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Dvorak Slams OLPC As 'Naive Fiasco'
theodp writes "PC Magazine's John C. Dvorak has a unique take on the cute One Laptop per Child XO-1, deeming the OLPC project a naive fiasco waiting to unfold that sends an insulting 'let them eat cake' message to the world's poor. When it comes down to a choice of providing African kids living in absolute poverty with access to Slashdot or a $200 truckload of rice, Dvorak votes for the latter. Buy ten OLPCs if it assuages your guilt, says Dvorak, but 'I'll donate my money to hunger relief.'"
After all, can you think of a single project Dvorak has claimed as a failure that didn't succeed spectacularly? His criticism is a strong hint that OLPC is no longer a niche player and is about to make major inroads.
On a more insidious note, Dvorak is an analyst-for-hire. He only comes out with an opinion when somebody pays him to have that opinion. That means one of the big players has decided they want bad PR about OLPC. I wonder if it was Microsoft, Intel, or somebody else?
did anyone else notice the interesting timing of this with other OLPC stories?
say for example Microsoft's criticism that olpc won't run Windows?
Thank you.
I've been working in Africa for a while, and I swear that the Army is the only organization in the US that gets it. "Not a big fan of the army or wars, but the Army is doing more teaching there then any of the other organizations I've gotten to work with.
Dvorak is an idiot. Africa's problems stems from it's cultural problems. For instance, the AIDS virus propogates because for some dumb reason people who have AIDS continue to have sex (forcibily at times) with women making the problem more. Nobody seems to have a civic attitude because everybody used to be tribal. I suppose we all started out this way. (btw, I realize this might be a sweeping generalization and obviously not everyone believes that, but the nature of the problem would not be this large if not a healthy portion (no pun intended) was not engaging in this kind of crap. The african libido is truly phenomenal!
:-) Something for everyone. But seriously, Africa's time is going to come but we need to have programs like this that allow ideas to proliferate through the young due to the fact that the adults don't seem to have gained sufficient wisdom to end the cycle in the various countries.
OLPC comes in because children will be exposed to new ideas (or old ideas) that when they grow up will be able to use and implement on their own. They'll learn the value of education, educate their people and then finally we can start offshoring our IT to Africa instead of the more expensive Asia!
sri
Hey, I hate python (did Guido learn nothing from the Makefile debacle?), but I can't imagine that the XO kids will learn nothing from a system designed with a very intelligent architecture, with security designed in from the ground up, with access to source for everything and with a focus on learning. I imagine that children who learn about computers from an XO would be much better developers than kids raised on Windows.
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Sugar is the only really non-standard piece, and that shouldn't add significantly to the overall costs.
You also claim that this "non-standardness" makes it less useful as an educational tool. You make it sound like the OLPC's purpose is to teach programming, which simply isn't the case. Hell, its primary purpose isn't even computer literacy. But it does come with several language interpreters, and I'm guessing a really ambitious student would be able to get a C++ compiler running on it. I'm just not seeing the problem, unless you're of the "if the kids aren't learning Windows, MS Office, and MS Visual Studio, they aren't learning" mindset.Which is why Negroponte is still expecting to hit the $100 price point next year. Of course, by three cycles, they don't make them anymore, which is why you don't see any $20 486 laptops these days.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!