Unintended Consequences and All That
By Erick Posted in Liberals — Comments (22) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Let's all sing kumbaya, build extreme cheap laptops to give to starving kids in Africa, and they will suddenly figure out how to find food, get educated, and build themselves out of third world status.
Yeah, um, sure they will.
The best laid plans . . .
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From the article...
A representative of the One Laptop Per Child aid group was quoted as saying that the computers, part of a pilot scheme, would now be fitted with filters.
From the ALA "Library Bill of Rights" website...
III. Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.
How dare the OLPC group censor the availability of information and thus the ability to learn of children in the third world. They deserve every benefit of rich kids in US libraries.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.
I remember reading about this project on Slashdot when it was embryonic a few years ago. This was a Nick Negroponte/MIT Media Lab initiative that was announced in Davos, Switzerland back in 2005.
Here's the project's official website.
Intel is also in on the program.
There are quite a few interesting comments in the Slashdot thread here. Including one observation that will probably become true before too long:
"How long until one laptop per child becomes one warlord with all the laptops?"
Which begs the question of how Nick Negroponte, MIT and Intel are going to handle this project if it comes to pass that a few thousand kids wind up hacked to bits in Africa for their laptops. Although I presume that they took pains to make them as basic as possible so they wouldn't be attractive theft targets, they're evidently powerful enough to download porn from the Internet, so...
Nick Negroponte himself presumably is intelligent enough that he's thought of that possibility (right?) and you can watch an interview with him here.
in addition to having to worry about buying Mrs908 a "blood diamond" for her anniversary, now I've gotta worry about buying the kids "blood laptops" for their birthdays.
Sheesh.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.
the internet was for porn?!?!
(mild language warning)
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The CIA has better politicians than it has spies - Fred Thompson
...after I stop laughing.
See, also "Internet Porn", found here.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
Bill Clinton/Larry Flynt model complete with propietary porn-magnet© software..
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"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." -- James Madison
Africa will need fossil fuels if the people want electricity? Laptop batteries are only good for a few hours of charge at a time.
"hand crank" and porn viewing sounds a little, uh... well, I won't go there.
...when they see me they'll say, "There goes Loren Wallace,
the greatest thing to ever climb into a race car."
:-)
While it's easy to laugh at OLPC as another big-time left-wing initiative, there are actually some very interesting aspects to it. I've been watching it reasonably closely since they started it up.
The biggest disappointment was when they threw in the towel on the $100 target cost and slipped to $175. My gut tells me that's just past the edge that will doom the project to ultimate insignificance.
But the fact remains that the technical aspects of the problem were solved very, very well. Meeting the target functionality-set in an ultra-low cost platform required some very intelligent and forward-looking ideas on what a personal computer really should be.
For a clue as to whose ox gets gored, look at Bill Gates. Normally a total sucker for big-time liberal philanthropy, he's been sniping at this one from the start.
However self-serving Gates' criticisms are, however, at least one of them hits home. Don't be giving laptops to children whose primary problems are hunger and malaria.
OLPC's founders seem to have believed that free access to communications and information would shift the balance of power in the undeveloped world. But that world's problems are not caused fundamentally by poverty. Rather, they're caused by governmental rapacity and horrible leadership.
OLPC picked an important technical challenge, and solved it with a certain amount of ingenuity and even brilliance. They picked the wrong target market, though. And as often happens with technical pioneers, the real importance and value of this project will be realized by someone else.
They did do a good job with these goals, technically, but maybe some investment by a reseller would give the extra push. Lots of people reacted to the original announcement with their own desires for a cheap laptop.
Meanwhile, I'm using my recently-acquired $270 used laptop and it works great. These aid groups should also look at off-lease liquidations to send along.
OLPC consumes very little power. It's rechargeable via physical power. Today's used laptops consume power that would cost a lot and/or simply not be available. We are better off taking used laptops and keeping them here in the states to give to poorer children right here in the US.
from the Yahoo article linked, and I wasn't sure hand-crank dynamos were suitable for laptop computers yet. That's good thinking.
Africa still needs more electrical infrastructure to raise everyone's standard of living to something we'd consider basic.
Those are going to be some seriously muscle-bound African kids when they get done cranking those laptops. I have a hand-crank radio that I use when camping on occasion, and it takes FOREVER (probably 15 mins or more for a full charge) to crank the thing long enough to charge it. If it takes that long to charge a radio, I can't imagine what it would take to charge up a laptop.
...when they see me they'll say, "There goes Loren Wallace,
the greatest thing to ever climb into a race car."
and it takes a lot of work just to get 30 minutes' worth of power, but it's handy if I want to go to sleep with the radio on but not waste any power.
When I was on safari in Africa I was exposed to the VERY simple schoolhouses and the crazy distances children needed to walk to attend them when outside the more populated areas. Primary education in a one room style building was often more local, but middle school and above often required significant travel and for the child and they had to pay to attend.
From what I could tell middle school aged children often would have part of a day available for study, but their families couldn't afford to loose the child's help for the entire day which would be consumed in school and travel time and thus they often didn't attend. OLPC powered by foot peddles (I think that's the design they went for as the hand crank ended up exerting too much torque on the case) would allow hours of education during the hottest parts of the day when nobody does much and/or at night all while not leaving the family.
For countries like India, etc I presume things are similar and remote farming communities could potentially see bright children learn enough to make a living outside their town. In this case the country has the potential to accept bright students, but how many never get enough education for their natural abilities to shine? India has enough money for the state to actually purchase a laptop for everyone unlike a number of poorer African nations. That's the real potential market for a project like OLPC.
Interestingly enough, I don't see the internet as a requirement for OLPC to succeed. It need only contain a week or a month of reading, math, etc classes/exercises at a time so that motivated children and families can teach their kids beyond the most basic skills.
The power generator/battery/low power consumption is the crucial point...
are the student populations diverse? We can't be supporting school systems that just reinforce the status quo. Laptops are OK, but they'll never substitute for diversity.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.
OLPC had much anti capitalistic baggage attached. Who could buy them and what they could be used for. Asus and MSI both have products that should be available Q4 07 Q1 08 that meet the goals (don't think they are including the hand crank)
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Those kids were just taking part in Sen. Obama's education program. Age appropriate sex education and all that.
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Develop alternatives to existing policies and keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. Milton Friedman
I'm inclined to think that this idea is nice in theory, but will not really work in practice. I don't really think giving laptops will solve any of the real underlying problems.
Let's not get to worked up that children found a way to get into the more risque parts of the internet. Using computers to expand distance education is a great idea.
I recall when the two way radio was used in the outback in Australia. Using computers is essentially an improvement on this.
that the Left will condemn this. They'll just call it "sex education" and blast conservatives for trying to force Internet filtering on the Africans.
...when they see me they'll say, "There goes Loren Wallace,
the greatest thing to ever climb into a race car."