Dvorak Slams OLPC As 'Naive Fiasco' 740
theodp writes "PC Magazine's John C. Dvorak has a unique take on the cute One Laptop per Child XO-1, deeming the OLPC project a naive fiasco waiting to unfold that sends an insulting 'let them eat cake' message to the world's poor. When it comes down to a choice of providing African kids living in absolute poverty with access to Slashdot or a $200 truckload of rice, Dvorak votes for the latter. Buy ten OLPCs if it assuages your guilt, says Dvorak, but 'I'll donate my money to hunger relief.'"
New section (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we have a john dvorak section so I have a shot at filtering out all his crap?
he's got a point. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a hard point to argue if you had only two options, food, or a laptop, the food seems a better choice. Of course there's no reason it can't be both. I think his point is worth thinking on, there are people for whom getting a computer is not much more than some diversion before they die of whatever disease they're slated to die from if they're lucky enough not to die of starvation (or unlucky enough, pick your idealogical slant).
True that no matter how much money you send, it's never going to be enough, but also true, for the lucky ones if they manage to survive their poverty, exposure to something like a computer may offer them a starting point.
He also raises good points... computers are hardly more than advertising pipelines, and unless you're already savvy, it's hard to suppress an rid the experience of the deluge of ads. Also, how many sites are in SiSwati or isiZulu these days?
Heck, I've seen and read of schools investing millions in computers with no tangible results in students' scores, grades, or even elevated interests in learning. The big problem is actually teaching something at all, ever, no matter the tools selected for education.
Yeah, sometimes Dvorak's nothing more than a grumpy old man who rants. I see him in this article as a grumpy old thoughtful and compassionate man. Kudos to him for raising the issue.
This confirms it (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmm. Let see (Score:5, Insightful)
I long ago quit reading him, because he long ago became worthless.
Give them fish... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dictators like to steal (Score:5, Insightful)
A free truckload of rice destroys their farmers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Give a man a fish... (Score:3, Insightful)
True I could go out and pay for some food for these folks, as many do. But unless we start investing in in their future they'll just end up dependent on handouts for generations to come. Many organizations are already offering food to the poor but not very many are investing in giving them access to high tech training that could help them get out of poverty. Hopefully OLPC will prove effective in doing just that.
Re:he's got a point. (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing is sure, it wouldn't work if no one bothered trying.
Re:give a man a fish... (Score:2, Insightful)
Empowerment is the key to beating hunger. (Score:3, Insightful)
There are concrete actions that we can take as members of the "developed" nations, and these include: subsidizing agricultural infrastructure, providing education about health and nutrition, education in general, helping to challenge laws / societal norms that restrict productivity, reducing sexism and racism, etc. But these hunger programs are specifically *not* about providing meals directly.
Chronic world hunger is a real issue (and is different from short-term famine relief, which our military and private organizations do a whole lot of), and there are things we can do to lead to a sustainable solution. Dvorak incorrectly assumes that because we can buy Y meals, we should do that instead of educating the next generation. In fact, the big organizations already tackling hunger know that empowering the locals is the key, and this is entirely consistent with OLPC's goals.
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Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation. [nerdkits.com]
Leave it to Dvorak to see a half empty glass (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you imagine how someone with starving children would feel when they Wikied "Turducken [wikipedia.org]?" It'd be like Marie Antoinette with a megaphone and a team of Solid Gold dancers.
But I also believe that technology is a need, in a technological world, and that it empowers people. I doubt this project can assuage the global poverty and resource distribution fiasco, nor was that the intent, but it may allow a new generation to help themselves.
These laptops can bring them something of value: hope. Hope tastes awful, and it needs salt, which many of the project's beneficiaries can't afford, but it's absolutely better than nothing at all.
I know this is a bit redundant, but I wanted to express Dvorak's point without all the bombast and condemnation. We're sorry you're a guilty white man, John. We're not getting on that bus.
I'm sure the OLPC is a good thing, and I know the people who buy them are doing a good thing, but I often wonder if our priorities are in the right order.
Because Dvorak is ultimately wrong. Technology, in whatever form, will absolutely change the world. I just wonder if it will be for the better.
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Toro
Re:he's got a point. (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that the OLPC isnt intended for demographics who have no food, people like Dvorak would be that reason...
There's a large and emerging segment of 'semi-poor people' who have food and most other necessities, but for whom educational material is a significant cost. One of the main points of the OLPC is to cut educational material costs while creating a load of other capabilities.
Personally I think the OLPC is already a huge success; I'd attribute the interest in it as a large part of the driving force for low-cost laptops such as ASUS Eee.
"Yeah, sometimes Dvorak's nothing more than a grumpy old man who rants."
Yeah, well, no different this time.
Buy a man a fish. (Score:4, Insightful)
Teach a child to use a computer, he gets to work in a call center for a lifetime.
Seriously though, food aid achieves...? It pretty much ensures poor kids live long enough to breed and make even more poorer kids. You pat yourself on the back for having saved a kid today and create five that starve tomorrow.
