Dear Mr. Jha, On Mon, 2005-11-28 at 20:33 -0500, Satish Jha wrote: > Nicholas Negroponte has done it once again. He has capyured the imagination > of the world interested in bridging the digital divide by talking about a > laptop for $100 and creating a vision of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC).
Might you perhaps, one day, feel like answering Taran's questions about the $100 laptop, rather than yet again telling us what a wonderful idea it is without any factual backing whatsoever? > Interestingly while the organised world has responded positively to his > strategy, the activists in the space see it is intrusive from someone who > does not listen to teh ground. Presumably you classify the Chilean government as a bunch of disorganised activists: [http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2005-11-04-022-26-NW-HW-PB] > It has been called "top-down", elitist, > redundant, another way of MIT usurping the people's movement by using its > branding power, a plain bad machine that does not meet the requirement If true, these are valid criticisms. I have seen no evidence that persuades me that they are not. > Some say the funds may have been allocated for better purposes. Mae West once said "well, they would say that, wouldn't they?" But $100 million is a huge chunk of most countries' educational budgets. It would pay for the (re)training of 100,000 teachers in the poorest countries, which would be much more likely to have a positive impact on education than an infinite number of glorified green calculators. > Just the intensity of reaction is a amazing. Reminds me of the green > revolution days when there were people who were busy leading it and a bunch > of critics who could see little right about it and now the critics have > faded and all of us are reaping the benefits of having gon through it. Oh, and where is this green revolution now? Is our petroleum consumption going down? Or energy use? Have we stopped cutting down the rainforests? Are we not testing genetically modified plants in the wild? Have we improved our environment in any way at all since we all started smoking pot and making peace signs? The critics didn't fade. They got organised instead of getting stoned. They got elected on promises of tax cuts and cutting red tape. And then they silently squished the so-called "green revolution". Unfortunately. > In the case of $100 laptop the poor do not have to realy pay for it Of course not, these laptops will rain out of the sky, airdropped by the US military in cluster bomb packets, and paid for by God himself (or Bush, whoever is the richer). > Someone else is planninbg it for them, someone else is organising it That worked out really well for the Soviet Union, didn't it? > and its coming out of funds that have been generated for the project. I think that Negroponte would disagree. He was very clear at WSIS that countries would have to stump up the $100 million for the programme themselves. Cheers, Chris. -- (aidworld) chris wilson | chief engineer ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
