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

[Evan Leibovitch]

Rick Tomaschuk wrote:
> Yes I know a poor African boy/girl desperately need a laptop. How else can the carry water from the stream to their hut?
OLPC is not going to replace irrigation and low tech needs, but it 
serves a very different purpose. Education and literacy improvement is a 
very important component of lifting societies out of poverty, and 
technology does have a role to play. For example: the introduction of 
the cellphone, together with the concept of microcredits, have increased 
revenue for rural African farmers by eliminating (often corrupt) 
middlemen in finding buyers and conducting price negotiations.

Tiny cheap computers, on the own, will add little. However, they will 
enable OTHER things to happen in the field of communications and 
education. Huge amounts of money have already been donated in this 
regard, largely proving to be of little value by the time any of the aid 
trickled down to the villages. This looks like an effort in which most 
of the money spent will actually make it into the hand of the intended 
recipients.

As well, look at the countries ordering the project -- Brazil, Thailand, 
Libya, Argentina. None of these are in the poorest parts of Africa, and 
they already have computer literacy initiatives in place.

Many developing countries look to India and want a piece of the IT 
outsourcing pie. The OLPC is a good step in helping increasing basic 
literacy and computer literacy. Some countries -- notably Brazil -- see 
OLPC and related efforts as a way to make their countries more 
self-sufficient in IT and not dependent on the US.

So if the World Bank is willing to help this happen, that's fine with me.
> How about looking at what drives this lunacy. Big banks, the 'New World Disorder'.
Sorry, but that doesn't wash. The convenient scam inherent in conspiracy 
theories is that reasonable efforts to disprove them are met with 
accusations of being part of the conspiracy.

As someone who has personally had to defend association-by-faith to the 
targets of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, (and mutations of it 
such as Henry Ford's accusation that Jewish bankers started world war 1) 
I find such "revelations" to be worse than a waste of time. They are 
truly destructive to real attempts at societal progress, a thinly-veiled 
excuse for bigotry that is no better than racism or religious extremism.

Anyone who tells you he has _the_ truth, surely doesn't. And bankers are 
people too.

- Evan

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