The Failure of the $100 Laptop? 487
RobertinXinyang writes "MSN's MoneyCentral has an article on the possibility that the $100 laptop project fails to meet its goals, and the potential of the project to harm people in developing nations. The article goes on to liken the project to 'good-natured showboating', and cites the unreality of a family using the glow from the laptop's screen as the only source of light in their hut. Perhaps there are better things to do with our time and money in developing nations?" From the article: "The entire idea may be misguided and counterproductive. At least that's what Stanford journalism lecturer an Africa watcher G. Pascal Zachary thinks. The basic argument is that with $100 you could almost feed a village for a year, so why waste that sum on a laptop? What are they thinking? The fact that these people need electricity more than they need a laptop is only part of the problem. The real problem is lost mind share. The people are harmed because these sorts of schemes are sopping up mind-share time of the people who might be doing something actually useful."
Disagree with a point (Score:5, Insightful)
Computer engineers and software developers are just that - they can create software and build computers.
They aren't molecular biologists or doctors or anything like that, so its not taking the mindshare from those kind of folks.
There's one difference... (Score:2, Insightful)
Giving them a laptop might make them productive.
Giving them food will make them dependent.
However, the added value of a laptop is greatly degraded by the lack of electricity in most places and the lack of education. The laptop program should also focus on these things to be succesful.
It seems (Score:4, Insightful)
Failure is the stepping ladder to success (Score:5, Insightful)
It's too easy to criticize when someone does good. That to actually do good in this world, you have to fight, and fight, and fight, and fight. And we get stronger every day.
Truth is (Score:2, Insightful)
Also how many times are imbeciles (John C.(for Cunt?) Dvorak I am opinionating on you), going to need to be told that THE LAPTOP IS FOR MIDDLE DEVELOPING NATIONS NOT LEAST DEVELOPED NATIONS YOU FOOL!
This laptop aint for starving kids
Re:Disagree with a point (Score:5, Insightful)
Computer engineers and software developers are just that - they can create software and build computers. They aren't molecular biologists or doctors or anything like that, so its not taking the mindshare from those kind of folks.
Mod parent up
I previously discussed this topic on an older article about the $100 laptop. Yes, people need a lot of things besides laptops. Imagine the economy in the United States and its trade partners. Pick out all the elements besides money: labor/skill/organization, raw materials, facilities/tools. Now imagine all the money in that economy. We have a lot of money--more money than economic resources. Saying that we could throw more money into food for third world countries doesn't necessarily mean you will get the amount of food you valued your money at. Paying out money to have workers and facilities that are only able to produce computers and software gives third world countries a little something extra. Why? Because those economic resources could not have produced food, so they would otherwise be an untapped outlet. If all the money going into a project like that went into sending food over, you'd probably choke the food supply and incredibly diminish the value of the money you spent on it.
Black and White Thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
Black and white thinking perceives the economic divide to be so immense that there is no middle ground of lack that can be alleviated. Unable to come up with a grand unified solution to the world poverty problem, they give up and distract themselves with a shiny new mp3 player.
Of course there are many, many people who still don't have access to clean water. Let's put our minds together to work on that problem as well. There's room for our service on all levels of impoverishment.
Re:There's one difference... (Score:5, Insightful)
How about they give them a free pick-axe and some seeds with every laptop purchase?
That would help, but only if the west would abolish farm subsidies for their own farmers.
What bullshit! (Score:5, Insightful)
OFCOURSE the problem with any project that uses things like computers/radios/video ect... is that its hard to make these programs sustainable. Typical projects have funding for 3-5 years in which time they distribute thousands of the things and then bam! one day the money runs out, the project ends, ... and then what? That is a problem with ALL development projects. The trick is to build sustainability.
Young people in a poor village in Africa are no different than anywhere else, and if you give them access to a networked computer with access to internet the possibilities are endless.
There are many successful projects implementing cell phones to help farmers get better prices for their crops. There are radio shows that teach people about HIV with call in shows using text messaging. The possibilities are endless. The next step is to integrate computers and internet into the matrix.
