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The Failure of the $100 Laptop?
RobertinXinyang writes "MSN's MoneyCentral has an article on the possibility that the $100 laptop project fails to meet its goals, and the potential of the project to harm people in developing nations. The article goes on to liken the project to 'good-natured showboating', and cites the unreality of a family using the glow from the laptop's screen as the only source of light in their hut. Perhaps there are better things to do with our time and money in developing nations?" From the article: "The entire idea may be misguided and counterproductive. At least that's what Stanford journalism lecturer an Africa watcher G. Pascal Zachary thinks. The basic argument is that with $100 you could almost feed a village for a year, so why waste that sum on a laptop? What are they thinking? The fact that these people need electricity more than they need a laptop is only part of the problem. The real problem is lost mind share. The people are harmed because these sorts of schemes are sopping up mind-share time of the people who might be doing something actually useful."
The people are harmed because these sorts of schemes are sopping up mind-share time of the people who might be doing something actually useful.
Computer engineers and software developers are just that - they can create software and build computers.
They aren't molecular biologists or doctors or anything like that, so its not taking the mindshare from those kind of folks.
liqbase
Giving them a laptop might make them productive.
Giving them food will make them dependent.
However, the added value of a laptop is greatly degraded by the lack of electricity in most places and the lack of education. The laptop program should also focus on these things to be succesful.
Like the countries that has expessed interest in the $100 lappy are not the wretchedly poor but rather those that have basic necessities covered but are not yet industrialized. For them a cheap computer will come in very handy. For people being murdered in Darfur, not so much.
Not everyone can become a success by marketshare and hype alone, and then never deliver the actual promised products. For most of us, failure is just another step towards success. So even if this $100 laptop becomes a failure, it doesn't matter. More exposure towards the poorer countries, more exposure that the Western countries take more money OUT of such countries, than is going in, more exposure to corrupt leaders which makes any sudden fix unattainable, and lots and lots learned from the project, which can result in even cheaper laptops with higher specs.
It's too easy to criticize when someone does good. That to actually do good in this world, you have to fight, and fight, and fight, and fight. And we get stronger every day.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
That this laptop project is of benefit .. cause $100 would never have been spent on feeding the village. So this way at least their can use the plastic for something(fuel for stove?) if not educate themselves on farming and basic first aid techniques.
.. it's for POOR KIDS WHO ALREADY HAVE THE BASICS TAKEN CARE OF. This would give them a step up so they can have assistance in learning shit and build some industry besides inefficient farming.
Also how many times are imbeciles (John C.(for Cunt?) Dvorak I am opinionating on you), going to need to be told that THE LAPTOP IS FOR MIDDLE DEVELOPING NATIONS NOT LEAST DEVELOPED NATIONS YOU FOOL!
This laptop aint for starving kids
Black and white thinking perceives the economic divide to be so immense that there is no middle ground of lack that can be alleviated. Unable to come up with a grand unified solution to the world poverty problem, they give up and distract themselves with a shiny new mp3 player.
Of course there are many, many people who still don't have access to clean water. Let's put our minds together to work on that problem as well. There's room for our service on all levels of impoverishment.
OFCOURSE the problem with any project that uses things like computers/radios/video ect... is that its hard to make these programs sustainable. Typical projects have funding for 3-5 years in which time they distribute thousands of the things and then bam! one day the money runs out, the project ends, ... and then what? That is a problem with ALL development projects. The trick is to build sustainability.
Young people in a poor village in Africa are no different than anywhere else, and if you give them access to a networked computer with access to internet the possibilities are endless.
There are many successful projects implementing cell phones to help farmers get better prices for their crops. There are radio shows that teach people about HIV with call in shows using text messaging. The possibilities are endless. The next step is to integrate computers and internet into the matrix.
