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OLPC a Hit in Remote Peruvian Village
mrcgran writes "The Chicago Tribune is running a feel-good story about the effects of OLPC on a remote village in Peru. 'Doubts about whether poor, rural children really can benefit from quirky little computers evaporate as quickly as the morning dew in this hilltop Andean village, where 50 primary school children got machines from the One Laptop Per Child project six months ago. At breakfast, they're already powering up the combination library/videocam/audio recorder/music maker/drawing kits. At night, they're dozing off in front of them — if they've managed to keep older siblings from waylaying the coveted machines. Peru made the single biggest order to date — more than 272,000 machines — in its quest to turn around a primary education system that the World Economic Forum recently ranked last among 131 countries surveyed.'"
Which may worry some people in power when impressionable children have access to all kinds of corrupting influences. "Daddy, what is 'capitalism'?" or "Teacher, why don't I have freedom of the press like my friends in America?"
I predict some kind of censorship - under the cover of 'protecting' them, of course - within a year.
Most of the talk on tech sites has focused on Microsoft trying to stuff their unwanted OS onto the laptop and getting the hardware specs increased to handle their OS, but there is a strange and sad reaction that I see to the laptop that mirrors the reaction to universal health care:
Poor people are supposed to be poor.
You can't have winners in life when there are no losers. Poor people are supposed to be sitting around in filth like Michael Palin in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And poor people are supposed to sit around in public hospitals for hours waiting for substandard care and dying early. That's their job in life.
How can a white middle to upper class American feel smug about themselves when poor people are getting the same care as they are and have access to information technology to better their lot in life?
- Read articles about fishing in Spanish Wikipedia.
- Explore the articles' references.
- Teach yourself to fish.
- Catch fish.
- Sell fish.
- PROFIT!
Am I missing a step???You know, it's almost enough to make an old geek cry, imagining these kids learning about computers and becoming proto-geeks, who otherwise might have lived their entire lives without ever seeing a laptop or using the internet.
I'll ignore all the normal arguments (like the fact there are other groups working on that kind of stuff). Let me ask you this:
Which is better? A disruptive technology now, or an infrastructure in 40 years?
If you give the kids laptops now, they learn to learn. They learn some physics. They learn some science. They learn some this, they learn some that. They are like renaissance people, learning a little about everything. They get the benefit of being able to look up the solutions other cultures have come up for to fix problem. They can improve their world in the next few years, even if in small ways. As they get older and more kid go through things, things improve. Some kids break out of the cycle, and they may decide to help donate to get others out.
Option two is to put up schools. We'll ignore the problem of keeping the funding going. You make the schools. If you can get the kids into the schools and get them to keep going (read the article to see how the OLPC is doing this), it's still 9 years to get the kid into the high-school range. They are limited by whatever materials they get. By the time they make a difference in the world, it may be 20+ years. It's a very long term investment. In the mean time, things won't change too much. Without the ability to go look up how someone solved problem X, they are forced to reinvent the wheel sometimes, slowing progress.
People have been trying the school option in the US and basically every other country on Earth for a long time. Charities have been setting up schools in poor countries (in Africa, South America, and other places, for example) for easily 30 years. Yet those countries still have these problems. Now we have a way that may improve things faster.
Worst case scenario: the kids stay in school and things happen the old-fashioned way.
All this ignores more immediate stuff. People in little villages would have to make pots, and toys, and many other things. There are people who, if given access (through eBay, for example) 10-100x what those people sell the things for right now. All they need is access to the market. It wouldn't take much of that to improve the lives of many people, spreading the wealth as they improved their lives.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
"They don't need computer skills or the internet"
One of the key mistakes made almost every time computers are introduced to kids is to try to introduce them to computers.
XOs are not tools to teach "computer skills". They are tools to teach reading, writing, arithmetic, science _and_ some basic computer skills. They are much more than most people see. Think of them as an infinite number of books distributed for free to any kid in the country in real time and you start grasping the idea.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
My kid wants a OLPC. But you can't just buy one. My kid isn't a good, African kid, she's a bad, American kid.
Your 'American kid' has far more resources to draw on that the target audience of these laptops. You, the dad, has the resources and ability to basically build her a laptop for cheap. You already have a 24/7 internet connection, ready for this laptop to connect to. She has PC's in school...all her friends (and their parent) have PC's at home. She can very easily go to the local library to use the computers there. If you work in any medium size company, you can probably scam an older laptop for free (I have 3 such laying around).
You popping for a brand new, dual core, multi gigbyte HD laptop for under $600 is far less of a financial impact than an OLPC would be for any of the target audience.
Or...you popping for a $399 OLPC (and a tax deduction of $200) is far less of a financial hit as well.
Should we also be bitching because the 'good African kids' also get free rice and 'bad American kids' don't? Or that 'good African kids' get a well dug in their town by the Peace Corps, and YOU, the downtrodden, poor American, has to actually pay taxes for clean, filtered, unlimited, water delivered to the multiple taps in your house at any temperature you desire.
Oh...and if you happen to come across a cheap/free laptop, you (Mr. computer wizard) can install the OLPC image on it and your daughter can have almost exactly the same thing. (unfortunately, that image is outdated. I hope they publish a current one soon)
Quit yer bitching.
But these kids aren't starving or dying off due to some easily treatable disease. Really, giving them $188 in food and medicine wouldn't help them that much, and would be pretty limited in the length of time it did help.
Providing the OLPC is something like providing a basic infrastructure like roads or water, except in this case it is information. Money for these things could always be spent in other ways to meet short term needs, but they are far better off investing in infrastructure that will have long term positive impacts for many years to come.