Computers, Celebrities, Google
Dvorak Says We Should Send Rice, Not Laptops, To Children
In case you haven't been following along with our occasional coverage of John C. Dvorak, we think he could lighten up a bit. This angry man has made a career out of bemoaning everything from Web 2.0 to the iPhone, and now the OLPC XO, the laptop designed for children in developing countries. Dvorak thinks that the OLPC XO is a slap in the face of the developing world. A modern day "let them eat cake," to steal his analogy.
Allow us to boil down Dvorak's arguments for you:
- Money would be better spent donating $200 worth of rice
- Millions of people are starving to death
- Kids will be spammed and see ads
- There are bomb-making instructions online
- There are lots of illiterate people
We also want to take issue with a particular piece of information that Dvorak takes from a "world hunger website:"
"Nearly one in four people, or 1.3 billion -- a majority of humanity -- live on less than $1 per day."
Wait, what? "one in four" is 25 percent, "1.3 billion" is less than half the population of China, and some how that's a majority? The most recent estimates actually put the population of the Earth at around 6,634,570,959 which would mean one in four would be closer to 1.7 billion. None of those three figures align.
As for his concern that these poor children have to deal withj spam, all we can say is, "oh well." Life is too short to worry about Viagra ads in a child's inbox. Then there are his worries about the type of information available on the internet, such as bomb making instructions. If Dvorak is worried that these children don't even have water, what is the likelihood that they'd have bomb making materials?
And, finally, Dvorak suggests that the OLPC laptop would be useless since there are large populations of illiterate children in Africa. I don't know if he's been paying attention, but the whole purpose of this thing is to get educational materials to children through the laptop so that they won't be illiterate.
Referenced story from PC Magazine
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Randy Stewart said 2:28PM on 7-15-2009
Hi-
I recently found this picture of mine was being used without attribution. You can find the original photo here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/stewtopia/865496725/.
I like attribution to read as such "(CC) Randy Stewart, blog.stewtopia.com."
Thank you for respecting my Creative Commons license.
Cheers,
Randy Stewart
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hkmarks said 12:55AM on 12-11-2007
Rice? Nonsense. Food aid is only useful in emergencies. It does nothing but depress prices for local farmers in the areas that this is targeted to. (Not to mention rice needs vastly more irrigation than other crops and is less nutritious... that's a story for another time.) Seed, maybe. Vitamins and medicine, sure.
There are perhaps better things to spend the money on than laptops, like school fees (in many places, basic education is not free), teachers, roads and infrastructure. Then again, telecom infrastructure at least will be connected to these things -- wireless is the norm in the developing world.
A better way to think of the OLPC is not as a commodity trinket, the way we tend to think of our electronic gadgets, but as a workbook, a calendar, a calculator, a lamp, (maybe a telephone?) and every textbook and book the child will read from the time they get it to the time they graduate. (5-10 years?)
Consider a bicycle: it's nearly worthless next to a car -- it can't take you as far or carry as many people or as much stuff -- but it's better than walking and it doesn't need gas. That's what you call appropriate technology.
$200 for 5 years of internet access alone is an incredible value. (Let's just say it's a tenth what I'm paying -- not counting the computer itself.) That's access to millions of educational resources... Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg are only scratching the surface. The educational value of a laptop computer connected to the Web is far greater than that of an equal dollar value worth of books -- at least when directed by a teacher.
While other initiatives like well-drilling are important, education is even more so. Throwing money at things like food aid is a band-aid at best.
See also this video about a well-drilling project:
http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/terra-401-the-water-carriers-part-one/4151046/
Note that one of the major problems they faced was getting the villagers to think of the well as their own property and responsibility.
I'm sorry -- Dvorak may now a bit about computers but he needs to do some research on the developing world.
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John S. said 2:19PM on 12-15-2007
Rice doesn't help end poverty, education and technology does.
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Lee said 10:14AM on 12-14-2007
What they need to do is provide ESSURE permanent birth control for these women so they don't continue to have more and more children that they cannot feed, let alone educate. A woman who has one child that she can care for is then able to do for that child. Poverty in America was lifted when people no longer had 8 or 10 kids to feed in a family. ESSURE doesn't require any surgery and blocks the woman's tubes so she has permanent birth control.
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Maddie said 6:36PM on 12-14-2007
re: ESSURE. Are your going to make them take it if they don't want to (ie forced sterilization?)
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