The truth is, you could probably buy a lot of flour for a single village for $100 for a year-- but once they have eaten it, they will still be hungry. Give a village a cheap device such as the $100 laptop and access to a network, the possibilities to exchange knowledge, generate ideas, and problem solve for THEMSELVES is limitless. This is how you create sustainability. Give them the tools and ideas, the rest can follow.
fed for a day, teach to fish ...
The goal is not to give kids toys. It's to give them the means to explore education.
Obviously "feeding a village" isn't solving the problem, it's just keeping uneducated poor masses alive.
I'd rather educate them so they can help themselves.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Indeed, it seems like a small minority are first world (USA as the most obvious example), most are second world and a very small minority, if any (depending on how you define these things) are third world.
These were never meant for people who are so poor they can't get water; these are for people who have established these and now want to get in on the big money act... I'm a little saddened that people would make these FUD claims against a good project based on either a lie or a lack of understanding. Sure there might be some criticisms you could legitimately level against it (like not thinking that computers help education, or the fear of cracking leading to massive bot nets) and then we could discuss them... but this is just terrible.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
"The basic argument is that with $100 you could almost feed a village for a year"
:) )
Ok I am from India so $100 = 4500 Rs, now I would be really delighted to learn how one can feed a village for a year with that much of money. No,I really would like to know...considering the fact that villages in developing countries are genrally big( I can speak for India here, I spend half of my childhood in the most backward region of India,
I really appreciate intelligence of Mr.John C. Dvorak, but wait...
What lost mind share??? This laptop isn't stealing "mind share" away from other ideas. If other ideas fail it's because no one cares about them. What these people in this article are whining about are that they think that their way is the best, and anyone else not solving the problem their way is wrong. It's just plain bullshit. This isn't a zero sum game... There's a huge portion of the population that isn't even playing or caring. A new idea won't steal mind share, it will bring new players to the table that otherwise wouldn't be interested.
It's like the lame argument that people blame Ralph Nader for stealing votes from the Democrats. Again, bullshit. A good part of the people who voted for Nader didn't want to vote for Gore OR Bush, so without that alternative, they probably wouldn't have voted. It's not Nader for screwing over Gore, it's Gore's fault for not making himself a more viable candidate.
The MSN article is completely correct. Everyone knows that people are either poor, and thus live in mud huts with only a single goat to keep them company; or they are rich, in which case they can afford to buy as many computers as they can fit inside their trendy apartments.
The creators of the $100 laptop are under the delusion that wealth is not a binary condition. For some strange reason, they seem to think that there are poor people in this world that have enough money to feed themselves and buy essentials, but not enough money or infrastructure to support buying the latest Pentium from Dell. This is clearly ridiculous, and I applaud MSN Money for reminding us that the world really is black and white (no pun intended, ahem).
Yeah, it's a pretty dumb argument. I've been to East Africa a few times in the last couple of years (Kenya & Tanzania), and was quite surprised at how popular mobile phones are over there. In many areas they never got full wired infrastructure, so skipped a generation and went wireless. Anyway, the point is there's a large market for mobiles there, despite the fact that it costs a sizable chunk of their income. If mobiles can succeed, a sub-$100 notebook should find a market. The argument that the money could be better spent on relieving poverty could surely be applied to any country with a population under the poverty line.
A flaw in his thinking is to assume that there is a fixed amount of help available. Another flaw is to assume that the laptop actually costs money. If used as an electronic book, then it substitutes for hundreds of dollars worth of books (over the course of its lifetime). Another flaw is to suggest that all expenditures are the same, blurring the difference between spending for investment and spending for consumption.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I think there is still a large a degree of colonial thinking left around, just under the surface, both in the subdued racism in Western societies (they do not deserve/will never understand laptops) but also in the 'victim mentality' of some ex-colonial states.
Some people have a dislike to the laptop project for two reasons:
1. FUD - They have not actually bothered to consider how revolutionary the laptop is, i.e. redesigning all the hardware, software and content.
For these people, salvation can only come through becoming a fat out-of-shape office worker, typing in Word using a crumb covered keyboard.
