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Comment Re:That's rather disappointing, but they had acces (Score 3, Insightful) 32

One generally overlooked thing that it did was launch thousands of children on careers that didn't entail plowing with the chakitaqu'lla to plant potatoes or spending interminable days herding sheep. My brother-in-law knows an accountant who was the first in his town to use a computer, lured off the farm by the realization that they were just a tool and even people like him could learn to use them.

Comment Re:The point of one laptop per child (Score 1) 32

This was much of the problem, lack of connectivity. In Paruro where my brother-in-law lives when they distributed the OLPCs the only option for Internet connectivity was an expensive ISDN line, and later an extremely congested 3G tower. In Paucartambo, where our niece taught, there was no connection for the first couple of years.

Another was that teachers were not provided with OLTPs, only students. I got a couple on Buy One/Get One and gave one to our niece, and my sister-in-law used the ancient creaking Win95 laptop we gave her until 2010.

So a good first effort, and lessons were learned. Today I can't help but think it would be much more successful.

Comment Re: The point of one laptop per child (Score 1) 32

In the 1970s Indira Gandhi convinced India's government to spend millions on secondary education, and especially computers. The portion of the world which didn't laugh at the effort was condemning it for not using that money to provide arable land, seeds and clean water (as if governments are unable to do more than one thing at a time). The investment has paid off many, many times.

Comment Re:Simple solution (Score 1) 20

mahogany lined corporate offices

No such thing. I've worked on Jassey's and Bezos' offices (and Bill Gate's as well). Their offices are only marginally better than other managers' offices in the company (although they do have much more extensive security precautions). You're probably thinking of Oracle.

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