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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.'"
We have space, hardware, your rights online, apple, etc...
Can we have a john dvorak section so I have a shot at filtering out all his crap?
It's a hard point to argue if you had only two options, food, or a laptop, the food seems a better choice. Of course there's no reason it can't be both. I think his point is worth thinking on, there are people for whom getting a computer is not much more than some diversion before they die of whatever disease they're slated to die from if they're lucky enough not to die of starvation (or unlucky enough, pick your idealogical slant).
True that no matter how much money you send, it's never going to be enough, but also true, for the lucky ones if they manage to survive their poverty, exposure to something like a computer may offer them a starting point.
He also raises good points... computers are hardly more than advertising pipelines, and unless you're already savvy, it's hard to suppress an rid the experience of the deluge of ads. Also, how many sites are in SiSwati or isiZulu these days?
Heck, I've seen and read of schools investing millions in computers with no tangible results in students' scores, grades, or even elevated interests in learning. The big problem is actually teaching something at all, ever, no matter the tools selected for education.
Yeah, sometimes Dvorak's nothing more than a grumpy old man who rants. I see him in this article as a grumpy old thoughtful and compassionate man. Kudos to him for raising the issue.
You know, I was a little nervous about giving them money, but now that I know Dvorak's against it, I'm convinced it was the right thing to do.
Slams Linux in 94 and says that it will never go anywhere ESP. on servers. Says that it will never replace unix (took ray norda to task for letting go of Unix and moving to Linux). IIRC, said that SCO was dead on WRT Linux stealing code from Unix. So on, and so on.
I long ago quit reading him, because he long ago became worthless.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
...but above all don't teach them how to fish!
Rice can be stolen and then resold on an international market for money. I was under the impression that XOs could only be used in a certain area or they'd be useless. So the real question is, would you rather give $200 of rice to a dictator that the people will never see, or try and get them a machine that can help spread education and freedom to peoples all over the world?
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
That's not a unique take, that's the same old tired objections that we've been hearing since the project started.
The XO is not intended to go to children who can't afford food. How dense can some people be?
Oh wait - it's Dvorak, silly question.
Advanced users are users too!
Looks like Dvorak--as many others--are totally missing the point of the OLPC program. It's not for places where people are starving to death. It's for places where kids are able to go to school and get some education. The OLPC program is designed to get kids in developing countries access to technology where they otherwise wouldn't have it.
Not all third-world countries are starving to death. Quite a number have the basic needs covered, but they need effective education, and the OLPC program aims to supplement that education.
...a free laptop destroys their pc hardware industry. ;-)
... and he will eat for a day. Show him how to monetize his web site with google ads, and he can go to the market and buy fish with the money he makes.
Loose lips lose spit.
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?
I've heard some dumb shit from this guy before but this breaks the mold. That rant wasn't even worthy of one of the AC trolls around here.
How many times has it been said over and over and over again: the OLPC is not for the starving countries with the distended bellies and flies in the eyes. They are for countries that have generally good health and food but just aren't rich enough to provide computers for their students. It would have taken about one freaking minute for him to find that out. Instead he lets us know (again) what an ass he is.
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
True to the linked article, my first thought about the OLPC project was that all it would do is show the have-nots just how much they don't have. I figured it was more likely to spur a violent, lower-class revolution than anything else. I was thinking about 18th century France at the time.
Can you imagine how someone with starving children would feel when they Wikied "Turducken?" It'd be like Marie Antoinette with a megaphone and a team of Solid Gold dancers.
But I also believe that technology is a need, in a technological world, and that it empowers people. I doubt this project can assuage the global poverty and resource distribution fiasco, nor was that the intent, but it may allow a new generation to help themselves.
These laptops can bring them something of value: hope. Hope tastes awful, and it needs salt, which many of the project's beneficiaries can't afford, but it's absolutely better than nothing at all.
I know this is a bit redundant, but I wanted to express Dvorak's point without all the bombast and condemnation. We're sorry you're a guilty white man, John. We're not getting on that bus.
I'm sure the OLPC is a good thing, and I know the people who buy them are doing a good thing, but I often wonder if our priorities are in the right order.
Because Dvorak is ultimately wrong. Technology, in whatever form, will absolutely change the world. I just wonder if it will be for the better.
--
Toro
Teach a child to use a computer, he gets to work in a call center for a lifetime.
Seriously though, food aid achieves...? It pretty much ensures poor kids live long enough to breed and make even more poorer kids. You pat yourself on the back for having saved a kid today and create five that starve tomorrow.
Given the choice, I'd rather give those kids a chance at an education so they can raise their standard of life and start trying to ensure their kids, grandkids and every generation afterwards is lifted out of a situation where they need food aid year after year to support too large numbers on poorly cultivated land.
Call me mercenary but, tough as it is, I'd rather a million kids starve while the million that survive improve their quality of life and for the generations to come than save both million now and have ten million starving within a couple of generations.
In this case, Dvorak's self congratulating his short term compassion while creating a far worse long term problem and knocking those who're trying to do the opposite.
I have some criticism here and there of OLPC, and I wonder if it will ever achieve what it hopes to achieve.
That said, I find Dvorak's comments to be horrifically offensive. The ignorance and pretension with which he is critical of OLPC and, by extension, any project that does anything other than ship limited, non renewable resources to countries where it can be stolen by corrupt bureaucrats is frankly disgusting. And the assumptions underneath! That you'll only ever make a one time charitable donation to a third world country in your life! If I didn't know that Dvorak was doing this only to be contrary, I'd say that his rhetoric belied someone who had never deeply considered the problem in third world nations before writing the damn article.
The truth is that third world countries desperately need infrastructure and education. They'll never be able to compete in the world wide industrial market, even if they have natural resources, but given sufficient education they can compete in the world information market. Is Dvorak really so short sighted as to not see that? Kids who grow up with computers can become information workers, and that requires no more infrastructure than a cheap laptop and bandwidth. But apparently that's a long term investment that Dvorak can't see - though I doubt he would be so critical of a similar education initiative in the US, which already has established resources in computer education. How hypocritical.
And there is more - a single laptop can service a large number of children, technology like the XO-1 that could let kids onto the internet can foster a generation supportive and understanding of democracy and free markets without growing up in one. I could go on and on (for example, that the nations themselves are sometimes purchasing these laptops), but I think around here I'd be preaching to the choir.
So, sure, if you're only ever going to spend $200 dollars in charitable donations in your lifetime, spend it on food for starving kids. If you don't mind giving a little more then consider investing in the future of these children, rather than just hemorrhaging money into life support and hoping the situation gets better on its own.
There's plenty of food in the world. The issue is one of distribution, not lack of ability to grow it. Typically hunger and poverty go hand in hand with war and social inequalities. If you look at the Global Hunger Map (requires Google Earth), you'll see hunger is worst in the Middle East, central Africa, and parts of India. Sending rice or laptops to those places will help little until they can establish safety and equality.
The point isn't that the world's poor need computers or that they need to be on the internet. The point is that they need better education. Currently a major cost of education is textbooks. The OLPC is intended, in combination with suitable content, to replace printed textbooks. The cost of an OLPC, even at US$188, is less than the cost of printed textbooks a child needs for five years of school. By providing the children with OLPCs, it should be possible to give them a better education while saving money.
John C Dvorak is a notorious professional troll. His MO is to post something which is carefully designed so it will be interpreted as highly inflammatory (like this story), but he's always careful to give himself a plausible "out" by never being absolute or explicit, so he can later claim he was misinterpreted. If you read this article, you'll see all the hallmarks - he never actually says that computers for the third world are a bad idea, or that education isn't better than food relief. He just wants people to think that's what he's saying because it's controversial and gets the hits.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
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?
One of the characteristics of a failed 3rd-world nation is that its people spend money on projects that are not directly related to providing basic necessities. To understand this issue, first look at a highly successful people who transformed themselves from a 3rd-world nation into a 1st-world economic superpower. Consider the case of Japan.
At the end of 1945, Japan was impoverished. Allied forces had bombed it back into barren rock, of which some became radioactive. In the ensuing 35 years, the Japanese people focused on the basics: building the infrastructure (e.g., railroads and public schools), acquiring industrial technology (e.g., transistors from the Americans) to expand its industrial base, etc. Specifically, Tokyo invested almost no money in military forces, space adventures, etc. By 1980, Japan became a 1st-world nation -- and the #2 economic superpower.
Now, consider India. Its people are wasting money on a space race and nuclear weapons. This activity only impoverishes the impoverished people, who are the majority of the Indian population. The result is that the prospects for India are quite poor.
Forget laptops. Forget space ships. Above all, forget nuclear weapons. If you are a citizen of an impoverished nation, focus on the basics: reading, writing, mathematics, science (includng agriculture), and free markets. If you can succeed at the basics (and everyone can succeed at the basics), then your nation will naturally prosper.
Look at Japan. In the 1960s, the Japanese watched, without envy, as the Americans "won" the space race. The Japanese knew that their day in space would come, but in 1965, they knew that they must stay focused on the basics. The Japanese succeeded.
Similar comments apply to Eastern Europe. Look at Poland. It does not waste money on either nuclear weapons or space ships. Yet, Poland is succeeding. It will soon become a Western economic superpower alongside Japan.
Unfortunately, most hunger relief programs are simply tax reduction scams. People donate millions of dollars to these 'aid' agencies, who spend 99% on salaries and other fancy stuff, and then deliver a few thousand tons of maize to some harbour in Africa, where it gets dumped on the dock to rot and get eaten by rats.
To deliver real aid, you not only have to deliver 10 Thousand tons of food to a harbour - you have to deliver 10 Million tons of food, plus the trains, trucks, drivers, guards, repair and resupply facilities, tents, generators, building materials, pesticides, drugs, bandages, beds, surgical equipment, doctors, nurses and more, if you wish the relief to be at all effective.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Consider countries like Nigeria for example, that is one of the countries that were considering the OLPC. Nigeria recently cleared out $18 BILLION of debt. The interest they've saved each year for a year alone would pay for a million OLPC's. Nigeria is far from rich, but has enough oil reserves that it can certainly prevent people from starving (whether the political will is there is a separate issue). Nobody should send food aid to Nigeria, because it's not what they need.
On the other hand, even in the areas where famines are rife the OLPC would be more useful than food aid except DURING a famine. A key problem for many farming nations is lack of reliable information that is vital for farmers, such as weather reports as well as information about more effective farming methods, and even prices at the nearby markets to prevent people from literally wasting days carrying goods to markets where demand is low.
Teaching a generation of kids in locations like that how to exploit computers and online resources will long term mean far more than disaster relief, which is what food aid is.
We must feed them, guide their politics, make them "civilized", for obviously, they are not capable on their own. And we had no say in their current situation, we are just innocent observers , trying to "help" them.
It's a sickening point of view, but most seem to hold it, and disguise it in premises that the money is better spent elsewhere. So yes dvorak, while i do agree that there is hypocrisy in many of these actions, and a huge disbalance in wealth in this world, and that people, of all walks, should be doing a lot more... Don't knock those who are doing something ( and the likely scenario is that you knock, but dont do anything yourself ). The just way to solve poverty,starvation, and instability isnt by feeding them and controlling their affairs. It's by giving them the tools and knowledge to correct the wrong, and allow them to rise up with their own ability, which is the same ability present in any human being. Its the way we have done it, its the way they will do it.
I'm not a religious man, but the fish versus fishing thing aptly applies here.
( oh, and btw,, guess why there isnt any of their languages on the web, or any content they can use.. BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO MAKE IT!!! )
But anyways... just the usual "those people" mentality...
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
1. Teach a man how to fish
2. Lend him a crapload of money under the condition that he buys the fishing boat, fishing equipment and fuel from you
3. Wait until man can't pay off the debt due to disastrous interest rates, and invoke the default clauses such as taking ownership of his business, and diverting the fish to a Western market
4. Profit!
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Mr Dvorak has obviously never heard the expression "teach a man to fish".
Sure, you can spend $200 and get a short-term benefit for a bunch of people. But when they've finished eating that truckload - what happens next? You have to buy them another truckload then another and another.
What's needed is a way to let these people become self-sufficient.
I imagine a small African village containing 20 teenagers who speak good enlish, are kick-ass programmers with knowledge of the way the outside world works - and web access. I think they can find enough out-sourced work to earn enough for a $200 truck of rice every once in a while.