2. Paternalism - The laptop project is based on the idea that smart but poor kids can learn, create and program, for themselves.
This conflicts with embedded western psychological beliefs about how you need a nice western strong man/organistion/society (i.e. 'Hilter') to go and sort those foreigners out.
My little Linux and tech blog
Why does everyone think that every single human being in developing countries lives in mud huts and is starving to death? Reality check: being poor doesn't mean that you're starving to death or that you're living in a mud hut.
There are hundreds of millions of people in those countries that don't starve, but they're far from wealthy enough to afford a computer. A $100 computer could be a help to them, and it introduces them to computing which is a very valuable skill.
Is it so hard to understand?
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> with $100 you could almost feed a village for a year, so why waste that sum on a laptop?
because after that year they will return asking for more food, while being taught how to make their soil productive, how hunt animals without extinguish them, how to limit births to a sustainable number, how to use sun and water energy etc. would help them forever.
People should not think about the OLPC as a toy for kids to play recompiling the kernel while mum and dad are starving to death but as a container for precious information (wikipedia and tons of other sources) and a media to pass them to others.
One thing "western" people should stop thinking at all is that we can help the hungry and homeless by giving them homes and food. That's plainly wrong! Intelligence and knowledge is what gives humans the ability to make use of what they already have there to fulfill their needs. Evolution already gave them at least a basic level of intelligence, so let's teach them to read then give them books, not food.
he eats for a week.
but give him the ability to learn and give him nearly unlimited access to information and knowledge and he can grow crops/produce food/orginize business/etc etc for a life time.
This isn't about solving the problem for a week. A temporary solution at best, training people to depend on foreign aid in the worst, but about empowering people to create real solutions for themselves.
Despite what people want to beleive, that african aid will save the world and make them heroes, the only people in a position to help Africans (and other third world nations) perminately is Africans (and natives to those same third world nations)
That's how it's going to happen. Africans helping Africans. Education and giving people the tools to learn to figure out solutions to their own problems is what is going to solve problems. (that and economic trade)
Not 'mister white european rich guy' coming around every few months and giving handouts of food and vaccinations. THAT is the real feel-good-happy-bullshit. Not saying it's not needed and people shouldn't be doing it. I am saying it's a bandaid, that's all. Your nursing the wounds (which in itself is valuable), not healing them.
- This is "negative" publicity intended to call attention to the project
- MoneyCentral is staffed by folks for whom all things are tactical, and the concept of a strategic project with payoffs in the decade range are like, totally too hard, dude.
Probably a blend of the two.Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
And I don't get why people keep complaining that this is a waste of money and they would rather use their money to help those people get food and other types of support. Well there are already programs for that. Why not have another form of help in the area of education and technology. It can run side by side with the people trying to get food and medicine to these underdeveloped countries.
I think this program could help keep kids, as well as adults, somewhat familiar with the idea of computers. If one day their country is pulled out of the 3rd world era, then they won't be completely foreign to technology.
Can I bum a sig?
"The argument that the money could be better spent on relieving poverty..."
The thing about it is, the act of providing the laptop is the very thing that will help relieve poverty. These guys are playing the long game by providing an educational resource to people below the poverty line, and in doing so improving their chances of getting a job and being able to work their way out of poverty.
There's the old line about 'you can give a man some grain, and he can feed his family for a day, but give him seeds and tools and he can do so for a lifetime'. It's this type of thinking that we're talking about.
The person debunking the idea doesn't recognise the true value of the laptop, and it's his loss not ours.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
Why would Africans need computers when they could harvesting rice and coffee? (Said coffee which will probably end up in Western Kitchens anyway, but never mind.) One of the reasons that African nations in particular and developing country have troubled economy is that they lack the technical means to control their own means of distribution. A cheap laptop (running a home brewed *NIX) would a good start to setting up a modern means of distribution of goods . Also, consider whose the source -- the Finance and Business section MSN, AKA Microsoft's personal News arm. Do you honestly think that Microsoft wouldn't do a hit piece on $100 laptop? Do you think M$ wouldn't want to get Africans or Latin Americans hooked on their half assed products or on overpriced server boxes?
