Can technology really change the world?

One laptop a day...
will that really make a huge difference in peoples lives?
would it be more important than food, shelter, clothes?
yes education is important..thats the only way to get yourself out of poverty..but how worthy is a laptop when your too weak from starvation to use it...
Negroponte has a point in trying to civilize and educate third world countires..but I would have to take Winstons side in this case.. yes technology is important but I would not classify it under a basic neccesity...
being a SST activist (this basically means that technology changes due to social needs, therefore it is not technology which changes us and technology is not a product of our society like technological determinist's assume)
I would have to agree with this concept...yes technology is important in our lives but we must also not forget that we are the reason why theres technology in the first place we play a MAJOR role in why technology is so advanced in the world we live in.
This makes the Marxist view a lot more appealing, it is true that people around the world benefit on behalf of those that suffer through exploitation and free labour the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.
We are living in a society where we think that technology is so important in our everyday lives...we are made to believe that we can not function without it however in truth we are living in a superfical world and at the end of the day money can't buy all your hearts desires (also ideals from the Frankfurt School for social research).
This brings us to another point Google and Privacy?
there have been many moral arguments around Google's right to information online..who's property is it and who has the right to that property?
moral judgements would suggest that no one is allowed to use another persons property without permission of the provider while others would say that information online has become so normalised and once it is posted or put online it officially becomes public property.
I would have to agree with the second idea... at the end of the day google has made people more aware of other peoples websites, information, even books...yes that can be a bad thing sometimes but in reality it can also be a good thing..for e.g. google books which provide users online the oppurtunnity to flip through snippets of the book online, this can encourage users to go out and buy the book which is the case on my behalf on numerous occasions.
Lastly is the idea of downloads such as films and music..
Everyone has to admit that they have downloaded something for free over the internet, whether its an mp3 song, a film or even an entire album we all fall victim to the appealing notion of free downloads. So is downloading a song online the equivalent of going into a store and stealing a physical item??
In a way yes it is.. the creative individuals involved backstage do deserve to get rewarded for their hard work (as RIAA have stated, it is the creative people involved who are being stripped from their rights, the record company comes 2nd however this is because it is the artist who does most of the work at the end of the day)
so is downloading free media online bad? in reality yes it is but will that stop people from doing it? I highly doubt it..the internet allows individuals to do almost anything which can be detrimental to those putting great amounts of effort into their work.... However I do know a lot of people who will download the song free first and buy it from iTunes later if they like the track.

Laptop has been eaten. Now what?

Are you weirded out by the fact that an 11 year old owns a cell phone? So by that same train of thought you would be just as weirded out by the concept of One Laptop Per Child. As I was reading the reading (LOL) for this week, I found this concept by Negroponte very bizarre and slightly unnerving.

This could severely impact the social and cultural aspect of a child’s life especially for children growing up in Third World Countries who are not used to a lot of technology in everyday life. I grew up in the Philippines so I know what it’s like to not have technology at the press of your fingertips and we used to make up our own games to pass times. As for education, I believe schooling is the most effective tool for a child’s learning and so I agree with Brian Winston’s stance that is slightly against Negroponte’s vision.

Though if you were to look at it from a different perspective, this could be just Nicholas Negroponte’s way of trying to help shape the world through technology. As there are a lot of organizations out there, such as World Vision (http://www.wvi.org) and Oxfam (http://www.oxfam.org) , who help children that are worse off with basic necessities like water, food, shelter and schooling.

You can’t help but be slightly cynical and critical about Negroponte’s vision for the 2 billion children out there in the world. Questions arise on how are these Third World Countries are going to find a power source to run these laptops let alone finding a decent and constant water supply. I think for electricity is my biggest issue with these laptops. Winston quoted Bill Gates in the reading in which Gates was more worried about how certain countries were going to supply the energy as a normal laptop would take about 20-30 watts to run within a few minutes and a child in a Third World Country could only handle 5-6 watts. It just seems odd to supply kids between the ages of 6-12 (I mean c’mon SIX-YEARS-OLD) with technology laden instruments and expect them to learn this way. Maybe I’m a little old fashioned but a lot of people in tutorial found this solution very odd indeed.

If I had to make the world a better place, laptops for kids would not be my ideal solution. Even that phrase, laptops for kids, and associating laptops with children boogles my mind!