Negroponte and the Third world

Nicholas Negroponte wishes that every third world child needs to be given a laptop because he believes that without education all other developments are considered as a fail and that computers provide a solution to education which will save the world.

I understand where he is going with one laptop per child policy as nowadays computers are an essential tool for education for all levels of students, but for third world countries, for me I don’t think he quite realizes what is truly important. It has to be taken into account that he is trying to help those third world countries but I think he needs to think not from his own perspective but from the other perspective. The fact is that third world countries need necessities in order to survive. I found out some information and it shows that in Asian, Latin American and African countries over 500 million people are living in absolute poverty and every year 15 million children die of hunger and more than 100 million will die within a decade because of illnesses and starvation. What I’m trying to say is that Negropontes idea of one child per laptop doesn’t apply in the third world country. It needs food, medicine and basic shelter in order to survive. Providing Laptops for education is something that needs to be taken into consideration after these nations have reached a level where people are not dying due to hunger and shortage of medicines.

From the way I look at it, Negroponte needs to live in a third world country even just for a few days and realize that even surviving for a day is a struggle for those people and by providing these people with laptops isn’t going to be of a help. For me I think Negroponte doesn’t have a clue of what life is like in the third world countries. If he knew, he wouldn’t be implementing his policy on how, one child per laptop will help those malnourished third world countries by improving access to education, which will eventually save the world. Negroponte is living in his own dream world as his policy doesn’t help at all with the needs of the third world country.