No, give em real British ale, brewed from hops. A couple of months to readjust (because drinking eight pints of ale won't kill you, but by god you'll wish you were dead the next morning) and they will become civilised, moderate imbibers of a healthy amount of proper, nutricious, healing beer. And a new dawn will rise, flowers will blossom in the streets, yea verily Wolverhampton town centre shall become as a garden of paradise.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Criticizing a do-gooder on the basis that the critic would prefer to use the do-gooder's resources in a different way is fundamentally flawed. That way lies paralysis and doing nothing. It's just a complicated way of saying "be reasonable--do things my way."
It's like criticizing the space program on the basis that it would be better to use the same resources to fight poverty in the U.S. That point is arguably true, but it's silly, because if we didn't have a space program the political reality is that those resources would not be used to fight poverty.
The altruistic impulse is not fungible. If you say to Negroponte "we don't want your laptops," he's not going to say, "Great, I'll just fold up the Media Lab and send all its funds to Oxfam."
I've faced this problem in deciding how to make personal charitable donations. How can one decide when there are so many worthy causes? How can one justify donating to the American Cancer Society when perhaps the American Heart Association would be a better use of resources? Is it frivolous to donate to the EFF instead of sending that money to UNICEF? The only answer is: these are the charities I donate to, you donate to whatever charities you wish.
Nobody knows how to solve the world's problems. If it were simple and obvious we'd just solve them. The $100 laptop is an interesting idea and it might do some good.
If not, I'd wager the amount of resources and "mind share" it's diverting from anything are utterly negligible compared to, say, the amount of resources and "mind share" being used in the U. S. to launch the PlayStation 3, or fulminate about O. J. Simpson's new book, or pursue the war in Iraq.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
No one can know what will work to help Africa, with its many, and now many ancient, basic problems.
What has G. Pascal Zachary actually done to help? He's been an academic/journalism/lecturer Africa expert watcher for a long time, but Africa is even worse in most ways than when he began his career. Where's the evidence that his opinions, part of the "help Africa" status quo, are any more likely to work than a new project that focuses on a quantum leap in empowering a new generation of Africans?
--
make install -not war
OLPC is opposed by the same mindset, and probably by many of the same people, who oppose the exploration of space and other long-term investments in the future of mankind. Their short-sighted view has been with us throughout time and represents a sociological counterpoint to the potential dangers of leaving the shelter of the cave, of hunting instead of gathering, of building a boat or a bridge or of seeing what's beyond that distant mountain. The One Laptop Per Child initiative isn't "about" laptops any more than Columbus' venture was "about" boats, but you may be sure Ferdinand and Isabella were told they could buy a lot of gruel for the cost of those ships and the men who sailed them.
It's unfortunate that Mr. Dvorak didn't talk with the proponents of and contributors to the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. He admits he depended on information on a Web site. Normally, this isn't a problem, but...unlike an organization with a for-profit motive with which Mr. Dvorak is used to dealing, there are no PR flacks in this small group of people doing the work. There isn't an army of copywriters keeping the OLPC web site up-to-the-minute. The focus of the OLPC army, about a platoon in strength, is getting the laptop built and distributed, to a price, to a performance level, to a quality level. There are no information officers here.
As a consequence, Mr. Dvorak's factual basis for his opinions appear to be flawed. That's the problem with fast-moving, lean projects that don't have a profit motive: the worker-bees don't budget time to spoon-feed journalists.
I base this critique on the facts shown at a presentation I attended last week on the project and its current status. During that presentation, many of Mr. Dvorak's criticisms were answered in full. I'll run down the factual points, based on the information I gleaned from that presentation. I don't vouch for absolute accuracy, as I wasn't taking notes, and I'm not part of the project. Keeping those caveats in mind:
* Justification: Mr. Dvorak doesn't touch on this issue at all, except in the negative and through the words of another person. He missed the one reason this project is interesting to the governments of the developing nations: it saves money in education.
