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

[Rick Tomaschuk]

I'm tired of solving the worlds problems while our own country goes to
hell. Solving third world dilemmas while a noble cause does little to
help me find work in and around Toronto. The list server is the Toronto
Linux Users Group. I don't tie religious associations with my business.
I simply observe what I see. As for 'bankers being people too' so are
lawyers but I digress.
RickT

"Replacing desktops one PC at a time"
http://www.TorontoNUI.ca

On Thu, 2006-11-30 at 13:56 -0500, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> 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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