Given the choice, I'd rather give those kids a chance at an education so they can raise their standard of life and start trying to ensure their kids, grandkids and every generation afterwards is lifted out of a situation where they need food aid year after year to support too large numbers on poorly cultivated land.
Call me mercenary but, tough as it is, I'd rather a million kids starve while the million that survive improve their quality of life and for the generations to come than save both million now and have ten million starving within a couple of generations.
In this case, Dvorak's self congratulating his short term compassion while creating a far worse long term problem and knocking those who're trying to do the opposite.
Teach a man t o FARM fish .... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm critical of OLPC, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, I find Dvorak's comments to be horrifically offensive. The ignorance and pretension with which he is critical of OLPC and, by extension, any project that does anything other than ship limited, non renewable resources to countries where it can be stolen by corrupt bureaucrats is frankly disgusting. And the assumptions underneath! That you'll only ever make a one time charitable donation to a third world country in your life! If I didn't know that Dvorak was doing this only to be contrary, I'd say that his rhetoric belied someone who had never deeply considered the problem in third world nations before writing the damn article.
The truth is that third world countries desperately need infrastructure and education. They'll never be able to compete in the world wide industrial market, even if they have natural resources, but given sufficient education they can compete in the world information market. Is Dvorak really so short sighted as to not see that? Kids who grow up with computers can become information workers, and that requires no more infrastructure than a cheap laptop and bandwidth. But apparently that's a long term investment that Dvorak can't see - though I doubt he would be so critical of a similar education initiative in the US, which already has established resources in computer education. How hypocritical.
And there is more - a single laptop can service a large number of children, technology like the XO-1 that could let kids onto the internet can foster a generation supportive and understanding of democracy and free markets without growing up in one. I could go on and on (for example, that the nations themselves are sometimes purchasing these laptops), but I think around here I'd be preaching to the choir.
So, sure, if you're only ever going to spend $200 dollars in charitable donations in your lifetime, spend it on food for starving kids. If you don't mind giving a little more then consider investing in the future of these children, rather than just hemorrhaging money into life support and hoping the situation gets better on its own.
Re:he's got a point. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes people are still starving but it is less than it has been before and the reason for hunger is almost always political, economic, or weather related. Much of the human reasons for keeping people hungry are dealt with when you educate and empower the population.
I don't think it is fair to consider people who have enough to eat often by subsistence farming to be too rich for our aid. This laptop plan may or may not be the best way but it is far from useless or harmful. I guess we will find out soon enough.
Dvorak is an attention whore (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, this doesn't surprise me a bit.
More babies or better lives? (Score:3, Insightful)
Give money for computers; they will teach themselves better lives.
Hunger is a distribution problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:he's got a point. (Score:5, Insightful)
That is bullshit. The OLPC project includes Squeak, a Smalltalk programming language, and has simple sensor and control devices available that can be used to have Squeak programs interact with the real world. A child who can program in Squeak grows into an adult who can solve problems, think logically, develop and use technology and compete globally. I've been guiding my 7 year old in it, and she's already made her first object oriented game, so clearly, it's suitable for the task.
prioritization of resources (Score:3, Insightful)
The XO is not intended to go to children who can't afford food. How dense can some people be?
Which is exactly the problem; the XO project ignores the people most in need, and for those it doesn't ignore, it hands them a pound of cake instead of a hundred pounds of rice. The guy's talent and resources could have gone to better causes. It's an exaggeration to say "you could buy food with that money", but the continent needs basic literacy, which is achievable with paper, pencils, a schoolroom, and a teacher. It needs agricultural and job skills training, also achievable with basic, inexpensive materials.
World "Hunger"? (Score:2, Insightful)
Luxuries Versus Necessities (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the characteristics of a failed 3rd-world nation is that its people spend money on projects that are not directly related to providing basic necessities. To understand this issue, first look at a highly successful people who transformed themselves from a 3rd-world nation into a 1st-world economic superpower. Consider the case of Japan.
At the end of 1945, Japan was impoverished. Allied forces had bombed it back into barren rock, of which some became radioactive. In the ensuing 35 years, the Japanese people focused on the basics: building the infrastructure (e.g., railroads and public schools), acquiring industrial technology (e.g., transistors from the Americans) to expand its industrial base, etc. Specifically, Tokyo invested almost no money in military forces, space adventures, etc. By 1980, Japan became a 1st-world nation -- and the #2 economic superpower.
Now, consider India. Its people are wasting money on a space race [slashdot.org] and nuclear weapons. This activity only impoverishes the impoverished people, who are the majority of the Indian population. The result is that the prospects for India [slashdot.org] are quite poor.
Forget laptops. Forget space ships. Above all, forget nuclear weapons. If you are a citizen of an impoverished nation, focus on the basics: reading, writing, mathematics, science (includng agriculture), and free markets. If you can succeed at the basics (and everyone can succeed at the basics), then your nation will naturally prosper.
Look at Japan. In the 1960s, the Japanese watched, without envy, as the Americans "won" the space race. The Japanese knew that their day in space would come, but in 1965, they knew that they must stay focused on the basics. The Japanese succeeded.
Similar comments apply to Eastern Europe. Look at Poland. It does not waste money on either nuclear weapons or space ships. Yet, Poland is succeeding. It will soon become a Western economic superpower alongside Japan.
Hunger relief is a scam... (Score:5, Insightful)
To deliver real aid, you not only have to deliver 10 Thousand tons of food to a harbour - you have to deliver 10 Million tons of food, plus the trains, trucks, drivers, guards, repair and resupply facilities, tents, generators, building materials, pesticides, drugs, bandages, beds, surgical equipment, doctors, nurses and more, if you wish the relief to be at all effective.
Most people aren't starving (Score:4, Insightful)
Consider countries like Nigeria for example, that is one of the countries that were considering the OLPC. Nigeria recently cleared out $18 BILLION of debt. The interest they've saved each year for a year alone would pay for a million OLPC's. Nigeria is far from rich, but has enough oil reserves that it can certainly prevent people from starving (whether the political will is there is a separate issue). Nobody should send food aid to Nigeria, because it's not what they need.
On the other hand, even in the areas where famines are rife the OLPC would be more useful than food aid except DURING a famine. A key problem for many farming nations is lack of reliable information that is vital for farmers, such as weather reports as well as information about more effective farming methods, and even prices at the nearby markets to prevent people from literally wasting days carrying goods to markets where demand is low.
Teaching a generation of kids in locations like that how to exploit computers and online resources will long term mean far more than disaster relief, which is what food aid is.
Its neither (Score:2, Insightful)
The manipulation can take the forms of military support for opposition parties they want in power, direct threats (eg in my left hand is $20m, in my right hand is random deaths in you entire family) to existing leaders to implement impoverishing policies, or economic punishment through grossly unfair trade policies.
Food AID does very little for long term benefits. I support AID in the form of micro business (like opportunity international) that teach the community to expand their economy.
A society can only function well when governed well.
The OLPC could be great for second world countries (which is where I think it is intended anyway).
"They" can't do it... (Score:5, Insightful)
We must feed them, guide their politics, make them "civilized", for obviously, they are not capable on their own. And we had no say in their current situation, we are just innocent observers , trying to "help" them.
It's a sickening point of view, but most seem to hold it, and disguise it in premises that the money is better spent elsewhere. So yes dvorak, while i do agree that there is hypocrisy in many of these actions, and a huge disbalance in wealth in this world, and that people, of all walks, should be doing a lot more... Don't knock those who are doing something ( and the likely scenario is that you knock, but dont do anything yourself ). The just way to solve poverty,starvation, and instability isnt by feeding them and controlling their affairs. It's by giving them the tools and knowledge to correct the wrong, and allow them to rise up with their own ability, which is the same ability present in any human being. Its the way we have done it, its the way they will do it.
I'm not a religious man, but the fish versus fishing thing aptly applies here.
( oh, and btw,, guess why there isnt any of their languages on the web, or any content they can use.. BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO MAKE IT!!! )
But anyways... just the usual "those people" mentality...
Re:he's got a point. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can relate to the attractiveness of the project from my own sour process of growing up under the MS umbrella. The defining experience installing every new version of DOS and Windows is a short-lived sense of accomplishment at having a clean, new, working installation followed by an empty feeling of betrayal at the inability to do much with the system, the useful bits being locked down behind undocumented APIs and binaries. The ensuing months would be filled with waiting for next issues of random computer magazines, grasping at crumbs of knowledge some two-bit writer would be merciful enough to publish. An issue describing video card registers would keep me going for a year. How much more would I have learned with an open, documentation-filled machine like the XO? If on top of this it contained encyclopaedic information about building stuff it would be a dream.
About the food thing, can you explain how local farmers can get established if they can't sell their produce at a profit because they are being undercut by free food? Do you suggest to keep the free food flowing forever?
Re:he's got a point. (Score:5, Insightful)
Today I'd even knock out the 'weather related'. The USA produces enough food by itself to feed the world, much of the problem of starving people is transportation - and politics blocking the transportation.
It's very much a 'give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him how to fish and he eats for life'.
Provide a subsidence farmer, even in the form of loans, a tractor, miscellaneous equipment and supplies, and the training how to use it and you'll have somebody who isn't a subsidence farmer anymore. He can produce enough food to pay off his loans as well as free up hundreds of other subsidence farmers to do things like work in the tractor/fertilizer factories, bicycle factories, and everything else that a developed economy needs.
With food aid I've seen unfortunate consequences: Local farmers are driven out of business*, women continue to have babies, and you end up with a population explosion of people who still can't take care of themselves. IE the food aid makes the problem *worse*. In at least one case very much worse - the food aid allowed a warlord to continue his campaign against the farmers who's farms he'd been burning.
I'd much rather concentrate on enabling people to take care of themselves. Provide equipment, training, and the security needed for them to work if necessary**.