Mr. Dvorak, have you looked at the price of school textbooks these days? How much does your local school spend, per year, on books for their kids? In developing countries, the textbook cost may be lower than here but it's still high compared to, say, food.
(N.B.: The situation in college is even worse. I leave research on that issue as an exercise to the reader, as most of the hits on Google about textbook pricing focus on higher education.)
You say, Mr. Dvorak, "with $100 you could almost feed a village for a year" but that same $100 doesn't cover educating ONE child for ONE year. You want to fill their stomachs, but starve their brains?
The OLPC project got the facts from the horse's mouth, the governments who have to somehow educate their children in order to raise the standard of living in their country. The cost of the laptop, roughly $20/year for the five-year life of the laptop, is less than the cost of the books needed to teach the kids. Throw in the infrastructure costs (development of electronic textbooks, "libraries", access points and their connections to a country-wide network) and the country still sees a savings.
Interestingly, like most "problems", it comes down to money.
* Manufacturing cost: While the presenter didn't provide a complete bill of materials for the laptop, the cost projections for building the laptop in million quantities falls well below $100 at the current time. Further cost reduction is possible as the laptop matures. The cost projection shown by the presenter was verified by members of the audience who have been on the front lines of manufacturing products like this laptop.
How much lower can the price go? You know as well as anyone the cost curve over lifetime of a computer product. Is $50 possible?
* Maintenance: Photos of the prototypes shown at the presentation show a modular approach very similar to that used by IBM in making the PS/2 Model 50 personal computer (and *not* used in virtually every PC made today). The only tool required to service the machines is a single screwdriver. Kids in the US, UK, Canada, and other developed countries have no problems servicing computers *not* designed to be serviced easily by untrained personnel. So the only infrastructure required is a way to get spare parts to those who need them.
* Networking: The laptops use mesh networking to communicate with each other, and to access points provided as part of the
You know, you could move to the first world, make 150,000$ a year and finance 5 idealistic self-made holier-than-thou econinjas such as yourself! But wait, then all of them could move to the first world and finance...
It never ends, does it?
Yeah, the article has a lot of FUD in it, and you're right on the 'feeding a village for $100' idiocy. (Maybe if their villages numbered about 5 people each and they ate nothing but bread and water for a year... And sometimes skipped the bread.) But assuming that the article is racist on the basis of the term 'these people'? How is that racist? Would you have preferred "Africans"? "Black people"? What? I'm willing to bet that if this whole subject was shifted to helping impovrished, starving (white) people in 3rd world Soviet Bloc countries, you wouldn't even bat an eyelash. And who is assuming that the 3rd world is sitting on their starving asses waiting for philanthropic 1st world handouts?
Maybe you hadn't noticed, but much of the 3rd world is starving, and not from any lack of effort on their part. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say, "Well, if those goddamned Africans would just get off their lazy butts and make some food, there wouldn't even be a problem!" No, most people say, "Well, maybe if we gave them some food (and some medical aid too, since half their continent is dying of AIDS), they would have more chance to devote time and energy to other things. Like education, sanitation, and infrastructure." We in the 1st world are not just throwing money at the place and giving ourselves a pat on the back for good charity (though certainly there are many who do that [see: famous rich people]). There are groups and people who use their money and help out with food (and not just handing them some foodstuffs and hoping for the best. Actually teaching them to farm and giving them the impliments needed to do so). Groups and people who help out with medical aid, with the building of schools and hospitals and sanitation facilities, et cetera. And generally, it seems to be working.
