One (Closed) Laptop Per Child

[n0cmonkey]

You'd think that going with an Open Source/Free Software friendly hardware manufacturer would be the smart way to go, especially since you're using Free/Open Source Software...

Guess not.

 

[kamper]

When that discussion started, I was a little apprehensive and didn't want to comment on it because I think open hardware documentation has to take a backseat to dealing with poverty on a global level. Of course, it's logical that the two goals are mutually beneficial, but that wasn't being debated.

But what came out of that thread was something I hadn't thought about: that OLPC is just a business oportunity of huge proportions with no real intention of benefitting the supposed recipients of the machines. That by itself is neither here nor there, except that they get to abuse people's sense of compassion by claiming to do a good thing. Now Theo's calling out companies like Redhat for abusing that sense to justify signing NDAs to write drivers or use out-and-out blobs while still glorifying the use of open source software.

Definitely something that I'd like to learn more about before really jumping on board with, but there were several good arguments against the OLPC including a few from folks in the 3rd world countries in question.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: kamper
When that discussion started, I was a little apprehensive and didn't want to comment on it because I think open hardware documentation has to take a backseat to dealing with poverty on a global level. Of course, it's logical that the two goals are mutually beneficial, but that wasn't being debated.

But what came out of that thread was something I hadn't thought about: that OLPC is just a business oportunity of huge proportions with no real intention of benefitting the supposed recipients of the machines. That by itself is neither here nor there, except that they get to abuse people's sense of compassion by claiming to do a good thing. Now Theo's calling out companies like Redhat for abusing that sense to justify signing NDAs to write drivers or use out-and-out blobs while still glorifying the use of open source software.

Definitely something that I'd like to learn more about before really jumping on board with, but there were several good arguments against the OLPC including a few from folks in the 3rd world countries in question.

There were a couple of people in the thread that really put it in perspective for me. The mails talking about how little people actually have in even countries like India, where $1 is roughly 45 rupees, and people are desperate for just a couple of rupees a piece. How many of those people are going to be able to afford 4500R?

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
There were a couple of people in the thread that really put it in perspective for me. The mails talking about how little people actually have in even countries like India, where $1 is roughly 45 rupees, and people are desperate for just a couple of rupees a piece. How many of those people are going to be able to afford 4500R?

Well, via government subsidies in theory. I think there's better development work that can be done with government money in such countries, although it's far from my job to tell them how to spend it. What concerns me is that OLPC will tell them how they need to spend it and that any country that doesn't want to participate will receive negative western feedback for refusing charity.

Not that it's necessarily all bad. I'm sure there are places where cheap, reliable hardware will be quite useful. It's just a good idea to try to be aware of what else might be going on.

 

[corkyg]

Does this imply that there will be no laptops left behind? LOL

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: kamper

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
There were a couple of people in the thread that really put it in perspective for me. The mails talking about how little people actually have in even countries like India, where $1 is roughly 45 rupees, and people are desperate for just a couple of rupees a piece. How many of those people are going to be able to afford 4500R?

Well, via government subsidies in theory. I think there's better development work that can be done with government money in such countries, although it's far from my job to tell them how to spend it. What concerns me is that OLPC will tell them how they need to spend it and that any country that doesn't want to participate will receive negative western feedback for refusing charity.

Bah. Refusing charity is a GOOD thing. Shows that your willing to take care of yourself and that is what is absolutely required to work your way out of poverty, for a country or a person. Of course if you "need" need it, then it's foolish.

I think people are sort of missing the point on the whole laptop thing.


For example.. Say your setting up a school and you have to obtain good books for your students. You need stuff for reading, math, writing. Then you need a set of books for each class level. Higher level students need books to deal with socialogy, history, economics, philosophy, science. (you know.. the stuff they _used_ to teach kids in U.S. highschools) Also for a good learning center you need to have books and other stuff for research for and specific interests. In a developing country stuff like this is a rarity.

Then you need to have materials for writing, doing math, taking notes, etc etc.

Of this is sort of the minimal requirements for a good education.

OR...

You can give your students a laptop and internet connection and place things online.

The cost savings would be immense and many many many people would end up with access to information and communications and other people that they would of never had a chance to otherwise. Think about it.. Nowadays if your a driven person from any part of the world you have access to the same amount of information and quality of information that 50 years ago only the very richest students from the richest nations had access to just by having internet access. Lots of these places haven't even got telephones, but wifi may work.

I mean just look at Wikipedia. Sure if you lived in a good sized American city with over a million people or so you can get access to better information.. but in my childhood in a small town in the midwest our house was larger then the local one-room library.. which was barely ever open. Wikipedia, in comparision, is a weath of invaluable information. Now how does that compare to what is aviable to a person living in some of the even relatively well developed areas of Africa?