The truth is, you could probably buy a lot of flour for a single village for $100 for a year-- but once they have eaten it, they will still be hungry. Give a village a cheap device such as the $100 laptop and access to a network, the possibilities to exchange knowledge, generate ideas, and problem solve for THEMSELVES is limitless. This is how you create sustainability. Give them the tools and ideas, the rest can follow.
give a fish... (Score:5, Insightful)
The goal is not to give kids toys. It's to give them the means to explore education.
Obviously "feeding a village" isn't solving the problem, it's just keeping uneducated poor masses alive.
I'd rather educate them so they can help themselves.
Tom
Re:Africa? (Score:5, Insightful)
These were never meant for people who are so poor they can't get water; these are for people who have established these and now want to get in on the big money act... I'm a little saddened that people would make these FUD claims against a good project based on either a lie or a lack of understanding. Sure there might be some criticisms you could legitimately level against it (like not thinking that computers help education, or the fear of cracking leading to massive bot nets) and then we could discuss them... but this is just terrible.
feed a village - goodness (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok I am from India so $100 = 4500 Rs, now I would be really delighted to learn how one can feed a village for a year with that much of money. No,I really would like to know...considering the fact that villages in developing countries are genrally big( I can speak for India here, I spend half of my childhood in the most backward region of India,
I really appreciate intelligence of Mr.John C. Dvorak, but wait...
Bullshit, this isn't a zero sum game (Score:4, Insightful)
It's like the lame argument that people blame Ralph Nader for stealing votes from the Democrats. Again, bullshit. A good part of the people who voted for Nader didn't want to vote for Gore OR Bush, so without that alternative, they probably wouldn't have voted. It's not Nader for screwing over Gore, it's Gore's fault for not making himself a more viable candidate.
Poor XOR Rich (Score:5, Insightful)
The creators of the $100 laptop are under the delusion that wealth is not a binary condition. For some strange reason, they seem to think that there are poor people in this world that have enough money to feed themselves and buy essentials, but not enough money or infrastructure to support buying the latest Pentium from Dell. This is clearly ridiculous, and I applaud MSN Money for reminding us that the world really is black and white (no pun intended, ahem).
Re:Sure (Score:5, Insightful)
The flaw in his thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sure (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people have a dislike to the laptop project for two reasons:
1. FUD - They have not actually bothered to consider how revolutionary the laptop is, i.e. redesigning all the hardware, software and content.
For these people, salvation can only come through becoming a fat out-of-shape office worker, typing in Word using a crumb covered keyboard.
2. Paternalism - The laptop project is based on the idea that smart but poor kids can learn, create and program, for themselves.
This conflicts with embedded western psychological beliefs about how you need a nice western strong man/organistion/society (i.e. 'Hilter') to go and sort those foreigners out.
All homes in developing countries != mud huts (Score:3, Insightful)
There are hundreds of millions of people in those countries that don't starve, but they're far from wealthy enough to afford a computer. A $100 computer could be a help to them, and it introduces them to computing which is a very valuable skill.
Is it so hard to understand?
Don't give fish, teach how to build rods! (Score:1, Insightful)
because after that year they will return asking for more food, while being taught how to make their soil productive, how hunt animals without extinguish them, how to limit births to a sustainable number, how to use sun and water energy etc. would help them forever.
People should not think about the OLPC as a toy for kids to play recompiling the kernel while mum and dad are starving to death but as a container for precious information (wikipedia and tons of other sources) and a media to pass them to others.
One thing "western" people should stop thinking at all is that we can help the hungry and homeless by giving them homes and food. That's plainly wrong! Intelligence and knowledge is what gives humans the ability to make use of what they already have there to fulfill their needs. Evolution already gave them at least a basic level of intelligence, so let's teach them to read then give them books, not food.
Feed a man for a week.. (Score:5, Insightful)
but give him the ability to learn and give him nearly unlimited access to information and knowledge and he can grow crops/produce food/orginize business/etc etc for a life time.
