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‘The Failure of the $100 Laptop?’: Slashdot discussion based on Dvorak column
November 19, 2006 | 4:57 am
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By David Rothman
Slashdot discussion, based on John Dvorak’s Marketwatch column. The discussion covers mostly familiar ground. Should the immediate needs of rural farmers and villagers come ahead of the educational opportunities that OLPC hopes the laptops will create?
Dvorak is no dummy, but I’d respectfully disagree with his opinion here. Imagine all the books and other items that the laptops can help spread around—helping rural people become more literate, employable and prosperous. The big issue isn’t whether the laptops could be useful. It’s, “Will they be—if they’re not well integrated with existing Third World educational systems, and reflective of local needs?” Wouldn’t a laptop be more useful in imparting the latest animal husbandry information than textbooks alone would be?
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Comments:
Dvorak’s business model is to regurgitate other people’s ideas in an inflammatory manner in order to generate hits from /. This is why I don’t bother with him.
However, the criticism he’s parroting has been shot down multiple times for the reasons you cite, as well as one other: Not everyone in the Third World lives in a dung hut. Whole nations in Africa live with electricity and cell phones, cars and toilets. *They* are the most likely beneficiaries, and the best targets for the device.
“Dvorak is no dummy”
The jury is still out on that.
Well…for some reason the concept of giving a laptop for improving the standard of living in poor, doesnt strike any chord within me…It might be because of the basic fact that ppl in developing coutries need basic literacy before starting to use hightech instruments such as Lap top…Moreover the $100/Laptop would still be costlier for ppl in developing nations…
So instead of distributing laptops it would be better if ppl start spreading computer literacy…a typical case in point is ITC’s Echoupal… which proved to be a succesfull initiative in India..
http://www.itcportal.com/agri_exports/agri_exports_new.html( please copy and paste this link in your Browser)
However, once the basic literacy is established, I believe the One Lap Top Per Child program would prove to be hugely effective….There are also initiatives in India such as Simputer…although I donno how succesfull it is currently…
use of internet and computers to hel farmers
“It might be because of the basic fact that ppl in developing coutries need basic literacy before starting to use hightech instruments such as Lap top”
What do you suppose the literacy rates are in the target countries for this device?
I dont think the decision to market these products are based on literacy rates of target countries .(It is probably driven by cost effectiveness of the product I guess).. …Or probably the product is not for the rural market itself …The level effectiveness of such product could be ascertained only when you know about the strategy of the developers…at present I am not in a position to comment on this …It would be great if you can shed some light on the strategy of these developers.
Dvorak is making a “straw man” argument. Of course a laptop won’t do much for the most impoverished chidren of the 3rd world. That’s not Negroponte’s target. His target is the demographic that is above abject poverty but below being able to afford computers and broadband connections as they currently exist. In places like Brazil that is a huge demographic and one well worth targeting.
If anyone is interested in playing around with the OLPC OS, there’s now a VM image with instructions on running it under VMWare Player available:
http://tuttlesvc.teacherhosting.com/wordpress/?p=251
“become more literature”
The more you F up, the less people will listen to you.
MacPaddy: Thanks for catching the goof, fixed. Want to volunteer as a copy editor or maybe donate money to hire one? Given the volume of copy I turn out each day, I’m amazed I don’t have more typos. Meanwhile I played CE with the F word. David