For $150, Third-World Laptop Stirs a Big Debate

[JoeHill]

On Thu, 30 Nov 2006 19:02:50 -0500
John Van Ostrand got an infinite number of monkeys to type out:

> Think about the charitable organizations that will be able to
> communicate to these people. Want a better pump for irrigation? Here's a
> plan using parts common to the third world. How about health
> information, crop information.
> 
> I see this as a way to get the information people need to survive and
> improve their lives.

All true, but to me the most important result of something like this, were it
to be 'successful' (whatever that may imply), is not so much that *they* will
get to learn more about what *we* think is important, but that *we*, so deeply
inured in our silly Western culture of greed and self-righteousness, will
finally be confronted with reality when these people start broadcasting *their*
values and *their* experiences.

We far too often forget that we, the so-called 'advanced' and 'educated', and
'developed' (AKA 'disconnected', 'brainwashed', and 'spoiled'), really
represent only a very tiny fraction of this planet's population. The rest of
the world had been forced to accept only our perspective, a ridiculously narrow
one at that.

Hopefully this endeavour will complete the 'feedback loop' that Harold Innes
(can't remember which book...) described as absolutely essential for a stable,
cohesive, and *realistic* community.

But then, they said that about books, radio, and television too. Unfortunately,
any new medium of two-way communication is perceived as a threat to entrenched
interests (religious, economic, or political...well, mainly economic, the
others are just smokescreens anyway), and immediately subjected to the most
rigorous and draconian bureaucratic control.

Can't have the 'masses' gaining access to the inputs, messes up ye ol' power
structure (Galbraith, The New Industrial State for more on that). 

-- 
JoeHill / RLU #282046
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"That's one small step for Fry..." -Fry "...and one giant line for admission."
-stranger in line
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