Nick Neg sells out....deals his soul to the devil.
I have mixed opinions, leaning more towards the negative end, about the whole OLPC thingamajig. No doubt, the machine is a technological marvel. The vision is noble but pardon me, the proposed way to achieve it is appalling. A complete farce of the whole idea of bringing learning to the masses. I'm assuming that the moolah to buy these things has to be coughed up by the governments in these countries. This money would probably be better spent elsewhere. I don't deny that every kid has a right to knowledge/education/literacy/ learning (a rose...). But the ground realities in most places deny this right to many. In many of the places that the pilot project will operate in, people survive on a few meager $s a day, maybe even lesser. Learning is probably not going to top your list of things if you are unsure of where your next meal is going to come from. Or if you have to worry about the fact that you have to walk 'x' miles in the afternoon sun for a drink of clean water. A free(?) laptop is not going to address issues like access to proper education, nutrition,water, sanitation, etc. The inner socialist in me rankles at the idea that, at the end of it, it will involve a bunch of companies making a tidy amount of money from the whole thing, after all tanstaafl. The self-confessed numbers involve something to the tune of $175 per laptop, with a profit of ~$3 per unit (only manufacturing), $1 to cover OLPC's costs,and this is probably not the end of the list. And when they themselves admit that many of the countries spend less than $20 per child a year, would someone care to explain to me how spending $200-250 on a laptop is going to solve the problem? Where would these additional funds come from?(err...here?) And Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, Thailand, Nigeria and Libya are not exactly model states, free of corruption, so inevitably there will also be a bunch of bureaucrats making a nice bundle off the project. The closet environmentalist in me also cringes at the idea of the newer mountains of electronic trash that would potentially grow around this whole project. Now, this is a whole new can of worms I would prefer not to delve into right now.
I admit, I might be wrong on some counts....but until someone can convince me that this is indeed a good idea...I stick to my guns.
I have mixed opinions, leaning more towards the negative end, about the whole OLPC thingamajig. No doubt, the machine is a technological marvel. The vision is noble but pardon me, the proposed way to achieve it is appalling. A complete farce of the whole idea of bringing learning to the masses. I'm assuming that the moolah to buy these things has to be coughed up by the governments in these countries. This money would probably be better spent elsewhere. I don't deny that every kid has a right to knowledge/education/literacy/ learning (a rose...). But the ground realities in most places deny this right to many. In many of the places that the pilot project will operate in, people survive on a few meager $s a day, maybe even lesser. Learning is probably not going to top your list of things if you are unsure of where your next meal is going to come from. Or if you have to worry about the fact that you have to walk 'x' miles in the afternoon sun for a drink of clean water. A free(?) laptop is not going to address issues like access to proper education, nutrition,water, sanitation, etc. The inner socialist in me rankles at the idea that, at the end of it, it will involve a bunch of companies making a tidy amount of money from the whole thing, after all tanstaafl. The self-confessed numbers involve something to the tune of $175 per laptop, with a profit of ~$3 per unit (only manufacturing), $1 to cover OLPC's costs,and this is probably not the end of the list. And when they themselves admit that many of the countries spend less than $20 per child a year, would someone care to explain to me how spending $200-250 on a laptop is going to solve the problem? Where would these additional funds come from?(err...here?) And Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, Thailand, Nigeria and Libya are not exactly model states, free of corruption, so inevitably there will also be a bunch of bureaucrats making a nice bundle off the project. The closet environmentalist in me also cringes at the idea of the newer mountains of electronic trash that would potentially grow around this whole project. Now, this is a whole new can of worms I would prefer not to delve into right now.
I admit, I might be wrong on some counts....but until someone can convince me that this is indeed a good idea...I stick to my guns.
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