Spending 4500R is a huge savings compared to other things.

And I know most of them will go to waste... But if you can get to the 1 in 10, or 1 in 30 children that have a strong drive and ability to learn and apply their knowledge.. giving them the oppurtunity of a education, even it's mostly on their own, is enough to turn around many communities. A lot of the problem with poverty in some areas is due to just ignorance. They don't know how to grow crops. They don't know how to dig a well or manage finances (when your dirt poor being able to handle finances is much more important then when your rich...). Health problems are caused by basic lack of hygeine or knowledge about nutrition. Stuff like 'Oh, I shouldn't have standing water so I don't attract mosquitoes and get malaria'. Stuff like that.

For the dirt poor, you probably won't be able to help them. But most people aren't the dirt poor. They are just poor and don't have access to good education.

edit:

Ya for the Wifi.. They should choose the correct hardware with open specs. It's stupid to do otherwise.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: drag
Bah. Refusing charity is a GOOD thing. Shows that your willing to take care of yourself and that is what is absolutely required to work your way out of poverty, for a country or a person. Of course if you "need" need it, then it's foolish.

I know, that's what I was saying. Countries need to be able to refuse to buy a laptop per child. I'm just expressing concern that OLPC will abuse the notion of charity.

I think people are sort of missing the point on the whole laptop thing.

For example.. Say your setting up a school and you have to obtain good books for your students. You need stuff for reading, math, writing. Then you need a set of books for each class level. Higher level students need books to deal with socialogy, history, economics, philosophy, science. (you know.. the stuff they _used_ to teach kids in U.S. highschools) Also for a good learning center you need to have books and other stuff for research for and specific interests. In a developing country stuff like this is a rarity.

Then you need to have materials for writing, doing math, taking notes, etc etc.

Of this is sort of the minimal requirements for a good education.

OR...

You can give your students a laptop and internet connection and place things online.

You're not really trying to say that we should hand these countries the American education system are you? 😕

The cost savings would be immense and many many many people would end up with access to information and communications and other people that they would of never had a chance to otherwise. Think about it.. Nowadays if your a driven person from any part of the world you have access to the same amount of information and quality of information that 50 years ago only the very richest students from the richest nations had access to just by having internet access. Lots of these places haven't even got telephones, but wifi may work.

I mean just look at Wikipedia. Sure if you lived in a good sized American city with over a million people or so you can get access to better information.. but in my childhood in a small town in the midwest our house was larger then the local one-room library.. which was barely ever open. Wikipedia, in comparision, is a weath of invaluable information. Now how does that compare to what is aviable to a person living in some of the even relatively well developed areas of Africa?

Spending 4500R is a huge savings compared to other things.

And I know most of them will go to waste... But if you can get to the 1 in 10, or 1 in 30 children that have a strong drive and ability to learn and apply their knowledge.. giving them the oppurtunity of a education, even it's mostly on their own, is enough to turn around many communities. A lot of the problem with poverty in some areas is due to just ignorance. They don't know how to grow crops. They don't know how to dig a well or manage finances (when your dirt poor being able to handle finances is much more important then when your rich...). Health problems are caused by basic lack of hygeine or knowledge about nutrition. Stuff like 'Oh, I shouldn't have standing water so I don't attract mosquitoes and get malaria'. Stuff like that.

For the dirt poor, you probably won't be able to help them. But most people aren't the dirt poor. They are just poor and don't have access to good education.

edit:

Ya for the Wifi.. They should choose the correct hardware with open specs. It's stupid to do otherwise.

If somebody doesn't know how to grow crops or dig a well or manage finances, handing them a laptop isn't going to do ******. First of all, whatever the claims about mesh networking, the internet connection is going to be extremely lousy. Then, most of the content will be in a non-native language. Add to that that the computer itself is an extremely foreign object to their culture and likely won't be viewed very favourably. Also, I doubt the internet is really a good resource for teaching basic things like this, it's extremely indirect. Far better is to research exactly what will help them and get people on the ground, working with the local population.

 

[kamper]

For the sake of hearing both sides of the story, here's a blog posting from Jim Gettys of Redhat and OLPC on the matter: http://www.gettysfamily.org/wordpress/?p=27

I'm not well enough informed to offer an opinion on his specific dispute with Theo but, the special proprietary sauce that Marvell has seems to be entirely firmware based so we're not really talking about an issue with source code distribution. Gettys is claiming that the current firmware can't currently be distributed freely in binary form because it's based on 3rd party stuff but the lawyers are working on it. Meanwhile, they seem to be trying to develop a new firmware which will be open source (but the documentation is NDAed I'm guessing??). So anyway, "we're not open yet, but just wait" is the message.

 

[drag]

Far better is to research exactly what will help them and get people on the ground, working with the local population.