Unfortunately, this is at least one order of magnitude more expensive than simply providing food. I'm of the opinion that it'd be better to do this, even if you can't feed everybody as a result of the diverted resources. The idea is that after doing this for ten years you don't need to provide food aid anymore except for short term disasters like a tsunami. Unlike current situations like with locations in Africa - which has needed food aid for decades.
*US product can easily be superior than what a 3rd world farmer can produce, and you can't beat 'free'.
**Like the current situation in the middle east, work on training up and equipping local defense forces, both military and police. That way you don't have to provide security forever.
Re:he's got a point. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:New section (Score:2, Insightful)
Every time you have a controversial sounding title and people read, you cheapen your fine publication. That is -- when the actual basis of the 'controversy' turns out to be very flimsy. In this case -- that what the world's poor need is food instead of technology -- has been disproved so many times right here in this forum under various topics.
Dvorak seems to be one of the editors' favorite tools for generating 'exciting' headlines. What a shame that they have such a low opinion of their readers. Here's to hoping slashdot survives.
Re:Hunger is a distribution problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The OLPCs are for people in developing countries who have governments that are trying to improve their people's conditions, and have already solved the immediate food problems, and are now moving onto problems like lack of education, health, and wealth.
Re:Hunger is a distribution problem (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an open question at the moment whether the movement of bits between people in chronic poverty has sufficient power to transform the conditions leading to that poverty. But inasmuch as other attempted solutions over several decades haven't really done much to change those conditions, perhaps it would be better not to be too cynical about this one. We've seen how Japan, after the war, or China and India more recently, have made quantum leaps in their economic stature by virtue of starting with a clean slate. It may well turn out that what's been holding back the Third World is nothing more than the means to organize itself and thereby release its creative potential.
Dvorak, never a man to pursue great subtlety of thought, seems to have reached only for the obvious. His point is valid, but hardly remarkable. I like yours better.
Short-Term Relief, Long-Term Prosperity (Score:3, Insightful)
There are millions in Africa who need food, shelter, medicine and protection from "ethnic cleansing" in the very short term (i.e urgently) to save their lives, and as their fellow humans, we owe it to them.
In addition, these people need the educational resources to better themselves and to become self-sustaining and fulfilled in the medium and long terms.
What these people do not need is Isloamofascism, Catholic priests telling them not to use condoms, and evangelical protestant missionaries telling them that the End of the World is just around the corner so don't worry.
What they really need is more practical projects like this giving them a "foot up" on the ladder to joining the rational, secular, educated world. With facts instead of fiction and information at their fingertips, these people can be lifted cheaply and quickly out of poverty and oppression.
Peace and prosperity will be achieved in Africa by technological means, not by warmongers, greedy western corporations (*cough*Microsoft*cough*Nestle*cough*) and religious loonies.
Re:he's got a point. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not everybody, but quite possibly a majority, as our attention deficit culture certainly overwhelms us with such images, failing to supply much in the way of background information.
Dvorak has taken the classic straw-man approach of defining OLPC as something that it is not, and then using unassailable logic to point out how that thing which it is not is a very stupid idea. Add to that the fact that he doesn't make a single suggestion about alternative strategies, but simply says that this (mischaracterized) idea is dumb.
It would be bad enough if he is doing this just to get hits (a strategy he jokingly admits to), it's downright frightening to think that an industry "legend" might actually think this way. I've been on board with some of his windmill tilting of the past, but this makes me wonder whether I'd ever want to waste the time on him again.
Had I not canceled my subscriptions to such publications long ago I sure would consider it now.
Teaching a man to fish. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, you can spend $200 and get a short-term benefit for a bunch of people. But when they've finished eating that truckload - what happens next? You have to buy them another truckload then another and another.
What's needed is a way to let these people become self-sufficient.
I imagine a small African village containing 20 teenagers who speak good enlish, are kick-ass programmers with knowledge of the way the outside world works - and web access. I think they can find enough out-sourced work to earn enough for a $200 truck of rice every once in a while.
I imagine a village with land enough to grow coffee - and the net-savvy ability to sell the stuff directly to gormet coffee drinkers at $10 a pound rather than to big business at $0.10 per pound (I bet it's less than that). Their money accumulates in a PayPal account that they use to buy their rice. Sure they have some bad years when the coffee harvest fails - but they have enough cash banked to tide themselves over - and enough basic math and statistics and weather data from the Web to allow them to analyse how often this is going to happen and therefore the amount of storage they need to store their product and keep running the operation over the rough times.
Tribal rug makers can sell their rugs on eBay for hundreds of dollars - they can use the computer to allow customers to upload designs like CafePress does - they can go into the custom rug making business.
Actually - the main thing they can do is to tell me (by replying to this post) exactly why all of my ideas are stupid and how they have much better ones of their own.
This is a MUCH more fulfilling life than sitting out there hoping that Mr Dvorak will send them a truckload of rice sometime in the next month. The OLPC group are attempting a long term fix - the short term problems will still be short term problem for a long way to come - but if just one generation of decently educated, net-savvy kids can emerge from this - the impact will be stunning.
