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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.'"
$20 says that this story is tagged "troll" etc. just because it's Dvorak.
You know what, folks? He's right. OLPC is one of a long line of pet projects to "help the poor" from people with money and leadership, driven by their own egos and perceptions, not reality.
Witness Oprah's $40M school "for leadership" for African girls; total size of the school is about 150 students. It has two beauty salons, among other things, and has been described as extravagant, even ignoring that it's in the third world. That's a great use of money; meanwhile, a friend of mine spent a month in Ghana teaching kids there, and they didn't have the money for basic materials like pencils for lessons in reading and writing. But hey, 150 girls a year are whisked to a class higher than 90% of the people even in the United States; Oprah gets some pretty photo ops with them, and both the black and feminist communities love her to pieces.
How about the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation? Guess what- month-old children in Africa don't die from AIDS; they die from diarrhea because of contaminated drinking water. They don't starve because of AIDS; they starve because they need food. They don't get shot because of AIDS; they get shot because the western world stands by while genocide happens.
They don't need fucking laptops. They need clean water, food, peace, basic health infrastructure, peace, and educational/vocational/agricultural training.
Please help metamoderate.
This is more of a solution for American schools than African schools. I don't think the kids are craving Wifi so much as food. I think Dvorak is right and you people are no better than missionaries feeding children your inedible religion (linux) instead of teaching them to fish or farm. And no, they can't just look it up on wikipedia- their needs are much more basic than that.
Here's a wikipedia article that can educate YOU:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_Hierarchy
HINT: They live somewhere on the bottom.
In the case of "second-world" nations that can be wasting their time on such things, maybe we should give them a laptop loaded with more standard Microsoft software so they can train to work tech support. Globalization 101. If these children are working white collar jobs in the future, who will weave your wind socks and witty Think Geek t-shirts for 10 cents an hour? If we educate our workforce, we'll have to sacrifice the retarded consumer culture that allows you to see the OLPC as a viable solution to hunger.
They can't use that 200 dollars worth of rice to send out scam emails.
Face it, the 'third world', especially African countries, are shit because what they want is shit. They've gotten all sorts of aid from bare nakked dollars to farming equipment. They aren't any better for it because they don't want better. The only way they can be help out is if we stopped helping them all together. There's a reason there are "please do not feed the animals" signs... one is so peope don't get their freakin fingers bitten off, the other is so the animals don't become dependant on handouts. It applies to humans also (yes, we are all animals).
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM