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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?
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!
You know, there are lots(like tens of millions) of people that get enough to eat most of the time, but still live in poverty. These laptops give them the opportunity to learn, and to share good ideas amongst themselves, ideas that may help them run their farm at a greater profit, or save time and labor.
One thing is sure, it wouldn't work if no one bothered trying.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Give a man a fish, and he can eat for a day.
Teach a man how to 419 and he can fish for a lifetime.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
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
"Of course there's no reason it can't be both."
Considering that the OLPC isnt intended for demographics who have no food, people like Dvorak would be that reason...
There's a large and emerging segment of 'semi-poor people' who have food and most other necessities, but for whom educational material is a significant cost. One of the main points of the OLPC is to cut educational material costs while creating a load of other capabilities.
Personally I think the OLPC is already a huge success; I'd attribute the interest in it as a large part of the driving force for low-cost laptops such as ASUS Eee.
"Yeah, sometimes Dvorak's nothing more than a grumpy old man who rants."
Yeah, well, no different this time.
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.
I think hunger relief is often the the far less useful money that gets rid of guilt. Somehow people think if someone is not literally starving they don't deserve their help.
Yes people are still starving but it is less than it has been before and the reason for hunger is almost always political, economic, or weather related. Much of the human reasons for keeping people hungry are dealt with when you educate and empower the population.
I don't think it is fair to consider people who have enough to eat often by subsistence farming to be too rich for our aid. This laptop plan may or may not be the best way but it is far from useless or harmful. I guess we will find out soon enough.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
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.
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
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?
That is bullshit. The OLPC project includes Squeak, a Smalltalk programming language, and has simple sensor and control devices available that can be used to have Squeak programs interact with the real world. A child who can program in Squeak grows into an adult who can solve problems, think logically, develop and use technology and compete globally. I've been guiding my 7 year old in it, and she's already made her first object oriented game, so clearly, it's suitable for the task.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I've got a question. Does everybody on Slashdot believe that all of Africa is starving babies with flies covering their mouths? That's a serious question, by the way. Because whilst there are certainly places where that is still happening and it's terrible, there's a fuck of a lot of places where it isn't like that.
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!
It's a hard point to argue if you had only two options, food, or a laptop, the food seems a better choice.
I seem to have missed this memo; I wasn't aware that the OLPC project was aiming its materials at the type of children who appeared in 1980s benefit concert videos, or that the population of the developed world was nothing but an utter monolith of absolute poverty.
Then again, this is Slashdot, which is utterly incapable of discussing the developing world as anything other than a straw man parody of itself...
"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
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...
You miss the point of the OLPC. It is NOT intended to be yet another 'throw computers at schools' project. OLPCs are not intended to run your Powerpoint. The biggest innovation of OLPC is not the hardware, it is in fact the open, education-oriented software stack. There is a key on the keyboard specifically set aside to switch to source code editing of the running application; think on that for a while and realize what kind of philosophy and corporate culture is needed to support such a deceptively simple feature. No other vendor on the planet can come close; all they are interested in is expanding mind share and pushing yet another office machine.
I can relate to the attractiveness of the project from my own sour process of growing up under the MS umbrella. The defining experience installing every new version of DOS and Windows is a short-lived sense of accomplishment at having a clean, new, working installation followed by an empty feeling of betrayal at the inability to do much with the system, the useful bits being locked down behind undocumented APIs and binaries. The ensuing months would be filled with waiting for next issues of random computer magazines, grasping at crumbs of knowledge some two-bit writer would be merciful enough to publish. An issue describing video card registers would keep me going for a year. How much more would I have learned with an open, documentation-filled machine like the XO? If on top of this it contained encyclopaedic information about building stuff it would be a dream.
About the food thing, can you explain how local farmers can get established if they can't sell their produce at a profit because they are being undercut by free food? Do you suggest to keep the free food flowing forever?
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Yes people are still starving but it is less than it has been before and the reason for hunger is almost always political, economic, or weather related. Much of the human reasons for keeping people hungry are dealt with when you educate and empower the population.
Today I'd even knock out the 'weather related'. The USA produces enough food by itself to feed the world, much of the problem of starving people is transportation - and politics blocking the transportation.
It's very much a 'give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him how to fish and he eats for life'.
Provide a subsidence farmer, even in the form of loans, a tractor, miscellaneous equipment and supplies, and the training how to use it and you'll have somebody who isn't a subsidence farmer anymore. He can produce enough food to pay off his loans as well as free up hundreds of other subsidence farmers to do things like work in the tractor/fertilizer factories, bicycle factories, and everything else that a developed economy needs.
With food aid I've seen unfortunate consequences: Local farmers are driven out of business*, women continue to have babies, and you end up with a population explosion of people who still can't take care of themselves. IE the food aid makes the problem *worse*. In at least one case very much worse - the food aid allowed a warlord to continue his campaign against the farmers who's farms he'd been burning.
I'd much rather concentrate on enabling people to take care of themselves. Provide equipment, training, and the security needed for them to work if necessary**.
Unfortunately, this is at least one order of magnitude more expensive than simply providing food. I'm of the opinion that it'd be better to do this, even if you can't feed everybody as a result of the diverted resources. The idea is that after doing this for ten years you don't need to provide food aid anymore except for short term disasters like a tsunami. Unlike current situations like with locations in Africa - which has needed food aid for decades.
*US product can easily be superior than what a 3rd world farmer can produce, and you can't beat 'free'.
**Like the current situation in the middle east, work on training up and equipping local defense forces, both military and police. That way you don't have to provide security forever.
I don't read AC A human right
I think we are to much entrenched in our superiority feeling towards African people, evidently a reminiscence from the "good old" colonialism time, that we deem them inferior and unable to do anything for themselves. In the 19th century we wanted to "civilize" them and now we just throw them scraps from the table to feed their starving children. The situation they are in is a clear result of colonialism and economic neoclonialism for which we are directly responsible. Giving them a bowl of rice to survive until tomorrow is not going to solve the problem. Helping them to build sustainable economies will probably do it. The laptop for child is a long shot but it might break the vicious circle they are in by creating a better educated new generation that will refuse to work in the diamond mines for 1$ a day so that some f.... Belgian company gets filthy rich. I guess that is "our" greatest fear! That someday they won't be dependent on us and IMF and their natural resources won't be open for plunder. I hope that day comes sooner!
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
Not everybody, but quite possibly a majority, as our attention deficit culture certainly overwhelms us with such images, failing to supply much in the way of background information.
Dvorak has taken the classic straw-man approach of defining OLPC as something that it is not, and then using unassailable logic to point out how that thing which it is not is a very stupid idea. Add to that the fact that he doesn't make a single suggestion about alternative strategies, but simply says that this (mischaracterized) idea is dumb.
It would be bad enough if he is doing this just to get hits (a strategy he jokingly admits to), it's downright frightening to think that an industry "legend" might actually think this way. I've been on board with some of his windmill tilting of the past, but this makes me wonder whether I'd ever want to waste the time on him again.
Had I not canceled my subscriptions to such publications long ago I sure would consider it now.
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
Yes, because dumping food on those who have no food doesn't help them have food in the future, it just undercuts all their farmers and builds a long-term dependent relationship. (There are exceptions, one that comes to mind is drought-caused-famine relief).
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
I'm merely a hobbyist geek. But I AM a professional sustainable economic development consult who has spent twenty years living and working in developing countries. In my opinion, the OIRP is not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination, but it is not the ideal use of resources either. At best, it is an important part of the total socioeconomic development package that must be deployed in order to alleviate the plight of penury and destitution that is the lot of hundreds of millions of children living in developing countries around the world. Are there more important individual components within that package? Yes. Access to potable water is more important than access to information. Access to food is more important (although as many posters have pointed out, it is not the biggest problem). Access to electricity is more important. Access to transportation is more important. And, of course, security and health are more important. But does that mean that access to information is unimportant? Of course not.
It may be that the hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of man-years put into the development of this project could not possibly have been better spent address one of the more critical issues I just mentioned. I honestly don't know. What I do know is that the always-hyperbolic nature of the discussion on slashdot shows that the vast majority of readers are not well enough informed about issues of international development to legitimately engage in reasonable and nuanced debate on the subject.
A-Bomb
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 ]
I have little clue who this Dvorak is and really don't care but he really must suck if they are calling to ban his ass from /.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
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.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Teach a man to fish, and he can sit in a boat drinking beer for a lifetime.
rj
The problem with the phone is not that it's a phone, but that the service provider purposefully locks it down and restricts access to developer tools. The XO most emphatically does not have this problem! In fact, it's the opposite: everything about it was explicitly designed to be easy to develop for (even by the children themselves), and that is why it is useful.
On the contrary, what you call "compromises," I call "necessary features." The XO is less powerful? That's a good thing -- it means better battery life. The XO doesn't have a hard drive? That's a good thing -- it means better reliability and better battery life. The XO has a "weird" screen? That's a good thing -- it means it's readable in conditions where a "normal" screen is not, and, yes, better battery life.
It doesn't matter if you could make a "conventional" laptop for the same price (e.g. the EEE or whatever). It doesn't even matter if you could make a Core 2 Quad, SLI, 20" TFT screen laptop for the same price! It would still be fucking useless for the intended purpose because it would neither have the battery life to get anything done, nor even stand up to the expected environmental conditions in the first place!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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