Comment What about Appalachia? Or South Central L.A.? (Score 0, Offtopic) 208
There are many, -many-, -many- places in the United States where similar democratization of technology would be of immense benefit. I'm not really miffed at the fact that they won't sell one to me. I'm miffed that they aren't working with school districts domestically to address our -internal- needs to spread education and welfare, and instead condescend that other children elsewhere need this sort of "assistance" more.
I'm not implying that they don't need to be given the chance to deal with these problems. I'm just stating that looking afar for opportunities to do good is stupid on the face of it, when there are many worthy domestic persons that need education, funding, and/or encouragement.
It's similar to my feelings around the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Want to do something -really- good? Don't just buy HIV drugs for people overseas. Buy patents, or fund disruptive biotechnology in countries everywhere, to innovate novel drugs, to bust the patent stranglehold on these medicines, and help lift the boat for the undereducated, the sick, and the weary throughout the world, including those in the first world. Highly tanned individuals dead or undereducated overseas are tragic, but similarly dead or undereducated individuals in the first would.. or, *gasp* poor white trash, are every bit as tragic.
If this world is truly a globalist, interconnected, all-singing, all-dancing capitalistic love-fest that means that everybody has superb opportunity, then by all means, let's please help everybody.
N.B.: I'm a native Kentuckian. I clawed out of crap to get where I am today, and I'm proud that I could, but my family were committed to my success. Of the eight other young men who grew up in my immediate area, one is in prison for molesting his daughter- who incidentally was born when he and his girlfriend were 15- three have been in and out of jail for various petty offenses steadily over the last decade or so, one is dead- shot in a robbery attempt, one managed to graduate high school, but has worked crud jobs, and has had many jobs lost over the intervening years.. one managed to hack some college, and is a hotel manager now.. and I managed to get out, get my schooling done, and get a good tech job, and I've since moved on to working at a university. Those are -long-, long odds. And that's one block of white children. That doesn't even take into account the obstacles that young, poor people of color have to get past, nor does it consider gender. Barefoot and pregnant isn't a joke in poor areas. It's a way of life. My own mother was sixteen when I was born. I know whereof I speak.
So really: OLPC for the third world? Super idea. How about OLPC for the ENTIRE world though. The United States is the land of the well-to-do... and the land of shit. We've got plenty of third-world inside our own borders to ignore anymore.