This isn't about solving the problem for a week. A temporary solution at best, training people to depend on foreign aid in the worst, but about empowering people to create real solutions for themselves.
Despite what people want to beleive, that african aid will save the world and make them heroes, the only people in a position to help Africans (and other third world nations) perminately is Africans (and natives to those same third world nations)
That's how it's going to happen. Africans helping Africans. Education and giving people the tools to learn to figure out solutions to their own problems is what is going to solve problems. (that and economic trade)
Not 'mister white european rich guy' coming around every few months and giving handouts of food and vaccinations. THAT is the real feel-good-happy-bullshit. Not saying it's not needed and people shouldn't be doing it. I am saying it's a bandaid, that's all. Your nursing the wounds (which in itself is valuable), not healing them.
Re:MSN reports... (Score:5, Insightful)
- This is "negative" publicity intended to call attention to the project
- MoneyCentral is staffed by folks for whom all things are tactical, and the concept of a strategic project with payoffs in the decade range are like, totally too hard, dude.
Probably a blend of the two.Re:it will work if... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this program could help keep kids, as well as adults, somewhat familiar with the idea of computers. If one day their country is pulled out of the 3rd world era, then they won't be completely foreign to technology.
Re:Sure (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing about it is, the act of providing the laptop is the very thing that will help relieve poverty. These guys are playing the long game by providing an educational resource to people below the poverty line, and in doing so improving their chances of getting a job and being able to work their way out of poverty.
There's the old line about 'you can give a man some grain, and he can feed his family for a day, but give him seeds and tools and he can do so for a lifetime'. It's this type of thinking that we're talking about.
The person debunking the idea doesn't recognise the true value of the laptop, and it's his loss not ours.
Typical Western Thinking (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:First-hand experience (Score:3, Insightful)
"Prioritization" is BS (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like criticizing the space program on the basis that it would be better to use the same resources to fight poverty in the U.S. That point is arguably true, but it's silly, because if we didn't have a space program the political reality is that those resources would not be used to fight poverty.
The altruistic impulse is not fungible. If you say to Negroponte "we don't want your laptops," he's not going to say, "Great, I'll just fold up the Media Lab and send all its funds to Oxfam."
I've faced this problem in deciding how to make personal charitable donations. How can one decide when there are so many worthy causes? How can one justify donating to the American Cancer Society when perhaps the American Heart Association would be a better use of resources? Is it frivolous to donate to the EFF instead of sending that money to UNICEF? The only answer is: these are the charities I donate to, you donate to whatever charities you wish.
Nobody knows how to solve the world's problems. If it were simple and obvious we'd just solve them. The $100 laptop is an interesting idea and it might do some good.
If not, I'd wager the amount of resources and "mind share" it's diverting from anything are utterly negligible compared to, say, the amount of resources and "mind share" being used in the U. S. to launch the PlayStation 3, or fulminate about O. J. Simpson's new book, or pursue the war in Iraq.
How Does He Know? (Score:3, Insightful)
What has G. Pascal Zachary actually done to help? He's been an academic/journalism/lecturer Africa expert watcher for a long time, but Africa is even worse in most ways than when he began his career. Where's the evidence that his opinions, part of the "help Africa" status quo, are any more likely to work than a new project that focuses on a quantum leap in empowering a new generation of Africans?
Re:it will work if... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Disagree with a point (Score:4, Insightful)
It reminds me of my old "3rd world" school lessons. Once, we sent tractors to african thinking that's what they needed to improve their agriculture. Fast forward 2 years and you have starving africans with broken down tractors (no spare parts or trained mechanics to fix them), and no diesel to put in them anyway. What we should have sent them was trowels, shovels and ploughs.
Although they can learn how to make solar stills for drinking water (hmm, how much water do you extract from an arid atmosphere?) missionary work where a teacher goes and shows them how to make this (and takes the raw materials with them) would be far more effective. If you want viral information dissemination - well, they already have this. Its called going and talking to the next village along. This kind of thing is already done with the AIDs work, amongst others.
Dempser farm windmills may be great, but do they have the steel and wiring to create them?
A rebuttal to Dvorak's article (Score:5, Insightful)
As a consequence, Mr. Dvorak's factual basis for his opinions appear to be flawed. That's the problem with fast-moving, lean projects that don't have a profit motive: the worker-bees don't budget time to spoon-feed journalists.
I base this critique on the facts shown at a presentation I attended last week on the project and its current status. During that presentation, many of Mr. Dvorak's criticisms were answered in full. I'll run down the factual points, based on the information I gleaned from that presentation. I don't vouch for absolute accuracy, as I wasn't taking notes, and I'm not part of the project. Keeping those caveats in mind:
* Justification: Mr. Dvorak doesn't touch on this issue at all, except in the negative and through the words of another person. He missed the one reason this project is interesting to the governments of the developing nations: it saves money in education.
Mr. Dvorak, have you looked at the price of school textbooks these days? How much does your local school spend, per year, on books for their kids? In developing countries, the textbook cost may be lower than here but it's still high compared to, say, food.
(N.B.: The situation in college is even worse. I leave research on that issue as an exercise to the reader, as most of the hits on Google about textbook pricing focus on higher education.)
You say, Mr. Dvorak, "with $100 you could almost feed a village for a year" but that same $100 doesn't cover educating ONE child for ONE year. You want to fill their stomachs, but starve their brains?
The OLPC project got the facts from the horse's mouth, the governments who have to somehow educate their children in order to raise the standard of living in their country. The cost of the laptop, roughly $20/year for the five-year life of the laptop, is less than the cost of the books needed to teach the kids. Throw in the infrastructure costs (development of electronic textbooks, "libraries", access points and their connections to a country-wide network) and the country still sees a savings.
Interestingly, like most "problems", it comes down to money.
* Manufacturing cost: While the presenter didn't provide a complete bill of materials for the laptop, the cost projections for building the laptop in million quantities falls well below $100 at the current time. Further cost reduction is possible as the laptop matures. The cost projection shown by the presenter was verified by members of the audience who have been on the front lines of manufacturing products like this laptop.
How much lower can the price go? You know as well as anyone the cost curve over lifetime of a computer product. Is $50 possible?
* Maintenance: Photos of the prototypes shown at the presentation show a modular approach very similar to that used by IBM in making the PS/2 Model 50 personal computer (and *not* used in virtually every PC made today). The only tool required to service the machines is a single screwdriver. Kids in the US, UK, Canada, and other developed countries have no problems servicing computers *not* designed to be serviced easily by untrained personnel. So the only infrastructure required is a way to get spare parts to those who need them.
* Networking: The laptops use mesh networking to communicate with each other, and to access points provided as part of the
Re:Disagree with a point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The main problem (Score:2, Insightful)
It never ends, does it?
Re:it will work if... (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe you hadn't noticed, but much of the 3rd world is starving, and not from any lack of effort on their part. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say, "Well, if those goddamned Africans would just get off their lazy butts and make some food, there wouldn't even be a problem!" No, most people say, "Well, maybe if we gave them some food (and some medical aid too, since half their continent is dying of AIDS), they would have more chance to devote time and energy to other things. Like education, sanitation, and infrastructure." We in the 1st world are not just throwing money at the place and giving ourselves a pat on the back for good charity (though certainly there are many who do that [see: famous rich people]). There are groups and people who use their money and help out with food (and not just handing them some foodstuffs and hoping for the best. Actually teaching them to farm and giving them the impliments needed to do so). Groups and people who help out with medical aid, with the building of schools and hospitals and sanitation facilities, et cetera. And generally, it seems to be working [repec.org].
It sounds to me like you're some hyper-PC, ultrasensative bozo who leaps at any opportunity to shout "Racism!" from the highest peak.
Re:Let them decide for themselves (Score:1, Insightful)
Ummm, unless there's a giant spigot I missed in geography class, the world IS a zero-sum game. Except for the sun. Damn sun, pouring energy into an otherwise closed system, ruining a perfectly good blanket statement.
Re:it will work if... (Score:2, Insightful)
$100 laptop usefulness (Score:2, Insightful)
Two of the things that lead to the growth in the wealth and productivity of a society are the ease of communications and the wide availability of knowledge. Jared Diamond makes a similar argument in his widely read book, "Guns, Germs, and Steel." The $100 laptop project offers features for communications (i.e., email, IM, VoIP) and for knowledge dissemination (built in wikipedia, web access).
Over a hundred years ago, when Andrew Carnegie funded the construction of free public libraries in many slum-laden US cities, I am sure many well meaning people said the money could have been better spent on providing food to eat, coal to heat homes, improved public sanitation, etc. But the knowledge that many a slum kid derived from those libraries helped them get an education and escape from poverty.
A full library, with its costs for books, a building, and caretaker, costs much more than the $100-150 of OLPC, so it seems reasonable to try the $100 laptop approach.
Re:Africa? (Score:4, Insightful)
Despite being nominally first world, even the US still has pockets of the third-world hidden away. Arguing that third world countries need to be brought up to a uniform standard of living before projects like this should be started is as stupid as arguing that the US doesn't need projects like this because we all live in clean, modern housing and have great jobs.
Re:Disagree with a point (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sure (Score:3, Insightful)
Please stop thinking they're all starving (Score:4, Insightful)
A very small percentage of the world is actually unable to feed itself - and which percentage keeps shifting, that's more about drought, war and other temporary emergencies than a permanent condition.
Required reading is this very sharp, short column by historian / columnist Gwynne Dyer:
http://www.gwynnedyer.net/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%
We are constantly bombarded with the comparison between our own wealthy fifth of the world and the poorest fifth, most of them in Africa. In the above column, he reminds us that most of Africa had a fairly good standard of living as recently as the 60s and has declined in recent decades because of apalling governments, not "natural" problems like more people than the land can feed.
And the "middle three-fifths" of humanity are a success story, recently - China and India get the press for their economic rise because they are so large, but all over the world (Dyer writes the above from Turkey) people of this generation have risen from subsistence to a level of comfort that most of our grandparents would recognise - or even envy. (See the series "1900 house" to realize how far we've come since our grandparents day.) That middle 3/5ths don't need the laptop for light, they have food, clothing, shelter, some light and water at least at the end of the street. What they need are opportunities to earn more cash so they can get water to the house and sewer that isn't the gutter.
Three-fifths of six billion is quite a "market". And the sooner they migrate up from $10/day to $50, the sooner we'll have *help* with the tough problem of the poorest fifth. Reviewing the recent economic changes, there's no reason to imagine this can't happen in a generation.
Re:Disagree with a point (Score:5, Insightful)
These are not targeted at, say, Rwanda, or any other place where someone might end up with a laptop but no food. It's more for places like Brazil, Micronesia, Libya...there are pleny of places that have the food/water/shelter trifecta more or less worked out, whose schoolchildren could really benefit from a cheap computer.
I don't know why this comes up every time OLPC is linked: "Third world countries don't need laptops, they need food." Not everyone in the "third world" is starving by the side of the road. It's incredible to me that people keep saying that, and I wonder if it's the same people.
another bogus Dvorak article (Score:3, Insightful)
By the time I had gotten to the end of the article, it was no surprise to find John C. Dvorak was the author. The man made some useful contributions to connectivity technology in the late '80s and early '90s. In the last ten years or so, he has been demonstrating that he can make a good money by being a highly visible troll. I cannot imagine that he actually believes half the stuff he writes; mostly he just seems to like to keep the pot boiling.
His argument against OLPC is basically a recycling of the old "White Man's Burden" argument, which was used to justify european colonialism in the late 1800s and neo-colonialism in the middle 1900s. In its current form it strongly implies that individuals who grew up in third world cultures are incapable of managing new technologies or making decisions about implementing these technologies in their native lands. It is up to us, who were fortunate enough to be born into the high tech cultures, to develop a Gantt chart for bringing these poor peoples up to speed (and we can do so without regard to cultural or logistic issues we know nothing about). And we should raise our voices in protest against anyone who suggests that there might be another way of doing things.
I also have some serious concerns about the "facts" presented in this product of Dvorak's imagination. He keeps referring to Africa for his examples. Since when are Brazil, Argentina, or Thailand in Africa? Yet these are the three nations that have expressed the most serious interest in deploying OLPCs.
I suggest that when you see Dvorak's name in the byline, you should use all your critical reading skills when absorbing his words. And since the man has a sizeable ego, this is even more important when he buries his name at the end, as he did in this article.
Re:Disagree with a point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let them decide for themselves (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing is, we're not talking about things on the physical level, we're talking economics- and in economics, value can be created. If Bob puts together a set of shelves, it's probably more useful and valuable to him than the lumber that it came from. If he bakes a loaf of bread, it's more valuable than the grain that it came from. If Van Gogh paints a painting, it's a lot more valuable to humanity than the canvas and paints (and ultimately the pigments and mediums that those came from) ever were. Heck, look at computers! The same electrons can send an amazing, awe-inspiring, insightful comment to Slashdot, or they can send a -1 Flamebait.
You also point out the Sun. I suppose the Sun is a big part of this process too - due to agriculture and horticulture and such.
Re:Disagree with a point (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not going to the moon. The two places I've read that theyre going are Brazil and Libya. I suggest you do some research before condemming those places as these stereotypical savage backwards lands. Libya GDP per capita is almost $12,000 dollars. [cia.gov] Brazil is poorer at about $8,000 per year, but far from the stereotypical 3rd world you describe in your post. I'm sure there are many schools in Libya that put public schools in Chicago or New York to shame. Let's stop pretending varying degrees of wealth doesnt exist on the local level. The third world is hardly homogeneous.
I don't know if the OLPC project is going to be a success, but the economics of it is sound. It may just be another failed technological solution to a social problem, but the price-point is probably doable (or at least much cheaper than anything else on the market), the countries interested in the pilot program are wealthy enough to afford them, etc.
Dvorak Column != Article (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Disagree with a point (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice post. May I elaborate further?
Maybe because "somebody" is scared stiff at the thought of a few million Linux laptops being given away. I wonder who could it be?
I happen to live in one of the countries that purportedly placed an order. And, just in case someone is wondering, not a part of the ruling elite, not even rich, but middle class. We have a HUGE middle class. We don't live in a hut. We have electricity. And running water. And way better food than I found in the States. And cable TV. And broadband. And computers. And yes, a rugged, simple, unexpensive laptop would be incredibly useful, and not just for children. If the OLPC were willing to sell them for, say, $200 I'd buy three or four. They seem bespoken for my business.
Yes, they are. And the astroturfing is going to get a lot worse.
Cheers,
CC
Re:it will work if... (Score:3, Insightful)
Spot on, and already proven by history. I can't remember when I read the article - it was at least 20 years ago - but when the author correlated specific technology with economic growth in the Third World, he found that communications technology (telegraph or telephone) was by far the most positive contributor. As an example, he discussed the case of an African village where locals were selling lumber for much less than it would cost farther down river. Once they got a telegraph station, they were able to compare rates downstream with their prices, and relatively quickly adjust their prices to get a larger profit. Any new communications technology, as MacLuhan pointed out, results in increased wealth.
The potential benefits of the $100 laptop are enormous. Let's just look at AIDS; the amount of disinformation in Africa is legend. Some men believe having sex with a virgin will cure them; this often leads to the rape of young girls. Having access to reliable information may save thousands of young girls from needless pain.
Let's use another metaphor: irrigation. We have made enormous gains in agricultural productivity thanks to irrigation. And that's just adding water to a field. Now, we're talking about irrigating villages with knowledge. Surely even the most Philistine must admit that the potential benefits are without limit. These are minds thirsting for knowledge, and we can now turn on the spigot.
There is a generation of killers being trained in Africa today. Our best hope of combatting them is to provide more and more African people with access to knowledge, information, and communication.