OLPC Cost Rises To $188 Per Laptop

Lex Spoon lex at lexspoon.org
Sun Sep 23 11:14:52 UTC 2007


Blake <blake at kingdomrpg.com> writes:
> On Sun, 16 Sep 2007 06:24:38 -0700, Sebastian Sastre
> <ssastre at seaswork.com> wrote:
> 
> > You'll excuse me but I'm on the position of thinking that is
> > prioritary  to develop brains more than stomachs. And OLPC hepls
> > feed brains.
> 
> You can't develop your brain on an empty stomach. (Not the starvation
> degree of empty.)
> 
> But the line of thought--repeated =every=single=time= the OLPC is
> mentioned on Slashdot--shows how poorly we think of grand schemes to
> improve the world. Every time the starvation issue is raised on
> Slashdot,  there's a rebuttal of how there are many parts of the world
> where  starvation isn't widespread and yet the educational
> infrastructure is  poor. This rebuttal often comes from someone in
> that part of the world.


Yes, but the root cause of starvation is a poverty of knowledge.  Food
aid helps with immediate crises, but if they are to be prevented in
the future, the populace needs to know what is going on.

Further, even leaving aside the possibility of big changes in the
local society, better information helps in more immediate ways.  If a
person checks out wikipedia and learns about germs, their life will
get much better.


Lex





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