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Wednesday, November 15, 2006 Part III: Philanthropy's New PrototypeContinued from page 3 By James Surowiecki
It is, in any case, important to recognize that the $100 laptop is not currently being pitched to truly poor countries, although Negroponte certainly envisions them as eventual customers. On the contrary, the five nations currently on track to buy the laptops--Libya, Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria, and (even after the coup that removed Prime Minister Thaksin) Thailand--all have relatively healthy economies and relatively large state budgets. That makes it considerably easier for them to justify investing in a new technology, particularly one that seems to offer the prospect of mitigating one of the biggest problems they face: the sharp divide between rich and poor. It also means that the $100 laptop could have a bigger impact sooner than it might otherwise, since the students likely to receive it first would use it to expand on skills they already possess; students in very poor countries, by contrast, are more likely to be illiterate and innumerate. While those involved with OLPC seem genuinely confident that the project will work, it could still be derailed by any number of problems. The laptops could end up being stolen from kids and resold, or the distribution of laptops could simply create a new digital divide. (In Brazil, after all, one million kids will suddenly have laptops, and 44 million won't.) More important, relying on governments to buy a product guarantees that the process will be capricious (especially in the case of undemocratic regimes), and certainly Negroponte's failure to get India to commit to the project was a blow to at least its short-term prospects. But even if we don't know whether OLPC will succeed, we do know that if it does, it will represent a dramatic step forward for both computing and philanthropy. What OLPC will have done, after all, is figure out how to put computing power in the hands of millions more people by using dramatically new technologies. Just as important, OLPC will, should it succeed, serve as a new model for getting the nonprofit, private, and public sectors to work together efficiently and productively. In part because of frustration with government corruption and bureaucracy, and in part because of the American preference for private rather than public solutions to social problems, the idea of working with governments in the developing world has become increasingly less attractive to philanthropists. But there are problems too big to be solved by NGOs or corporations (or governments, for that matter)--problems that demand new kinds of alliances. OLPC is, in that sense, not just building a new computing machine. It's also building a new philanthropic machine, one as cobbled together and untraditional as the $100 laptop. The question that remains is just how well either of those machines will really work. James Surowiecki is the financial columnist at the New Yorker and the author of The Wisdom of Crowds. |
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Part II: Philanthropy's New Prototype
11/14/2006
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comments
acutmore on 11/15/2006 at 6:44 PM
1
When ever I bring up this topic with people they normally dismiss it out of hand and make comments like "what would a kid in the 3rd world want a laptop for?, what a waste of money". However when you say "what if using the laptop they could access every book ever written in the entire world, would that be useful?" that shuts them up.
MikeS on 11/17/2006 at 11:08 AM
3
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Extra/The100DollarLaptop.aspx
eas on 11/20/2006 at 3:58 PM
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1) How much maintenance are they actually going to need?
2) Why can't the most proficient students take on a support roll (perhaps getting paid a little something for their trouble)?
The point about mindshare is an interesting one, generally people who complain that some new approach distracts from some other approach always pre-suppose that the approach that is loosing mindshare is a better solution to the problem.
People tend to see the world in terms of things they understand, so if you ask a librarian the best way to provide widespread access to information in underserved populations, they'll probably incorporate technology, but they'll put it in a library. Similarly, if you ask a teacher the best way to educate children in underserved communities, they'll probably start with a something that would be familiar to anyone who went to school in the 20th century in what used to be called "the first world."
Are either of these the best approach? I'm not sure they are (given how poorly traditional schools are doing in the US), and given how existing libraries are often failing to capture mindshare in the communities they serve when it comes time to approve a new levy.
Does a $100 laptop do a better job of solving these problems? Surely not on its own, but it could be part of a solution that can bring information and the education required to use it to undeserved populations. It is definitely worth mindshare to consider and explore new approaches.
manohar on 01/03/2007 at 1:41 AM
1
targetted by OLPC (Libya, Egypt, Nigeria, Thailand, ...).
For more questions and my views on the OLPC,
see http://simpact-india.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_simpact-india_archive.html
The positive effect of the OLPC is that governments, companies and non-profits around the world have been forced to confront the issue of
technology and education.