Playing with the OLPC

It's not a XOR, it's a AND: children need not only to eat, but also to get education.

If you set a man on fire, he will stay warm for the rest of his life."

The other thing to consider is that you can't solve just half the problem. You have to fix the structure of society if you want to keep people from starving. Education and communication technology is one of the most powerful steps I know towards empowering people, and empowered people at least have a chance of fixing things.

It should be mentioned that a common criticism of the project is to say, "What poor people need is food and shelter, not laptops." This comment, however, is ignorant of conditions in improvished nations around the world. While it is true there are many people in the world who definitely need food and shelter, there are multitudes of people who live in rural or sub-urban areas and have plenty to eat and reasonable accommodations. What these people don't have is a decent shot at a good education.

>In the mean time, I have a bunch of old machines that can run
>Linux that I can donate, and I bet you do too, instead of sending it
>back to China for landfill.

Nice thought, but no cigar. Those "old machines" you have are built for first-world conditions: they're not going to tolerate an unreliable electricity supply, or the regular wear-and-tear of any equipment that spends much time with schoolchildren, without ready access to a well-equipped repair shop if anything should go wrong.

In short, your suggestion is exactly the typical misguided one of a first-worlder who thinks they know what's good for those poor third-world folk. I'm on the side of the OLPC project on this one: don't patronize them, but give them the tools, and let them make the choices for themselves.

bread, bread, bread..., is still this give-a-man-a-fish, and he's fed for one day. Teach him how to fish, and he's fed for the rest of his live.

It's actually much worse: If you just pump in food into poor countries, they'll be poorer and poorer, because poor contries have economies that base on food, and you kill their economy. So apart from countries with civil wars, it is not in the interest of the people there if you give them some bread. Really, it isn't. Don't spend your Xmas gift on that. It doesn't help, it just helps the organizations who organize this thing.

Furthermore, the actual situation in most countries of the world is far better than the typical US citizen imagines. People might need to cook their water before they can savely drink it, and they also need to cook their food before they can savely eat it (i.e. no salads and such like), but the vast majority of people have about enough to eat. There are a few countries, where people are not fed well enough. Funny enough, the US is the worst offender with children not fed as they need it, IIRC, 40% of the US children are overweighted, and therefore suffer physical harm from what they eat. 90% of the world has better (more healthy) food for their children than the US. A bit less than enough is far more healthy than too much.

A computer is an incredible tool. Obviously some will use it wrongly or not use it much, but it makes little sense to deny the masses access to them so they don't "hurt" themselves. Let the person decide. These aren't babies; these are kids! Hungry kids!!!

And for every skill lost to computers there is one gained. Maybe it isn't that crucial to know how to use a library card catalog until/unless you need to use one or unless you personally find value in that.

Having choices is good. Having the option to choose is good. Computers have tremendous potential.

In fact, if anything, I'd think that some in first world countries might accually just be afraid that high tech jobs will flow out of their countries (ie, not genuine concern for well-being of kids in olpc projects, but fear and desire to keep those kids dumm). However, first world countries can use a little competition to trim some of their fat. Maybe we will then start to take computers and education and card catalogs more seriously here.

Then again, people are people. In the end, competition will only increase so much, but there will be improvements in standard of living for everyone!

.. and traveling will be more fun (argueably) and less dangerous.

The Dewey Decimal System: dead, and thank goodness. It's well designed, yes, but totally arbitrary. Why teach it to new generations?

The Typewriter: also dead. Extremely wasteful in materials, time, and energy. I don't think anybody misses fingers covered in ribbon ink, having to retype an entire page just to fix a typo (and probably inserting two more), or those awful correction pads.

Pens/Pencils: My 6 year old niece has mastered this technology just fine. No need to worry.

Finally, I'm a little confused that you worry about kids not learning proper communication tools while you yourself ignore proper punctuation, grammar and style.

So, I agree... I'm worried that a virus will brick 50% of the OLPCs. Or that the black market will destroy their ubiquity (why do this if most of its owners sell them for one year of rice?). Or a bad cap in high humidity will force a mass recall after six months. This utter lack of biodiversity is downright scary and there are a thousand scenarios where the maintenance costs will be far higher than any benefit seen by students. We'll see.

But if it pushes typewriters or the Dewey Decimal System permanently into history, I shall praise the OLPC to the end of my days.