Slashdot Mirror
The Indian Info-Rickshaws
DoomDoom writes "CNN is running a story
on how the Indian government is delivering health and educational services on a WiFi equipped rickshaw to the poorest of its citizens. It's a poetical union of a typical third world product with high-tech! Do you still think computing is unnecssary for the poorest of the poor?"
If I was a poor dude in India, living on $1 per day with no water or electricity and possessing only a few clay pots, a few shirts, pants, and rubber slippers, I could care less about some bullshit technology in some bullshit rickshaw.
Look at it from my perspective. I need clean water. I need clean food. I need some electricity. All that must come FIRST before everything else. Why is my government wasting money on some bullshit technology that isn't going to help me?
Despite the fact that Bill Gates got it so wrong with Microsoft/Windows, he got everything right when he said that people living on $1 per day cannot survive on free WiFi and computer education. I applaud him for standing up to those tech-obsessed idiots who think technology is going to solve everything.
The ONLY technology that will solve EVERYTHING is the Star Trek-style replicator. Only that will solve my problems as a poor dude living on $1 per day.
What a ridiculous waste of money and a preachy headline. Things that would improve the lives of people who are truly at the bottom of society in a second world nation are health care (India has 57.92 deaths per 1,000 live births), basic literary (only 59.5% of the population can read at this time! how can you justify his crap?!?!) and helping the absolutely destitute (25% of the population is below the poverty line) feed themselves.