One Laptop Per Child
2007 September 24
Buy one, get one. Yes, a laptop. The XO laptop is designed to withstand the harsh conditions of rural village life, while boosting education among the world’s poor.
I wonder if this is a good idea? Sure, boosting education is great, but social disruption created by one child having a computer in a remote village could be immense. What do you think?
Read the Times article
The goal is for them to issue them en mass to cities, villages, and countries. So it won’t just be one child in a village it will be all the children in that village. Yes it might disrupt things a bit to begin with, but the potential is pretty large.
i know this sounds overly simple, but don’t you think technology has the potential to both improve and disrupt a society no matter what economic level even if the technology is distributed in mass?
cool post, Jonathan. The husband of one of my labmates works for this MIT-related organization (we’ve gotten to see/play with early models months ago:))
Yes, both but too often the impact of technology on tribal societies is not properly evaluated. African tribes have been disrupted by the introduction of the tractor. Women were trained while men were at the bars. the men returned with authority in hand banning women from the tractors. they tried to use them without the womens help and the ended up rusting. i can think of worse examples….
sara, any insight on how they will implement the laptops? what did you think of them?
I think they’re pretty spiffy and they’re a pretty green color:) I’ll ask Madeleine about their implementation . . .