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David Pogue Reviews the XO Laptop
Maximum Prophet writes "David Pogue, technology reviewer at the New York Times, has taken a first-hand look at the XO laptop, also known as the 'One Laptop Per Child' project, or the '$100 Laptop'. His reaction is very favorable, having tested it out via several criteria. And ultimately, he writes, the laptop is about more than just technology for the people. 'The biggest obstacle to the XO's success is not technology -- it's already a wonder -- but fear. Overseas ministers of education fear that changing the status quo might risk their jobs. Big-name computer makers fear that the XO will steal away an overlooked two-billion-person market. Critics fear that the poorest countries need food, malaria protection and clean water far more than computers. But the XO deserves to overcome those fears. Despite all the obstacles and doubters, O.L.P.C. has come up with a laptop that's tough and simple enough for hot, humid, dusty locales; cool enough to keep young minds engaged, both at school and at home; and open, flexible and collaborative enough to support a million different teaching and learning styles.'"
I'm not sure exactly where I stand in this argument, but the natural rebuttal is that the money spent on computers for the children might be better spent on things like malaria research/treatment and providing more food. It's not so much "computers could be used for bad, so we shouldn't get them," but more like "computers come with a small number of bad things, whereas only good can come from giving starving people food."
At the risk of getting flames from a tech-oriented /. crowd, I still don't agree or possibly don't fully understand the mentality behind a push to get laptops into the hands of children in poor countries. I see it as folly, and missing the point of what people really want.
Strip away all the bullshit of society and people are very simple emotion-driven machines: they want the good feelings and they avoid the bad feelings. That's it. At the deepest level, there is nothing more - everything else people want is an artifact or support within a (very) dysfunctional cultural system. Good feelings come from learning, food, sex, (long term) safety, love, and gratification (self worth). Bad feelings come from physical pain, attachment, sickness, hunger, sorrow, guilt, shame, anger and hate. These lists are incomplete and gross simplifications - but no where in there is the latest technology, the fastest ipod/palm pilot/pc/ whatever. No where on the lists is the fastest Comcast download speed, a cool car, or any of the other techno-pushed bullshit that people think is important.
The only reasons people want this stuff (new technology) both in 1st worlds and 3rd, is that these people get the emotions they want in society when they have them. Expensive do-dads are signals of status and status gets you laid, it gets you security through a job, it gives (sort of) some access to learning, and from ones job, it gets you food and a safe place to live. I can't help but think that pushing laptops into children of third world countries we are exporting our own techno-centric unhealth, our materialistic orientation on how to have the feelings we really want, but that new technology does not and can not give us.
There is extreme irony that the same technology that reflects signals of status also supports online systems of non-economic status that is increasingly important (explicit reputation), and cannot be easily purchased. Reputation- explicit, online and public is enabled in a connected world, and (I think) will become more powerful than the petty materialism people revert to in order to have self worth within a culture that thrives on most people having low self worth and working hard to make up for it. In fact, these systems are already here, people just have not realized it yet - as it takes years for people to understand how the rules of society change.
You misspelled "... new laptop using YET STILL ILLITERATE child hacker overlords."
Although to be fair I think the OLPC project is more about replacing heavy, expensive, quickly-obsoleted textbooks than anything else.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Oh, the malaria problem was under control many years ago.
It was called DDT.
Then some rich white people decided that bird egg shells were
more important than brown people half a world away.
Bu-Bye DDT. Bu-Bye brown people.
It's the usual story of the Eco-Warriors :
We had to destroy the indigenous people in order to save them. We had to deny them access to modern jobs (like mining) and modern products (like cars) in order to preserve their primitive purity. We value brown people in their Noble Savage state, and we will spare no sacrafice to keep them there.
good one kid. you'll go far in life.. provided no one decides not to feed you because you're a rapist.
http://www.xkcd.com/354/