Dvorak Slams OLPC As ‘Naive Fiasco’

Originally published at Lemmingworks. You can comment here or there.

Slashdot | Dvorak Slams OLPC As ‘Naive Fiasco’

“PC Magazine’s John C. Dvorak has a unique take on the cute One Laptop per Child XO-1, deeming the OLPC project a naive fiasco waiting to unfold that sends an insulting ‘let them eat cake’ message to the world’s poor. When it comes down to a choice of providing African kids living in absolute poverty with access to Slashdot or a $200 truckload of rice, Dvorak votes for the latter. Buy ten OLPCs if it assuages your guilt, says Dvorak, but ‘I’ll donate my money to hunger relief.’”

Dvorak asks, in One Laptop per Child Doesn’t Change the World, “Does anyone but me see the OLPC XO-1 as an insulting “let them eat cake” sort of message to the world’s poor?”

Of course we’re all cautious in our enthusiasm and support for OLPC, and no one has ever said that technology should take the place of, or money be diverted from helping people access safe drinking water, basic education and human rights, etc., but anything that will help support literacy, access to information, communication with one’s own community and culture, give people a voice that cannot easily be silenced by government, first language education tools, health information at least has the potential to do good. I wonder if Dvorak’s point is to keep people in poverty by merely giving them food when we can do so much more.

On a lighter note, someone’s comment on Slashdot made me smile: “Give a man a fish, and he eats for day. Teach a man to Phish, and he eats for the rest of his life.”