[geeks] $100 One Laptop Per Child - grist for the mill

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Sat, Nov 18, 2006 at 10:02:24PM -0500, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> >From what I understand in talking to people who've worked in africa,
> almost no one would afford a $100 laptop, and few villages could come
> close to affording a $300 network link.

No one is asking them to pay for any of it. The idea is to get people to
pay for it who can. One of the unfortunate things of life is that if
you ask your average geek to pay for a water pump, or 10,000 water
sterilization tablets, or a carboard house (yes there are such things),
or even a tent for starving children in Africa, etc, they won't.

Ask them for $100 for a laptop and they will give generously. People
relate to themselves. Many simply can not understand that there are
needs so basic that go unfulfilled.

BTW, how much money has anyone on this list or Dvorak given to the NGOs
that do provide the basic needs? 

To answer that question, although we get more than half of our income
from the national insurance, we put out loose change in a coin box which
a friend comes by every month or so and collects it. It goes to a
charity that among other things help feeds Israeli poor, I know because
we have gotten boxes of packaged food from them. They solicit the
donations, package the food and arrange for distribution.

Some of it we don't want to eat and put it out on the street where it
is taken by other people who will. 

 
> The vast majoirty of people there have annual incomes measured in single
> digit US dollars, assuming they have any at all.

Still does not mean they don't need education. Getting a few hours a day
of education on a laptop is better than none at all. 


> To me, if the people solved their fundamental problems--slavery,
> genocide, civil war, unchecked disease and causes thereof, near total
> lack of national will, and so on--and created a stable civilization,
> they probably would not need anyone's help getting laptops.

I'm sorry, is this a joke? People at this level don't have the ability
or education or information to do what you ask. Many don't even know
there is a central government or how it works. They see the NGOs come
by on occasion with something for them, but except for the army, they
never see the government. 

They don't get and can't read newspapers, they don't have radios or TV,
there isn't a village school, etc.

> There *are* areas where good education is available, and yet it doesn't
> seem to help much in the absense of the will to use it.

Too broad a brush. It's like saying all starving Africans are ignorant
and want to stay that way. Education like everything else, in life is wasted.
just because it is does not mean that other people would not use or
appriciate it.
 
> I think it would be nice if good technology could be provided to them,
> but lacking solutions to their other general problems of survival and
> stability, it won't really help much.

I think it would. Part of wanting better is knowing what it is and how
to achevive it.

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
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