So - you can give a man a fish and he eats for a day - or you can teach a man to fish and he eats forever. But, if he doesn't understand the basics of fish ecology, he probably destroys his local fishery by overfishing it. So if you teach a man to get gainful employment on the world stage, he can buy all the goddamn fish he needs just like you or I do.
Laptops are infrastructure and technology (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe the proponents of OLPC see aren't thinking in terms of laptops. They see them as a way to provide education, communication infrastructure, and the basis for participating in the world economy - in other words, a means to achieve what Japan did. Maybe they're wrong. But in today's economy, it's much cheaper to build economic capacity through computers than it is through capital investments in machinery. The same may be true of education and technology. In addition, it's much easier for corrupt governments and companies to control expensive equipment and factories than it is to influence large numbers of (relatively) cheap computers.
Want to know how to help the 3rd world? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:he's got a point.- no he doesn't (Score:3, Insightful)
Before we even start on a response, the eternal question arises: Did he, or did he not donate a single google ad earned cent to hunger relief as he so glibly concludes at the end of his tirade?
Somehow I suspect he smugly punched the submit button on his blog and went back to browsing around looking for more soft targets to lure more indignant ad clickers in with, without a second thought for the starving millions he so crassly claims concern for.
Honestly the man is so clueless as to how the rest of the world that he claims empathy for operates he might as well start writing on the subtle nuances of Mongolian yodelling.
First, kudos for googling iSiswati and isiZulu. I'll be interested to see if his next article that mentions German calls it Deutsche. Honestly, if you going to write in English use the English words. Swazi and Zulu. And had he taken the time actually scroll down the wikipedia page he used for the spelling he may have noticed links to projects concerning translations of software to those exact languages or even, heaven forbid, an online Zulu Newspaper. And er, perhaps if my mates in KwaZulu Natal has a few more of these computer things, they could uh, you know, actual write those "missing" wiki's. Oh wait, hold on THEY DID!
Now, if you will bear with my rant a little longer, for those seething uneducated masses that daily have to choose between mastering MySQl and filling the belly, I think that dear old dozy Dvorak will get a rude surprise if ever he ventures out of his oh so grounded in reality Silicon Valley and met some staving minions.
I know from personal experience that many families that have to choose between food on the tables for themselves and an education for their children, will give both the food and education to their children and suffer in silence themselves in the hope that those children at least can escape the lives that they as parents feel they cannot escape themselves.
How, pray tell, will the expired and rancid grain not fit western tables that Mr Dvorak claims so to be so keen to sponsor, help to create a better life for those children? Seriously, I actually want to know how.
And as for theft, does our dear old correspondent in the land of the free(speech, NOT) even know how little of that relief he is so generously offering to pay for actually makes it to the people who need it after all the officials, leaders, warlords and general low life opportunist have taken their cut.
Good point, of course there will be losses to theft etc. But as he so deftly points out only 13% of the Niger population can read. Last time anyone checked, 100% of them could eat. So if they had to choose between raiding the latest food package or stealing some kids laptop, I don't know about him, but I would rather be protecting the laptops.
Ill say this plainly F@ck off ! (Score:3, Insightful)
some people band together, try to do a charity, they put effort to it and realize it.
then some shitbags come up and say "hey, this is not something on top of the need list. you had better to >this
you know shitbag, those people actually banded together, and made an effort to fix matters for a change.
WHAT the f@ck did you yourself do ? other than "dont do that, do something else" blabber while sitting pretty in your office chair ?
WHY are you talking against some people who actually DID something, and not doing something on the matter you have spoken yourself ?
Re:he's got a point. (Score:5, Insightful)
hate to say it but.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Truck load of rice? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:he's got a point. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm merely a hobbyist geek. But I AM a professional sustainable economic development consult who has spent twenty years living and working in developing countries. In my opinion, the OIRP is not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination, but it is not the ideal use of resources either. At best, it is an important part of the total socioeconomic development package that must be deployed in order to alleviate the plight of penury and destitution that is the lot of hundreds of millions of children living in developing countries around the world. Are there more important individual components within that package? Yes. Access to potable water is more important than access to information. Access to food is more important (although as many posters have pointed out, it is not the biggest problem). Access to electricity is more important. Access to transportation is more important. And, of course, security and health are more important. But does that mean that access to information is unimportant? Of course not.
It may be that the hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of man-years put into the development of this project could not possibly have been better spent address one of the more critical issues I just mentioned. I honestly don't know. What I do know is that the always-hyperbolic nature of the discussion on slashdot shows that the vast majority of readers are not well enough informed about issues of international development to legitimately engage in reasonable and nuanced debate on the subject.
Re:he's got a point. (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps the XO is a return to the old days in some respects. You don't need a powerful machine to have something useful. Power users want powerful machines, but for most uses, a $200 laptop will do just fine.
Stop sending food. (Score:2, Insightful)
On having been to Africa (Score:4, Insightful)
What a lot of people don't realise is that most African's are fairly happy, and fairly adapted to their way of life. A computer won't help kids. A computer only helps administrators, and typists.