I imagine a village with land enough to grow coffee - and the net-savvy ability to sell the stuff directly to gormet coffee drinkers at $10 a pound rather than to big business at $0.10 per pound (I bet it's less than that). Their money accumulates in a PayPal account that they use to buy their rice. Sure they have some bad years when the coffee harvest fails - but they have enough cash banked to tide themselves over - and enough basic math and statistics and weather data from the Web to allow them to analyse how often this is going to happen and therefore the amount of storage they need to store their product and keep running the operation over the rough times.
Tribal rug makers can sell their rugs on eBay for hundreds of dollars - they can use the computer to allow customers to upload designs like CafePress does - they can go into the custom rug making business.
Actually - the main thing they can do is to tell me (by replying to this post) exactly why all of my ideas are stupid and how they have much better ones of their own.
This is a MUCH more fulfilling life than sitting out there hoping that Mr Dvorak will send them a truckload of rice sometime in the next month. The OLPC group are attempting a long term fix - the short term problems will still be short term problem for a long way to come - but if just one generation of decently educated, net-savvy kids can emerge from this - the impact will be stunning.
So - you can give a man a fish and he eats for a day - or you can teach a man to fish and he eats forever. But, if he doesn't understand the basics of fish ecology, he probably destroys his local fishery by overfishing it. So if you teach a man to get gainful employment on the world stage, he can buy all the goddamn fish he needs just like you or I do.
www.sjbaker.org
Talk to someone in the Peace Corps. Seriously. And no, I am not in the Peace Corps. And yes, I have had this conversation with several who are. Bottom line: The P.C. tries to go in and make a people self sufficient. They try to help them establish a means of commerce, build small business, drill wells, etc. The minute the "Sally Struthers" of the world show up giving away food and life staples, the Peace Corps leaves. You see, the Peace Corps folks and their crazy ideas about helping communities become self-sustaining can't compete with give-aways. You can NOT eat a laptop. You CAN learn with it. Learn to read, write, communicate. Learn about your world, AND the rest of the world that you are completely clueless about. Learn skills and information that would otherwise be completely unobtainable. Is the OLPC going to save the world? Nope, but neither are Sally and the gang. "Teach a man to fish" and whatnot.
Hell, what do you know, this little article has actually pissed me off enough to get me contribute. A fair achievement in my long and almost entirely parasitic slashdot relationship.
Before we even start on a response, the eternal question arises: Did he, or did he not donate a single google ad earned cent to hunger relief as he so glibly concludes at the end of his tirade?
Somehow I suspect he smugly punched the submit button on his blog and went back to browsing around looking for more soft targets to lure more indignant ad clickers in with, without a second thought for the starving millions he so crassly claims concern for.
Honestly the man is so clueless as to how the rest of the world that he claims empathy for operates he might as well start writing on the subtle nuances of Mongolian yodelling.
First, kudos for googling iSiswati and isiZulu. I'll be interested to see if his next article that mentions German calls it Deutsche. Honestly, if you going to write in English use the English words. Swazi and Zulu. And had he taken the time actually scroll down the wikipedia page he used for the spelling he may have noticed links to projects concerning translations of software to those exact languages or even, heaven forbid, an online Zulu Newspaper. And er, perhaps if my mates in KwaZulu Natal has a few more of these computer things, they could uh, you know, actual write those "missing" wiki's. Oh wait, hold on THEY DID!
Now, if you will bear with my rant a little longer, for those seething uneducated masses that daily have to choose between mastering MySQl and filling the belly, I think that dear old dozy Dvorak will get a rude surprise if ever he ventures out of his oh so grounded in reality Silicon Valley and met some staving minions.
I know from personal experience that many families that have to choose between food on the tables for themselves and an education for their children, will give both the food and education to their children and suffer in silence themselves in the hope that those children at least can escape the lives that they as parents feel they cannot escape themselves.
How, pray tell, will the expired and rancid grain not fit western tables that Mr Dvorak claims so to be so keen to sponsor, help to create a better life for those children? Seriously, I actually want to know how.
And as for theft, does our dear old correspondent in the land of the free(speech, NOT) even know how little of that relief he is so generously offering to pay for actually makes it to the people who need it after all the officials, leaders, warlords and general low life opportunist have taken their cut.