It sounds to me like you're some hyper-PC, ultrasensative bozo who leaps at any opportunity to shout "Racism!" from the highest peak.
the idea of Milton Friedman and other economic liberals is that the world is NOT a zero sum game
Ummm, unless there's a giant spigot I missed in geography class, the world IS a zero-sum game. Except for the sun. Damn sun, pouring energy into an otherwise closed system, ruining a perfectly good blanket statement.
You left out something. "You can feed them forever or you can educate them" - until they starve to death, or die of AIDS, which is a huge problem in 3rd-world countries today. Mesh networks are awesome, sure - but do those in 3rd world countries know how to start up a mesh network? These aren't IT pros and Linux gurus. We're handing underpowered laptops to people who have absolutely no idea how to go about using them. If we're going to honestly educate and support these people in using this technology, the cost will be far more than $100 a pop. And, in the end, they still can't eat the laptop, and it still won't cure HIV, and it still won't make clean water, and it still isn't a hospital or a school or electricity. I think the problem with the whole OLPC idea is that people really aren't thinking about what life is really like in these places, they aren't thinking through what's needed and how best to use it. And while, yes, the OLPC program can go on side-by-side with other programs, they would have done much better to donate the funds to organizations doing more useful work. In our rush to buy bigger TV's, faster PC's and shinier SUV's, our vision is clouded; we start to assume this is everyone's struggle, the struggle for a new couch and a new house and a new boat. But a huge portion of the world's population is still struggling for simple survival; for food, shelter, clean water, and any measure of health care. They're struggling, and they're losing. They have more important concerns than a laptop.
[Z?]
Two of the things that lead to the growth in the wealth and productivity of a society are the ease of communications and the wide availability of knowledge. Jared Diamond makes a similar argument in his widely read book, "Guns, Germs, and Steel." The $100 laptop project offers features for communications (i.e., email, IM, VoIP) and for knowledge dissemination (built in wikipedia, web access).
Over a hundred years ago, when Andrew Carnegie funded the construction of free public libraries in many slum-laden US cities, I am sure many well meaning people said the money could have been better spent on providing food to eat, coal to heat homes, improved public sanitation, etc. But the knowledge that many a slum kid derived from those libraries helped them get an education and escape from poverty.
A full library, with its costs for books, a building, and caretaker, costs much more than the $100-150 of OLPC, so it seems reasonable to try the $100 laptop approach.
I live in Houston and I remember a piece about a black lady who's kids had died because they couldn't get medical care in time. She lived in what was basically a hut on the south-side of Houston, and I can remember in the report being able to make out roaches crawling around on the walls. They had power but not much else.
Despite being nominally first world, even the US still has pockets of the third-world hidden away. Arguing that third world countries need to be brought up to a uniform standard of living before projects like this should be started is as stupid as arguing that the US doesn't need projects like this because we all live in clean, modern housing and have great jobs.
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
Man they really misnamed the "One Laptop Per Child" project if it's supposed to be one per village.
I have doubts about this project of my own - in sufficient volume, the real cost of books is about $2 each, so you're trading 50 books for the gadget; but there's just no question that while some places could use 50 almost infinitely rugged (by comparison) books more than a laptop, there are also many, many places that could use the laptop.
2 0article_%20%20Human%20Development.txt
A very small percentage of the world is actually unable to feed itself - and which percentage keeps shifting, that's more about drought, war and other temporary emergencies than a permanent condition.
Required reading is this very sharp, short column by historian / columnist Gwynne Dyer:
http://www.gwynnedyer.net/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%
We are constantly bombarded with the comparison between our own wealthy fifth of the world and the poorest fifth, most of them in Africa. In the above column, he reminds us that most of Africa had a fairly good standard of living as recently as the 60s and has declined in recent decades because of apalling governments, not "natural" problems like more people than the land can feed.
And the "middle three-fifths" of humanity are a success story, recently - China and India get the press for their economic rise because they are so large, but all over the world (Dyer writes the above from Turkey) people of this generation have risen from subsistence to a level of comfort that most of our grandparents would recognise - or even envy. (See the series "1900 house" to realize how far we've come since our grandparents day.) That middle 3/5ths don't need the laptop for light, they have food, clothing, shelter, some light and water at least at the end of the street. What they need are opportunities to earn more cash so they can get water to the house and sewer that isn't the gutter.
