December 9th, 2007
OLPC backlash continues
PC Magazine’s John Dvorak is the latest to question the real value of One Laptop Per Child’s distribution of XO laptops in developing countries. He brings up points that have been percolating in the blogosphere for some time but presents them in one heck of a rant. He doesn’t pull any punches as he writes
This machine, which is the brainchild of onetime MIT media lab honcho Nick Negroponte, will save the world. His vision is to supply every child with what amounts to an advertising delivery mechanism. Hence the boys at Google are big investors.
Before you cheer for the good guys, ponder a few of these facts taken from a world hunger Web site. In the Asian, African, and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called “absolute poverty.” Every year, 15 million children die of hunger. For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for five years. Throughout the decade, more than 100 million children will die from illness and starvation. The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well fed, one-third is underfed, and one-third is starving. Since you’ve entered this site, at least 200 people have died of starvation.
Negroponte and his followers will respond that a laptop provides opportunities for learning and horizon-broadening self-education. Such opportunities, they say, would do more than direct food and medical aid (teach a man to fish, etc., etc.). Dvorak quickly counters with
Think of how many families will get to experience the friendly spam-ridden Information Super Ad-way laced with Nigerian scams, hoaxes, porn, blogs, wikis, spam, urban folklore, misinformation, sites selling junk from China, bomb-making instructions, jihad initiatives, communist propaganda, Nazi propaganda, exhortations, movie clips of cats playing the piano, advertising, advertising, and more advertising. Do you now feel better about the world’s problems, knowing that some poor tribesman’s child has a laptop? What African kid doesn’t want access to Slashdot?
I don’t think anyone, Dvorak included, is suggesting that impoverished kids shouldn’t be provided with opportunities for education and a chance to improve their lot in life. However, even here in the States, kids rarely find much productive to do with their computers without appropriate guidance. Why should Third World kids be any different? At least in developed countries, money wasted on poorly planned 1:1 computing initiatives is simply money wasted. In the target countries for the XO, however, money wasted by governments and philanthropists on these machines is money that can’t be spent on food, sanitation, water, medication, and, ironically, education.
As I was discussing this project with a class last week, one student put it quite well, if a bit bluntly: “We don’t even really need laptops. What are these kids going to do, Google images of food they can’t have?” Will somebody please talk back below and explain how we can rationalize the opportunity costs of XO rollouts in OLPC’s target markets?
Follow Chris Dawson on Twitter! Christopher Dawson is the technology director for the Athol-Royalston School District in northern Massachusetts and a member of the Internet Press Guild. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations, but always keep in mind that the opinions expressed here are his own and not those of his daytime employer, even if he talks incessantly about his day job.
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| 12/09/07
