Indeed, a very nice article to read.
In a nutshell, author John C. Dvorak shares his insights how One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) founder Nicholas Negroponte might have missed the train when it comes to solving world hunger.
Apparently, saying anything negative about the OLPC XO-1 computer amounts to heresy in this community. You may as well promote NAMBLA or the KKK. People don’t want to consider the possibility that their well-meaning thoughts are a joke and that a $200 truckload of rice would be of more use than Wi-Fi in the middle of nowhere. There seems to be a notion that the poor in Africa or East Asia are just like the kids in East Palo Alto. Once they get a laptop, there will be no digital divide, will there? People can say, “I did my part!”
It is true that food is more important than a $100 laptop to a starving child. But there is an old saying that goes:
Give man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.
World hunger cannot be solved by merely giving food to the needy. It involves several actions that needs to be done and the OLPC, a project that aims to provide every child in impoverished countries a laptop as an educational aid, is a step in achieving the goal of eradicating poverty. With proper education, people will learn to look after themselves and not to rely on other people to save them.
OLPC is an education project that designs an affordable laptop and educational software and aims to provide children outside of first-world with new opportunities to explore, experiment, and express themselves.
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