Good point, of course there will be losses to theft etc. But as he so deftly points out only 13% of the Niger population can read. Last time anyone checked, 100% of them could eat. So if they had to choose between raiding the latest food package or stealing some kids laptop, I don't know about him, but I would rather be protecting the laptops.
Slashdot degrades itself when it runs stories by Dvorak. It can't look good from any perspective when half the regular membership is tagging a story submission as troll. I'll show you how it works. Watch me degrade myself by making references to Woody Allen. In fact, I did watch Sleeper the other night. (An interesting calculation: when Allen wakes up in the year 2173, Soon-Yi will be 203 years old. Gaaa! Given enough time, he'll prove us wrong yet.) Dvorak is the Howard Cosell of the IT industry, and that's probably paying him a complement he doesn't deserve.
On having been to Africa, I'm in complete agreement.
What a lot of people don't realise is that most African's are fairly happy, and fairly adapted to their way of life. A computer won't help kids. A computer only helps administrators, and typists.
One of the projects I did while in Zambia was to help renovate a school. African's would rather have more materials for their schools, working radios they can teach with, or more access to simple life saving treatment such as blood or TB vaccines.
A rural teacher who I met simply wanted bars in the windows (holes) of his Oxfam built school so kids wouldn't climb in a steal what little supplied he had. Paper and pens were far far more useful than computers.
We have to look at India and China. They're becoming the world Math and Scientific elite. Employing an education system Britain abandoned 40 years ago in favour of modernising. Educations works.
Even though I dislike most religions and the dangerous ideologies they breed, religion in many developing countries is a key focus point for community driven development - people like to pitch in where there is a support structure; but support structures need money! Even if it's just food to sustain some of the 80% unemployed in Zimbabwe so they don't take to looting, hostage taking or drugs.
There are better things to donate money to: such as anti-corruption schemes or Médecins Sans Frontières.
Take your pick, GO TO A DEVELOPING COUNTRY AND SPONSOR A VILLAGE FOR AS LITTLE AS £50/m, just don't get a piece of technology for a child who can't charge it.
Matt
This is an incredibly important point: direct food aid competes w/ local production and serves to put farmers out of business. Note that Western food subsidies have been a major bone of contention in recent free trade treaty negotiations for much the same reason.
The XO, on the other hand, is very unlikely to put local chip fabs and ISVs out of business. Instead, it will facilitate learning and communication.
kieran hervold
Also known as "Windows 3$-edition pre-installed on Classmates", to put a parallel to the current situation.
That's why Negroponte is trying to push hard for open-source solutions.
So there's no restrictive conditions. So people target by the OLPC can actually own the technology and not be hooked and dependant on a western seller (Microsoft).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
INTERVIEWER: Tell us how it works John
DVORAK: This is the formula for pissing off Macintosh users, for getting a lot of links or attention, and this has been deconstructed but never accurate, let me give you the deconstruction.
First I'd write something that would be semi-innocuous with just enough insulting stuff to get a lot of attention from the Macintosh community. So then they would write in, and by the way it would always be done in such a way that I would have outs, in other words I would write in kind of a weasel way. I would then, then I'd get one column with a lot of numbers.
Then I'd get a lot of hate mail and all kinds of Macintosh reaction and then I would react to it as though I was flabbergasted, that everybody misinterpreted me and they hated it and I don't get it and what was wrong with these people, which would piss them off even more. So I'd get huge hits, after that..
INTERVIEWER: What was the point of all this?
DVORAK: Now wait a minute, for the numbers..
INTERVIEWER: Which numbers exactly? What numbers are you looking for?
DVORAK: And, believe me, lots of numbers. Now then I let it simmer down for a while and when whatever position I had taken originally I would change the position exactly the opposite, and tell the Macintosh people I was completely wrong and they were right all along and the numbers would go through the ceiling! (laughter)
A lot of poor countries complain that "aid" is in effect a subsidy to western farmers plus product dumping, which completely destroys the market for their own local farmers. They'd prefer to have monetary support for their own local farmers instead of flown-in foreign food, but when they ask for donations of cash instead of food, they're usually told no due to fears of corruption. Now admittedly that's a real fear, but it doesn't solve the fundamental problem that paying American farmers to dump product cheaply on Africa is not going to make Africans richer. It does help American farmers, though, many of whom not coincidentally live in politically important states.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10