One of the projects I did while in Zambia was to help renovate a school. African's would rather have more materials for their schools, working radios they can teach with, or more access to simple life saving treatment such as blood or TB vaccines.
A rural teacher who I met simply wanted bars in the windows (holes) of his Oxfam built school so kids wouldn't climb in a steal what little supplied he had. Paper and pens were far far more useful than computers.
We have to look at India and China. They're becoming the world Math and Scientific elite. Employing an education system Britain abandoned 40 years ago in favour of modernising. Educations works.
Even though I dislike most religions and the dangerous ideologies they breed, religion in many developing countries is a key focus point for community driven development - people like to pitch in where there is a support structure; but support structures need money! Even if it's just food to sustain some of the 80% unemployed in Zimbabwe so they don't take to looting, hostage taking or drugs.
There are better things to donate money to: such as anti-corruption schemes or Médecins Sans Frontières.
Take your pick, GO TO A DEVELOPING COUNTRY AND SPONSOR A VILLAGE FOR AS LITTLE AS £50/m, just don't get a piece of technology for a child who can't charge it.
Matt
Bingo: unintended consequences (Score:3, Insightful)
The XO, on the other hand, is very unlikely to put local chip fabs and ISVs out of business. Instead, it will facilitate learning and communication.
kieran hervold
Also known as... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also known as "Windows 3$-edition pre-installed on Classmates", to put a parallel to the current situation.
That's why Negroponte is trying to push hard for open-source solutions.
So there's no restrictive conditions. So people target by the OLPC can actually own the technology and not be hooked and dependant on a western seller (Microsoft).
No, he misses the point entirely (Score:3, Insightful)
The financial justification for the OLPC is NOT OLPC vs rice, but OLPC vs printed textbooks. The OLPC is financed by replacing printed textbooks.
You lose heavy, out of date, hand me down textbooks which are almost certainly in some foreign language, expensive to obtain, expensive to distribute.
You gain up to date digital textbooks in the native language, all of which can be easily carried at once, which are easily distributed, and whose cost is limited to the initial production and translation only.
There is another point which Dvorak has backwards. Which is more insulting to a third worlder, to give him rice which destroys his own agriculture and tells him he is too stupid to learn, or to give him textbooks which he cannot produce on his own and which give him hope for the future? Dvorak seems to think it is better to keep the third world ignorant and dependent on foreigners for food, rather than have them learn and stand on their own legs become competitors. That is the true insult.
Wish it were that simple (Score:3, Insightful)
Before I get started, yes, I can't think of Dvorak as anything else than the infamous "why is my Idle process eating up 99% of my CPU cycles?" idiot. Yes, I think there may be some merit to OLPC. Still, just saying, reality isn't as simple as "The village idiot is against X, therefore X is the right thing to do."
The problem is that RL problems are almost never dichotomies. This is not a 2-choice RPG / Japanese dating sim / whatever. Sometimes when it looks like the choice is between X and Y, the real answer is actually Z. And there's a whole alphabet of answers A to V too, with various degrees of merit or lack thereof.
In other words, there for each one "right" answer there are a million of "wrong" answers, to various degrees of wrong.
Just because someone is an idiot, it doesn't mean that he'll always pick the opposite of the best answer. It just means that his logic is faulty, his facts dubious, and he can arrive at pretty much any point of the solution space without any reason. (Or rhyme.) He could even arrive at the right answer, by sheer random luck, in spite of the faulty logic. As they say, even a broken watch shows the right time twice a day.
What I'm saying is really a verbose and armchair philosophical version of this: A => B is not the same thing as !A => !B. _If_ A is true, then "A => B" says B must be true too. But if A is false, it doesn't say anything about B. It could be false, but it could just as well still be true anyway, for no fault or merit of A.
In this case we have, basically "if Dvorak has all the data and knows what he's talking about, then it's better to send food than OLPCs". That's your "A => B". Of course, we know that Dvorak is a professional troll, talks out of the arse, and couldn't tell his arse from his elbow. So we can say with some degree of confidence that the safe bet is !A. But that leaves us with no clue as to whether B is true or false. You'll need some other information and reasoning to determine B.
In most RL situations, even determining whether B is true or false, however, still is a bit short. As I was saying, RL problems have a lot of possible solutions, often a multi-dimensional continuum of them. Just knowing "an OLPC is better than a sack of rice" or viceversa doesn't say that either is the optimal solution yet. It could be that a third thing is far better bang-per-buck than both in the long run.
So to wrap this long rant up, well, you're still free to send them money if you want to. But use your own judgment and sources of information there. Don't do something just because the village idiot was against it.
Re:he's got a point. (Score:3, Insightful)
The calculation comes from a individual in a set of people who are willing to donate money.
The original argument assumes that 1) you have only 1 Unit of currency, and 2 ) that you are making the decision in a void. The reality is that there are hundreds of thousands of individuals willing to donate (some of them if only for the tax breaks), and some of them will choose to give food and nutritional aid to those who have no access, while others will choose to educate children in the developing world.
