"Its not a laptop project. Its an education project".

I may have gotten beaten to it, but I am going to write about it anyway. That is, the topic of Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child Vision.

Nicholas Negroponte's endeavour to give every child a laptop has the enormous ability to polarise opinion. It can either be seen as a noble cause, or an equally unimpressive one.

In short, Negroponte makes the compelling case for the distribution of laptops to the world's poorest children in the aim that it will improve education and begin to close the increasingly large gap between the first and third world. On the websites (sickeningly sweet) mission statement, it is suggested that with the use of laptops, children may 'become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future'.

At first, it seems incomprehensible to think that a child without access to clean water and clothing could still enjoy a laptop that is engineered to be readable in direct sunlight. This is where most of the criticism lies.

However, Negroponte is at pains to point out that "This is not a laptop project. Its an education project".

And education, is vital to sustained and longer term poverty reduction. The project does not suggest that laptops are more essential then food, shelter and water. There are other efforts worldwide that endeavour to help out these important issues. The project is focused and specific in attempting to simply trying to make a better future- by improving education.

As new media and technology becomes more and more ubiquitous, digital natives will probably be more and more likely to make up the majority of the population. Already behind, equipping children in developing nations with laptops is also another way in which to ensure that the gap with the western world will not widen.

Before, I sound like Negroponte's biggest fan, I will say that I am undecided on whether the One Laptop Per Child vision is wholly beneficial and the best use of resources. There are many limitations and questions and issues that need to be addressed, such as how the success of the project is measured, the environmental effects of the laptops and the imposition of Western values.

However, I do applaud the project's moral intentions to make the world, and future, a better place, and most significantly, the integration of technology to effect these changes. The amount of thought and research that has gone into the project must be commended, and the determination and relative success should also be recognised. Considering how far $100 can get you these days, spending $100 on a laptop that may improve the education and life of a child does not seem like a bad way to part with money.

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!

Negroponte: A Complete Genius or Complete Nutter?

Although clearly Photo-shopped, the image says it all; who actually benefits from projects like the ‘One Laptop per Child’ scheme? Brian Winston critiques Nicholas Negroponte’s ‘sophisticated yet affordable laptop’ proposition as he undermines his argument and blatantly names him the Marie Antoinette of the 21^st Century. After having visited their official website I am reminded of gestures that organizations like Trade Aid, who seem genuinely wanting to help others. It seems that the negative hype surrounding the controversial issue is largely based on the idea that the money could be spent otherwise on more proactive ways that would directly benefit these communities in terms of providing them with sufficient basic needs to survive. What critics like Winston easily dismiss are the numerous other organizations like World Vision and Child Fund that are taking place simultaneously that are already collecting donations and funds from people around the world to provide such basic means for survival, although arguably more money could be spent in this area. Negroponte attempts to mitigate the digital divide between first and third world countries, whereby knowledge and education can be seen as an intervention to breaking the poverty cycle in the long-run. If the software and internet access to all kinds of information for example, have the potential to teach those to live off the land, build communities, gain technical skills and eventually have the opportunity to work ‘anytime and anyplace’ as the internet promises, then why not?

Idealistically, it is a generous gesture to help those in need and providing education for third world countries where the poverty cycle may be considered the norm. In terms of what such effects of cheap mass-produced technologies may be doing, as Winston suggests towards the article, is creating increasingly sophisticated and more affordable technology that other corporations can efficiently imitate and distribute to developed countries. In addition to this, even before the economic turmoil and recession hit we have seen many jobs disappearing as corporations attempt to maximize profits and efficiency. Local residents are made redundant as their positions were outsourced to third world countries so that ‘we’ living in developed countries, can have increasingly more affordable access on the behalf of countries living below their means. Will the negative effects of globalization be the outcome of such schemes? If we continue to outsource work to locations with the lowest wages, worker protection, health and safety benefits, are people in developing nations any better off? Perhaps the ‘One Laptop per Child’ scheme is a start to something more revolutionary; whether it is implementing collective intelligence or creating ‘social/smart mobs’ that can potentially overthrow corrupt government officials—only time will tell.

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.