But OLPC does not take away from those other efforts. It's not like the OLPC-guys would be more useful handing out food than they are designing laptops.
Actually, they probably would be. What you probably meant to say is that OLPC
shouldn't take away from those other efforts. I think in fact that they do. Plus, I think there are far more plentiful and effective ways to educate children and PARENTS (who arguably need it more) than with niche laptops that aren't universally available.
Sure. But OLPC-guys has no means to help in that area. The area where they can help is through education and technology. So their efforts do not diminish the efforts done by other people in some other area.
Which is why it is more important IMO - that the "other people" are successful. Without REAL infrastructure, health, sanitation, and a stable government, the OLPC concept can not succeed - no matter how well-intentioned or technologically savvy the creators are.
It's like when people complain when new version of software is released. It contains new artwork, and people complain "why not focus on fixing bugs as opposed to working on the artwork?". They fail to understand that the coders and the artists are different people and the artists efforts to improve artwork does not take away any resources from the coders who try to fix bugs. Those artists couldn't fix bugs even if they wanted to.
This is a fair argument. So, wouldn't it follow that a company with limited resources on a limited budget would set and make priorities and staffing decisions that work to the benefit of the company
and the software as a whole? In your example, I'd say in order to keep the software a viable product to market, bugs and glitches should always take
priority over aesthetics. This means
less artists and coders focused on these aesthetics and
more engineers brainstorming and fixing the errors and fine-tuning the product.
It may be a beautiful laptop - technologically marvelous, laden with the secrets of education and life itself, but if the child is feverish with malaria, suffering from Kwashiorkor, he isn't going to benefit from OLPC until his other problems have been solved.
And what makes you think that these laptops are not part of that infrastructure? It's like when remote villages got their first cell-phone. People wondered what's the point in giving them phones, when they barely have any food to eat. But it was soon discovered that the farmers used that phone to survey nearby towns to determine which had the greatest demand for their products. It was used for remote healthcare and education. And it was of course used for communication between people.
I don't believe computers are the
infrastructure developing countries need. At least not as a
priority. I've seen the effects misplaced priorities in a community can do to the poor. There are cell phones in Jeremie, Haiti, yet sewage still runs through the street. There are cell phones in Jeremie, but large families still live together in small, rickety hovels of cardboard, tin, rags, and straw – unfit for human habitation. There are cell phones in the country, yet few Haitians have access to electricity or clean water. Love those phones, but kids are lucky if they get even one meal a day. A lack of vitamin A means blindness for many children. Blindness makes a laptop slightly more difficult to use.
... the phone single handedly helped the community a lot, even though on the surface it was just a phone.
In many cultures, I believe "on the surface", technology could mesmerize people to the point of self destruction. I think the cell phone is proof of this in Haiti. I'll concede that in other less indigent cultures, technology could surely assist a population to rise up from poverty. In Haiti - I'm not yet convinced.
Unemployment there stands at roughly 70%; average annual incomes are roughly less than $300 per year. Subsequently, entire villages suffer from malnutrition. Children lack sufficient calories to survive – nearly 40% are malnourished and more than 15% do not live to see their fifth birthdays. Of those who do survive, 51% are mentally and physically stunted and many go blind from lack of vitamin A. Diarrhea and pneumonia, coupled with malnutrition, remain the leading causes of death, because these children have no nutritional reserves to sustain them. You'll forgive me that these sobering facts leave me somewhat jaded at the utility of a cell phone and computer.
No - I'd rather take my chance on the latrine and clean water; on clean, dry shelter; on nourishing food; on soap and hygiene and life-saving medicine; on a safe, clean school with chalkboard, desks, paper and pencil first. Networking neighborhoods with an XO laptop just doesn't seem to me to be the missing link for developing nations like Haiti.