Three-fifths of six billion is quite a "market". And the sooner they migrate up from $10/day to $50, the sooner we'll have *help* with the tough problem of the poorest fifth. Reviewing the recent economic changes, there's no reason to imagine this can't happen in a generation.
By the time I had gotten to the end of the article, it was no surprise to find John C. Dvorak was the author. The man made some useful contributions to connectivity technology in the late '80s and early '90s. In the last ten years or so, he has been demonstrating that he can make a good money by being a highly visible troll. I cannot imagine that he actually believes half the stuff he writes; mostly he just seems to like to keep the pot boiling.
His argument against OLPC is basically a recycling of the old "White Man's Burden" argument, which was used to justify european colonialism in the late 1800s and neo-colonialism in the middle 1900s. In its current form it strongly implies that individuals who grew up in third world cultures are incapable of managing new technologies or making decisions about implementing these technologies in their native lands. It is up to us, who were fortunate enough to be born into the high tech cultures, to develop a Gantt chart for bringing these poor peoples up to speed (and we can do so without regard to cultural or logistic issues we know nothing about). And we should raise our voices in protest against anyone who suggests that there might be another way of doing things.
I also have some serious concerns about the "facts" presented in this product of Dvorak's imagination. He keeps referring to Africa for his examples. Since when are Brazil, Argentina, or Thailand in Africa? Yet these are the three nations that have expressed the most serious interest in deploying OLPCs.
I suggest that when you see Dvorak's name in the byline, you should use all your critical reading skills when absorbing his words. And since the man has a sizeable ego, this is even more important when he buries his name at the end, as he did in this article.
The thing is, we're not talking about things on the physical level, we're talking economics- and in economics, value can be created. If Bob puts together a set of shelves, it's probably more useful and valuable to him than the lumber that it came from. If he bakes a loaf of bread, it's more valuable than the grain that it came from. If Van Gogh paints a painting, it's a lot more valuable to humanity than the canvas and paints (and ultimately the pigments and mediums that those came from) ever were. Heck, look at computers! The same electrons can send an amazing, awe-inspiring, insightful comment to Slashdot, or they can send a -1 Flamebait.
You also point out the Sun. I suppose the Sun is a big part of this process too - due to agriculture and horticulture and such.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
An opinion piece should never be labeled an "article". Especially when the piece is by John Dvorak, who's the absolutely the most ignorant computer pundit in the business. Which says a lot, given how sloppy computer pundits are with the facts.
Spot on, and already proven by history. I can't remember when I read the article - it was at least 20 years ago - but when the author correlated specific technology with economic growth in the Third World, he found that communications technology (telegraph or telephone) was by far the most positive contributor. As an example, he discussed the case of an African village where locals were selling lumber for much less than it would cost farther down river. Once they got a telegraph station, they were able to compare rates downstream with their prices, and relatively quickly adjust their prices to get a larger profit. Any new communications technology, as MacLuhan pointed out, results in increased wealth.
The potential benefits of the $100 laptop are enormous. Let's just look at AIDS; the amount of disinformation in Africa is legend. Some men believe having sex with a virgin will cure them; this often leads to the rape of young girls. Having access to reliable information may save thousands of young girls from needless pain.
Let's use another metaphor: irrigation. We have made enormous gains in agricultural productivity thanks to irrigation. And that's just adding water to a field. Now, we're talking about irrigating villages with knowledge. Surely even the most Philistine must admit that the potential benefits are without limit. These are minds thirsting for knowledge, and we can now turn on the spigot.
There is a generation of killers being trained in Africa today. Our best hope of combatting them is to provide more and more African people with access to knowledge, information, and communication.
What was once true, is no longer so