</obvious>
Re:Bingo: unintended consequences (Score:1, Insightful)
The problem with the XO is not that it competes with food, its the fact that we seem to be deliberately building out the developing world on an incompatible technology infrastructure.
There is not going to be much demand in the West for XO programming skils. Its a bit like the folk who got a BBC computer rather than a ZX Spectrum, muc more powerful but not the standard so much less useful.
OK so the thing runs Linux, well so does my cell phone and fat lot of good that would do for learning programming. The XO is not a standard platform, its not a standard platform with extra stuff. Its a platform written by MIT folk.
This might not have mattered if Negroponte had met his original target price. But they missed and the price is not far short of the price of a conventional machine but with a huge number of compromises.
I have always thought Negroponte somewhat on the whacky side. He seems to be oblivious of the iron law of IT: standard is cheaper than non-standard. It does not matter much how much something costs today, wait one technology cycle and what was the bleeding edge is the commodity item, wait two cycles and its on closeout. Keyboards with PS/2 connectors can be bought really cheap now, only problem is finding a computer they will work with as many modern machines only have USB.
I bought a desktop from Dell complete with an LCD display for $400 three years ago. The same spec machine could be built for $200 today.
Still one positive outcome of the OLPC failure is that the conventional manufacturers have been forced to compete at that price point.
Re:New section (Score:5, Insightful)
All joking aside, $200 of rice will feed them sure enough. But that is merely treating the symptom. It always has.
Indeed, it seems a lot of the times that's what happens. People see a problem but they don't fix it. Instead they treat the symptoms of the problem.
Now why would that be? The answer is, of course, profit. There is far more money to be made from treating symptoms than solving problems. Just look at the government. We've got the war on drugs, the war on poverty, and let's not forget our most recent addition to the family, the war on terror. All of which were started with good intentions (the road to hell and all that), but not a single one of them address the underlying problems.
The OLPC project is actually a step in the right direction. Helping people help themselves works out a lot better than providing a constant crutch that people grow reliant on.
And that, Mr. Dvorak, is the problem with $200 dollars worth of rice. When it runs out, they'll need $200 more. That doesn't fix the problem, it only temporarily addresses the symptom.
~X~
Re:On having been to Africa (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, I don't think I've read a more idiotic post about the OLPC yet.
Utterly mindlessly wrong assertions. So African kids are "fairly happy": that sounds like a great reason to deny them computers. A computer won't help them, it "only helps administrators and typists"? Do you know anything about the OLPC project? What about providing teaching material, mathematics, and new ways to think? Even if you never use math and programming, learning them teaches you new ways to think, which is valuable. If just one in a thousand of these kids starts inventing and improving their society...
Sure, no one needs a computer. We could all be living in huts and caves and picking fleas off each other. But that doesn't help anyone, does it?
The point of OLPC is that you don't have to spend tens of thousands on buildings, textbooks, and other items which will need yearly replenishing and maintenance to serve only a few kids. Rather it's $100 per kid for physical materials, flat scale (and easy to donate). (Yes, it's more now, but this is the goal.)
Vaccines? Go take it up with the drug companies.
Did you even read this after you typed it? Yeah your way is much better: instead of giving the kids the supplies so they can use them---supplies without resource constraints, at that---we should instead lock them up so they can only be used under direction. Instead of giving the kids a laptop which doesn't require ink or dead trees, pens and paper sound like a great idea.
How is this even remotely relevant? The good ol' British education system is the only thing that works? This is the real reason for India focusing on math and technology? (And China is different too. Why you didn't mention other countries... Japan? South Korea? US? France? I guess not all of these fit your nice little theory.)
Another complete non sequitur. How is this relevant to OLPC? Can religious organizations not donate to OLPC? Is donating OLPC mutually exclusive with donating to other efforts?
In your opinion. After reading what you have to say, I'm not sure your opinion is worth much. Additionally, if you didn't catch the rhetorical nature of the question above, it is possible to support more than one effort at a time. Maybe one that improves health and one that improves education.
Re:New section (Score:4, Insightful)
Somebody needs to pay for all that rice. But here's a hint: it's not the rice farmers, and it's not the agencies managing the distribution. Instead, they're all getting paid. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out who's getting the shaft.
Re:he's got a point. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, he can't, because of exactly the other thing you just said: "the USA produces enough food by itself to feed the world!" And not only that, but it's subsidized too. In fact, part of the reason those subsistence farmers can't get the loans to do what you suggest now without our "help" is that food prices are so low (because of American subsidies) that they wouldn't ever be able to pay the loans back!
Yep, food aid and subsidies have exactly the same effect: helping out American farmers at the expense of foreigners.
Re:Bingo: unintended consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with the phone is not that it's a phone, but that the service provider purposefully locks it down and restricts access to developer tools. The XO most emphatically does not have this problem! In fact, it's the opposite: everything about it was explicitly designed to be easy to develop for (even by the children themselves), and that is why it is useful.
