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.'"
I guess its the old fish story. (Score:2, Interesting)
Or at least till global warming kills all the fish.
Is Dvorak just posting stupid comments again so he can get posted on slashdot and improve his readership?
STOP SUBMITTING HIS DAMN ARTICLES! (Score:1, Interesting)
BRILLIANT! (Score:5, Interesting)
On a more insidious note, Dvorak is an analyst-for-hire. He only comes out with an opinion when somebody pays him to have that opinion. That means one of the big players has decided they want bad PR about OLPC. I wonder if it was Microsoft, Intel, or somebody else?
Sustainability (Score:3, Interesting)
Survival is ultimately a competitive business, among nations as well as individuals. Knowledge and skills are essential in order to produce virtually ANY marketable project in this world's economy, and teaching requires access to that knowledge in the first place. Textbooks are expensive, as are writing materials. Computer skills and an understanding of computers has become incredibly fundamental - to the point, in fact, where basic literacy is taken for granted in the business world.
In cases where there is no social structure and all the power is in military hands, knowledge and skills won't count for much. In many other situations it can make a HUGE difference, and just because there are worse regions of the world doesn't mean we should ignore the ones where people need additional education.
We don't want these people to have to rely on ANYBODY forever - they should be able to build their own society with their own resources eventually. We need to help kickstart the process, but we can't do it for them. To build a non-despotic government people have to invest themselves in the success of a system that is designed to educate and help people rather than grabbing whatever one can for oneself, even at the cost of personal gains that COULD be had by acting selfishly. Once enough people do that selfish actors begin to have difficulty getting more by bypassing the system than attempting to work within it, and for a democracy THAT is the beginning of stability. People need to know that for it to work. Arguably Russia has not reached that point, based on recent news reports - if the system itself were strong the penalties for voting fraud would be strong enough to deter a party (or individuals) from attempting to mess with the system. The US trend towards electronic voting is troubling for similar reasons - it makes accountability for the correct functioning of the system difficult to enforce.
Anyway, the point is that knowledge and understanding should be in as wide supply as possible, and that is the purpose of OLPC. It feeds a different hunger than food, but one in the end that is just as important to the building of a sustainable future.
Timing with other OLPC stories (Score:4, Interesting)
say for example Microsoft's criticism that olpc won't run Windows?
Thank you (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been working in Africa for a while, and I swear that the Army is the only organization in the US that gets it. "Not a big fan of the army or wars, but the Army is doing more teaching there then any of the other organizations I've gotten to work with.
Using technology to break the cycle.. (Score:4, Interesting)
OLPC comes in because children will be exposed to new ideas (or old ideas) that when they grow up will be able to use and implement on their own. They'll learn the value of education, educate their people and then finally we can start offshoring our IT to Africa instead of the more expensive Asia!
sri
Re:Give them fish... (Score:3, Interesting)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071209/ap_on_re_af/rethinking_africa_from_the_ground_up [yahoo.com]
Everyone's known for a long time that overly cheap western food has destroyed African farming, perpetuating the cycle of poverty. African countries are finally realizing that if they tell the US to screw off, they can do a lot better themselves.
Re:Bingo: unintended consequences (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bingo: unintended consequences (Score:4, Interesting)
Sugar is the only really non-standard piece, and that shouldn't add significantly to the overall costs.
You also claim that this "non-standardness" makes it less useful as an educational tool. You make it sound like the OLPC's purpose is to teach programming, which simply isn't the case. Hell, its primary purpose isn't even computer literacy. But it does come with several language interpreters, and I'm guessing a really ambitious student would be able to get a C++ compiler running on it. I'm just not seeing the problem, unless you're of the "if the kids aren't learning Windows, MS Office, and MS Visual Studio, they aren't learning" mindset.Which is why Negroponte is still expecting to hit the $100 price point next year. Of course, by three cycles, they don't make them anymore, which is why you don't see any $20 486 laptops these days.
Re:he's got a point. (Score:3, Interesting)
And please don't think that I am just singling out farmers alone for special attention. The oil and gas subsidies, the war spending, and the entitlements programs (social security and medicare to name the two big ones) are all part of an almost inumerable number of wasteful programs undertaken by our government.
For those of you who are interested in a more detailed anyalysis of the harm caused by farm subsidies I would refer you the following article [heritage.org]
agreed (Score:3, Interesting)
He's a waste of bandwidth now. The only way he can get page hits now is by saying things so outrageously stupid that people promptly blog about them with links.
Ignore him and he really will go away.
Re:Bingo: unintended consequences (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Uruguay is a third world country, but we don't have a problem feeding ourselves. We even have a good literacy rate, much higher than most Latin America. But we want more, of course. Education should be the basis of our development. We are buying the laptops with our own money, and serving as a pilot for other countries. It's 200 dollars a kid, and it helps us get rid of a lot of paper, and cover the bulk of the materials cost for 6 years of education.
Negroponte was hoping for a $100 laptop, but then the value of the dollar was much higher. Adjusting for devaluation, the target was closer to 120 dollars of today, and only after ramping up production, which hasn't happened yet. Here, they bought them, with included support (that costs money), for $200 each. It's great price for a kids laptop, with custom software, grid capabilities and no hidden costs.
All the numbers you make about a Dell costing 200 dollars is nonsense. Dell doesn't charge 200 dollars for a laptop, period. Add to that that they are not waterproof, they are not readable like a book (crucial for this purpose), and battery life is 3 or 4 times lower.
Not for argumentation, but just for illustration, imagine this was about cars. The XO would be a cheap chinese biodiesel offroad vehicle, for $3000 with great MPG, and people would be trying to replace it with a Chevrolet 2.0 sedan on sale at $5000, and claim that it would work the same for the needs of rural kids with no access to oil.