. I hardly see any white people ever. If the people on the streets here had to live from a few English words and being able to read... And how do they get those magical tables? Are they going to be handed out on the streets?

Moreover, if you want to improve reading skills and learning English, don't you think that stopping dubbing over movies and use subtitles instead doesn't have a greater impact? That stuff is already in place (a lot of people have TV) and it costs nothing to get it rolling (it might even be cheaper).

Mexico has good internet access, in Xalapa there's a cybercafe at nearly every corner (I met my wife online, and she used one close to her house). To me, the whole "let's push technology on them so they can improve their lives" sounds to much like someone hasn't done his/her homework. Or has done his/her homework very well, but has a very different agenda.

Even if this whole project becomes a "success", I am afraid that I will encounter those magical learning devices 2 or 3 years after they have been "given" to the poor in the places I hike. Dumped in illegal trash heaps causing another problem. And the poor will still be poor. Or, I am afraid, will be even more poor.

Anyway, a very good read on this all: http://www.deeshaa.org/2005/11/05/formula-for-milking-the-digital-divide/

... now that everyone has his data stored away the project is obsolete anyway.

For an insightful view of the project from India I may refer to 'OLPC -- Rest in Peace', already written July 2006. 'Formula for Milking the Digital Divide' might also be interesting.

Disclaimer.

CC.

... now that everyone has his data stored away the project is obsolete anyway.

For an insightful view of the project from India I may refer to 'OLPC -- Rest in Peace', already written July 2006. 'Formula for Milking the Digital Divide' might also be interesting.

Disclaimer.

CC.

A blogger from India also criticizes the olpc:

http://www.deeshaa.org/2006/08/07/olpc-rest-in-peace-part-3/

He points out that for India's 100 million children it would cost
about 5 billion per year.
This money, if spent on teachers and "blackboards" would circulate in the economy.

"..If we consider about 100 million children in the age group 4 through 15 need to be in school in rural India, then the total cost is of the order of US$5 billion per year. Given the student/teacher ratio of 30, we will employ about 3.33 million teachers at an annual wage cost of around $3.33 billion. The two important words in there are employ and wages. We are employing educated people as teachers and they are earning wages which they spend in the rural areas. The forward and backward linkages of this wage spending affect the entire economy more positively than the spending on buying high-cost high-technology gadgets. I posit that the multiplier effect of employing teachers in schools is greater than that of buying OLPC for India. .........

$100 a PC is a fortune in comparison to the amount that would be needed to ensure basic literacy.

India actually has a giangantic problem with basic literacy. Even though the country produces so many engineers and doctors, many of its people cannot read. If India could get the money to buy the laptops it would be better spent on making 1st-5th grade education universal. And at least by estimates from the 1990s, the price would be quite similar, with the five years paper and pencil education being cheaper.

(from a friend in a discussion the other day)
http://www.deeshaa.org/who-actually-paid-for-my-ed ucation
http://www.ashanet.org/stats/PROBE.html

I've heard Negroponte in speeches he's made in India (and he's made a tidy packet doing that sort of thing) and he's given to such "let's solve the digital divide with charity" sort of thinking. While it may sound like a nice thing to say, the devil is in the details. The basic reasons for children lacking access to knowledge infrastructure are not only much about availability of hardware and bandwidth. Social conditions, religious and sectarian dogma, poverty, illiteracy and ignorance of parents that makes educating kids not seem attractive, language barriers and lack of teachers are much bigger hurdles. Without solving at least some of those, handing out laptops is (as another post pointed out) going to result in resales of those laptops or them lying around gathering dust or at best teach those kids to play computer games. For those that are going to scream that we in the west should applaud these and not diss progress in poor countries - I am from South Asia and lived there most of my life till a few months back and I have seen and interacted with enough people that this effort is aimed at to have some idea of what progress would mean for them. Also, consider that since the $100 price is enabled only when these things are manufactured in tens of millions, the project is likely make poor economies dish out large sums to order large numbers of said laptops before any results can be seen. The only guaranteeed winners are going to be manufacturers of these machines (and components in them). Though I don't agree with all that he says, there are some interesting thoughts about this project in this blog http://www.deeshaa.org/2005/11/05/formula-for-milk ing-the-digital-divide

So yeah, I wouldn't say the educated, qualified, talented Indian -- the 10 grand a year type -- has a great quality of life. But yeah - compared to the life most of these people's parents had, this is heaven; so it's not surprising that they don't see anything wrong with the kind of life they're leading.