On the contrary, what you call "compromises," I call "necessary features." The XO is less powerful? That's a good thing -- it means better battery life. The XO doesn't have a hard drive? That's a good thing -- it means better reliability and better battery life. The XO has a "weird" screen? That's a good thing -- it means it's readable in conditions where a "normal" screen is not, and, yes, better battery life.
It doesn't matter if you could make a "conventional" laptop for the same price (e.g. the EEE or whatever). It doesn't even matter if you could make a Core 2 Quad, SLI, 20" TFT screen laptop for the same price! It would still be fucking useless for the intended purpose because it would neither have the battery life to get anything done, nor even stand up to the expected environmental conditions in the first place!
If Dvorak is against it then its good (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.storyofstuff.com/ [storyofstuff.com]
Dvorak has such a wonderful track record and I actually feel a little bit better now he opposes OLPC.
Forget AIDS, people are starving! Forget cancer, people are starving! Forget USA schools, USA has starving people!
Dvorak: "3rd World" countries are not all in the same shape.
POLITICS are the real MAJOR problem to world hunger and too many people with the power to help are too clueless or 'evil'. Over population I'd maybe place a close second. Bankers/etc I'd place under politics since they are heavily entrenched in politics.
Don't forget the debt relief scams which have only made things worse for many nations; thanks to "banker/investor" types with political connections. http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=FC37F4B5EC10D27C [youtube.com]
If you don't consume or produce goods YOU have NO value!
Re:he's got a point. (Score:3, Insightful)
And you're surprised by that? Half the advocates of any issue can't explain why they support it, and half the opposition of any issue can't explain why they're against it. Why is this? Because half the people are idiots anyway!
This is human nature. Why would you expect the OLPC issue to be any different?
PS: the other reason people seem to disagree is that the XO is about teaching kids to code and teaching them other things and teaching them to think logically and critically in general (which learning to code is really good at) and producing people who aren't subjugated by the Western (i.e., Microsoft-based) hegemony (although people actually connected to the OLPC project might not advertise that last bit). Because of that, they might answer the question "is the XO [only] so kids can learn to code" differently in different contexts (such as whether the "only" is present in the question or not).
Re:he's got a point. (Score:3, Insightful)
Second World -- Aligned with the old Soviet politics
Third World -- Countries straddling the fence trying to court the favors and aid of either the First or Second World.
Fourth World -- Special category created specifically for the Arab nations and their....unusual politics.
this is actually a longstanding sore point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:he's got a point. (Score:4, Insightful)
A country (and perhaps more importantly, a government) can survive with its supply of petroleum shut off for a short time, although the results may not be fun. Natural gas in areas where it's widely used for heating are worse, but again tolerable for a while, although it may result in people torching their furniture. Food, though
We've seen the panic Russia caused when it toyed with the idea of using its natural gas supplies to Europe for political ends -- imagine if a country was as dependent on a single source for food as many are for gas: they'd hardly be able to call themselves independent. Introduce a few 'unfortunate delays' into the shipments, and in a few weeks the government would more than likely be toppled. People like to eat.
And that's the elephant in the room when it comes to agricultural subsidies. We may have a very interconnected world, but when you get right down to our most bas(e|ic) natures, countries tend to shy away from making themselves so clearly subservient to other nations.
Dvorak - Troll? (Score:3, Insightful)
People with extreme opinions are interesting, for better or worse. That's why so many columnists and radio talk show hosts present extreme opinions. I wager that a large chunk of their audience, if not most of their audience disagrees with them, and may even hate them. Dvorak puts out insane predictions, and writes controversial opinions largely because it provokes such a strong reaction.
He has been known to express fanatic opinions, and later roll over later like he doesn't even care, which leads me to believe that he expresses fanaticism just to provoke people. Hence, he is a troll. He has been provoking people with his columns since 1986, which really might make him the first troll for computer geeks. Quoting from Wikipedia for proof of his trolly-ness.
"On 9 June 2006, he explained to Dave Winer that he would bait Mac users in order to increase traffic to his website."
Re:New section (Score:3, Insightful)
Fighting poverty and fighting the symptoms of poverty are two very different fights. They're both worthy, but bags of food aren't going to start nonexistent economies.
Re:New section (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:this is actually a longstanding sore point (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Luxuries Versus Necessities (Score:2, Insightful)
Not only did the U.S. aid in Japan's economic recovery, we did our best to update and enhance their educational system.
A few years ago when I was doing research on teaching methods, I read a book reviewing results of the 1999(?) TIMMS study [ed.gov], and it was noted that the teaching methods used in Japan that have given their students such an edge (~1-1.5 years ahead of similarly aged U.S. students) came from research on educational methods around the 1950's.
I should mention that this edge does not come from the extremely high-pressured environments of Japanese high school (which has not been shown to be any more effective than other systems), this educational edge comes from teaching elementary school students through discovery, which is exactly the sort of learning the OLPC encourages.
Re:New section (Score:4, Insightful)
If you give them tools to become productive and relevant you have the possibility that they might get the next $200 worth of food themselves.
"Teach a man to fish..."