Away from Criticism

Here's a significant commentary on the One Laptop Per Child program which I recommend:

http://www.humanitarian.info/2006/04/02/i-want-to-believe-in-the-100-laptop/

As I hope that I have stated clearly in previous posts, the big issue here is not technological - I am confident that it is possible to meet the technical and economic goals of the OLPC development project (with the exception of the past claims for the hand-crank generator). The technical issue is the infrastructure (or lack thereof) which will be necessary in order for the project to come close to meeting its goals.

The larger social issue is the assumption that "education is the answer to poverty" - that, in effect, an entire generation must be written off and children separated from their culture through the agency of these marvelous machines. This would be less dangerous if Negroponte's formidable network and credibility were not being thrown into an effort to impose the laptops on the world's children without regard for the opinions of their families or their cultural institutions.

That such an effort will necessarily fail is pre-ordained - this has been the fate of almost all such development-from-above projects and I have laid out my prospective analysis in my initial posting on the topic. I am most concerned that other worthy projects will be brought down by the predictable failure of OLPC. In my history in the personal computer area I have seen many technologies and directions wither and die not because they were unworkable or even uneconomical, but because effort was expended to dominate "mindshare" and to induce a herd mentality among buyers. In this case the "buyers" are the sources of funding for development projects.

I am trying here to propound the idea that another approach is possible, an approach whereby devices and systems which can significantly benefit people and communities in the developing world can be designed, built and installed with the active and informed cooperation of the people who will use them and benefit from them.

The Fonly Institute exists to help create these designs and to aggregate the information available which informs us as to their performance. I would like to turn the discussion here from criticism of the OLPC effort to the exploration of the possibilites of applying current technologies to the actual needs and possibilities that exist in rural developing communities.

In a later post I will lay out a structure of topics for discussion, all under the heading of "Fair Trade Technologies", my term for the emergent industry which creates and supports tools and systems  owned and used locally in developing countries to support functioning markets and viable communities.

(The thread on the OLPC starts here).

Comments

[Paul]

I am truly satisfied by reading this post. You gave me a big inspiration. Thanks for letting me know about this stuff!!!

[CE]

Altruistic endeavors are usually met with disaster that is true. Exactly for the aforementioned reasons and due to the imperialistic self actuating desire of a newly found human nature called “immediacy”.
A forced mindset will never be met with cooperation by the general public of any area on the planet. It must be shown to be cost effective for the user and profitable for the creator in some form or another. Regardless of a selflessnesses beginning there will always be a trade for recognizing or promotion within the standing. The endeavor also must also be shown to promote immediacy and instant usability today with very little knowledge required to operate. It is simply how the human race has developed the computational platform into use. Fear and competition are the driving factors of human nonresistance and accepting change. The pathetic and embarrassing truth of our existence today. Even though quite distant and far different from our predecessors whereas hard work was rewarded. The human race is reminded daily that 'cheat your brother', 'steal from your neighbor' is largely “considered fair play” and almost universally accepted as the benefactor of operation. Integrity amongst leaders is rarely rewarded, often it remains uncriticized openly by peers out of fear for reprisals or that 'it will require to many brain cycles to continue a conversation of intellect and substance'. In the shadow of those aspects are that of duplication at a lower manufactured price and the risk of erroneous legal matters to absurdly pontificate the development requirements of technology.
“One laptop per child” is a wonderful ideology. However, it is far outside the realm of reality for a child in this day and age. Promotion of usability and progress would be found far more suited in actual scientific proofs of Wi-Fi waves not being harmful to children of our planets future. Then and only then with conclusive unbiased proof. A basis that is established can then progress towards a method of communications and usability for children of today and tomorrow. The frame of time that is required for that simplistic requirement to be tested will lead to availability of more routes of options to progress the ideology, so that it does not fail the human race. One solid identity of what is truly altruistic in nature will undoubtedly touch the lives of millions effectively and productively create success in many avenues of grandeur. Perhaps then will it quite possibly further the requirement and success of “one laptop per child”.

[paolo]

You say "effort was expended to dominate "mindshare" and to induce a herd mentality among buyers".

Might I add that placing a link to a .doc file is precisely the same?
From "We Can Put an End to Word Attachments" by Richard M. Stallman, Jan 2002
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

(I have removed the text of Stallman's comment which had been pasted here because it deals only with a peripheral issue and takes no cognizance of the fact that attachments in Word format (.doc suffix) can be readily opened, read and edited by free software, most notably OpenOffice, which I have. - LF)

I believe a bit more than you in MIT's effort but nevertheless your points are alwasy interesting and insightful. Keep going in this way!