After watching the Nicholas Negroponte speech on giving impoverished children a laptop, at the cost of $100, I have mixed feelings. I am not really sure if that is their top priority when it comes to their needs, according to Maslow and his hierarchy of needs as we briefly discussed in class. There are many things that you could probably put ahead of needing a broadband Internet connection and the need to Skype. The need to end disease, feed, cloth and bath themselves would be high on the list of needs I would imagine.
On the other hand, I believe that laptops have the power to pull people out of poverty by educating them, and helping them learn. That way they can go on to live a productive and leave their impoverished lives. They can also use these laptops to communicate with other countries if and when an emergency occurs, or a national disaster happens and they need some assistance. This way they will have a lifeline to the outside world and be able to communicate quickly with either skype or their broadband Internet. And most importantly, and I think this goes along with my first point, they can educate themselves on diseases, and other health issues by using the Internet.
Cyclebeads
15 years ago
1 comment:
You got it right. Education is the most effective anti-poverty measure known. But there is more to it. Not Skype, which is commercial software, but Ekiga and other Free Software that communities can translate to their own languages and adapt to their own needs, as soon as they grow their own programmers.
Most notably the Sugar software on the XO, and a new kind of Free digital textbook to make full use of it and integrate it into the curriculum. With these electronic learning materials, the XO will be less expensive than printed textbooks, while offering a much greater range at no extra cost.
It works even better when you add in renewable electricity generation and storage; broadband Internet; and international microfinance. Even before children finish school, access to the Internet will enable them to get information to help their parents with farming or any business they may be in. It will let artists and makers of crafts enter global e-commerce. And much, much more.
In dealing with the current corrupt governments of developing countries, it will also let the citizens band together to do something about the situation, such as getting health care, honest law enforcement, clean water, adequate food, and jobs.
None of this is a given. It is what we and the people most concerned can _make_ happen, just as Barack Obama explains that change cannot come from him alone, but only from us getting together to change things ourselves.
The greatest fear of the enemies of progress is that children will learn how to take over the world before the old are ready to relinquish their power over us all by finally dying off. In the past the old and hidebound could count it as a victory if they kept the next generation from taking over until it was nearly as old and nearly as hidebound. But no more! Children have the Internet, not just the politically approved textbooks of the schools. Most of all, they will have each other, a billion of them.
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