I think that is pretty much what people have been doing for the past 40 years right? Sending people out and doing research? I swear that I remember things like the peace corp and things like that from the sixties going on and on and on. I don't think they've stopped...

Your making it sound like the OLPC people are just pulling this out of their ass or something. Like it's 'Oh, hey I have this neat idea, lets give all these poor people Linux!' or something like that.
People have schools. They have teachers. The major problem is materal such as paper, pens, documentation, books and the like. Providing a cheap laptop and no-cost way to git the information out to people will provide much superior results at a fraction of the cost.

Also the language isn't as big of deal as you could imagine. For instance most countries in Africa have the official language that matches their colonial history. So most of them most everybody already speaks French or Portuguese and such. Etheopia doesn't have official language and they have a mismatch of local tribal stuff... But schools already teach in English (according to the CIA fact book)

I figure it's like how it turned out in India. There are so many different Indian dialecs that although most people know several the most efficient way to talk to somebody else in any random part of the country is to use English.

Also they aren't depending on 'mesh networking' to blanket a entire country. The idea is that at the school or local commuity center you would have the 'server' setup with somebody with basic computer skills to hold the information for books and circulum and be the (I am guessing NAT-style) router for the town's internet access. The mesh networking is a way to spread that out as far as possible.

Education is the key. It's ignorance that hurts these countries the most. Say you dump a lot of money into aid workers. They go from village to village. Innoculate, help some sick kids, maybe dig a well or setup a community center... Then they go on to the next town. What happens then? What happens when the pump for the well breaks? It's a temporary solution. It's not invalid and is needed, but if you don't figure out a way to get quality education for people so that they can learn to do that sort of stuff on their own then things aren't going to get any better then they are right now.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: drag

Far better is to research exactly what will help them and get people on the ground, working with the local population.

I think that is pretty much what people have been doing for the past 40 years right? Sending people out and doing research? I swear that I remember things like the peace corp and things like that from the sixties going on and on and on. I don't think they've stopped...

Your making it sound like the OLPC people are just pulling this out of their ass or something. Like it's 'Oh, hey I have this neat idea, lets give all these poor people Linux!' or something like that.
People have schools. They have teachers. The major problem is materal such as paper, pens, documentation, books and the like. Providing a cheap laptop and no-cost way to git the information out to people will provide much superior results at a fraction of the cost.

Originally posted by: kamper
Not that it's necessarily all bad. I'm sure there are places where cheap, reliable hardware will be quite useful. It's just a good idea to try to be aware of what else might be going on.

Also the language isn't as big of deal as you could imagine. For instance most countries in Africa have the official language that matches their colonial history. So most of them most everybody already speaks French or Portuguese and such. Etheopia doesn't have official language and they have a mismatch of local tribal stuff... But schools already teach in English (according to the CIA fact book)

You're right, of course. There is certainly a lot of english spoken, but that doesn't mean it will be easy for them to just get out there and read everything. As an aside, it's scary to think what this will do to the native cultures, as far as destroying old languages. But I couldn't blame anything like olpc for that, it's inevitable.

I figure it's like how it turned out in India. There are so many different Indian dialecs that although most people know several the most efficient way to talk to somebody else in any random part of the country is to use English.

Also they aren't depending on 'mesh networking' to blanket a entire country. The idea is that at the school or local commuity center you would have the 'server' setup with somebody with basic computer skills to hold the information for books and circulum and be the (I am guessing NAT-style) router for the town's internet access. The mesh networking is a way to spread that out as far as possible.

It's still gonna be crap. You're relying on at least one laptop every couple hundred feet from you to a real access point. Then one of your neighbors forgets to pedal the few minutes it takes to keep his laptop going and the chain breaks... But whatever, it's not really worth debating how well it'll work.

Education is the key. It's ignorance that hurts these countries the most. Say you dump a lot of money into aid workers. They go from village to village. Innoculate, help some sick kids, maybe dig a well or setup a community center... Then they go on to the next town. What happens then? What happens when the pump for the well breaks? It's a temporary solution. It's not invalid and is needed, but if you don't figure out a way to get quality education for people so that they can learn to do that sort of stuff on their own then things aren't going to get any better then they are right now.

No, moving on doesn't work too well. Much worse than a well breaking is that these cultures rarely listen to advice you give them and very quickly go back to their old ways, if they ever listen to you at all. And computers of all things are one of the most foreign things you can dump on them. Simply giving them these machines and expecting it'll make any sort of impact at all without constant supervision is silly. That's why the only way to help is to focus on what their real problems are (AIDS, poor farming techniques, oppressive governments... they're not dying from lack of internet access) and work slowly to develop solutions that they understand. Handing them a computer and saying "This has done wonders for the western world. Be more like us and you'll be fine!" is very dangerous.