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Negroponte: Rwanda Kid’s First Word is: Google
This morning on CNN, Nicholas Negroponte was a guest demonstrating the One Laptop Per Child laptop. During the demonstration, the anchor asked Nicholas about how the kids in Rwanda have embraced the laptop during the test. He noted that the laptop has been very well received, it can network with other laptops in the area, each one can hold 100 ebooks and they can share them creating a never-ending supply of books.
The anchor then asked about Internet access and Nicholas replied by saying that this allows kids to access almost anything. He then concluded with noting the following: "Many of the young kids in Rwanda using the laptop - their first word is Google."
Wow.
(I am trying to find this video, unfortunately I was not able to capture it from the hotel.)
A) I simply don’t believe what he’s saying. He made it up. Kids are neither reading, nor requesting Internet access, before they ask for food or someone to get the flies out of their eyes.
B) Negroponte is a failure. No human recharging. Twice the price. Late. 30x fewer initial orders than expected. But he still seems to get the same treatment, the same fawning, as if he did actually do what he claimed he would do.
This is not a comment on your coverage. Yours is probably the only tech news blog I can bear to — and dare I say it, enjoy — to read anymore. It’s just a pet peeve, this guy’s entire idea came from letting Cambodians use his laptop– and they used it as a light bulb.
These people need the basic infrastructure of civilization. Not a laptop. They need clean water. They need not to be killed. They need private property.
The hottest laptop in the world is not going to keep a kid from getting dysentery or rickets. In order to grab the brass ring of technology, they need the food to develop and to actually live long enough to move into a tech career.
So Nicholas Negroponte and his self-congratulatory and made-up stories, well, I guess it’s clear I’m not a fan.
One note, you’ll want to delete the latest comment on your http://www.centernetworks.com/job-board-launch story. He’s got a particularly distasteful take on the matter :)
Thanks Morgan! - cleaned the spam - trust me, I spend a LOT of time cleaning spam every day. It sucks.
Ok Morgan. Let’s see your contributions to society. At least this guy is trying to do something rather than just saying “this is what they need”.
Not everybody in the third world is starving to death or dying of dysentry. Some are struggling along with life, but with no prospect of a way out. A learning tool such as a computer can help with that.
Your attitude indicates a complete lack of actual contact or experience with this kind of people. Nothing more. Maybe you’ve been to Nigeria, maybe you saw one poor district of Lagos from your taxicab window on the way to the airport, and that’s where you draw all of this “insight” from. Perhaps you haven’t even done that much. Perhaps you’re drawing your ideas from a certain other, much more local source, such as your backside.
I’ve met plenty of third world kids who *weren’t* desperately searching for clean water, but who *were* living in crappy shacks in shanty towns, with really basic educations, who now stand to gain a lot from a state-supplied computer.
And guess what? They won’t have to brush “flies out of their eyes” to see the screen, you goddamn bigot.
That’s exactly the attitude that I’m talking about. Rewarding intention over results is exactly where guys like Negroponte come from.
Do you understand that he’s not a volunteer? That this is not his business, not his money on the line? That the deals to sell this machine are to government officials that are not starving, because selling to the people at any price would be useless?
I don’t consider that trying, nor a positive achievement. Any individual, doing any level of voluntary commerce, is doing more for the world than Nicholas Negroponte.
As for myself, I support church missions groups to Uganda. Value-for-money, I’ll put that up against Negroponte any day. Any idea how many millions or billions of dollars he’s burned through, as compared to the actual improvement on the ground? With that much money being used, ‘trying’ is not a valid excuse. You have a responsibility to produce the results you claim.
I wonder if you’re an employer? Because I’d love to say I’ll be in to work from 8-5, show up the only half the days and produce less than half the value, and still get credit for at least ‘trying’.
The thing is: this project has the capacity to help solve some of these issues. It may very well give the kids the educational capacity to be able to help solve some of these issues, either by opening up economic prospects, or by giving kids the information needed to directly deal with these issues. They can learn about clean water and, more importantly, where it may come from.
These were my first thoughts as well after reading that ignorant reply. I don’t buy the whole, “Their first word is ‘Google’” bit, but I certainly approve of the OLPC program. Yes, it came in over budget, and thanks to Intel’s decision to put out a competing product, demand is lower than hoped for. That doesn’t make the program any less beneficial.
Agreed, Morgan is making a pretty radical stereotype. The better tools they have for education, the better able they are to create a larger middle class that can overcome the poverty that is prevalent.
What better way to take a region out of the third world by creating resources, and that is exactly what computers create. Don’t underestimate the power of the information age.
Your subtle presentation aside, you can believe what you want of me. A computer is not private property, and a computer is not safety, and a computer is not freedom.
In fact, I have not been to Africa at all. I have spent time in the third-world, and I have started businesses there. But the Negroponte story was about Rwanda, and dysentery outbreaks, in my opinion, are more damaging there than a laptop is useful.
http://www.infoplease.com/cig/dangerous-diseases-epidemics/epidemic-dysentery.html
Malaria deaths are another issue. I’m talking statistics, I’m not talking about the anecdotal evidence Negroponte claims.
Personally, if you want to throw names around, I find it far more bigoted to think these are lesser people that need our pity and our hands and our help to be lifted up. I think they’re capable of it themselves. What they need is to be free. They need to not be interfered with, they need to be able to use DDT like we got to to eradicate malaria. They need to be able to burn coal until they can get enough industry to burn it cleanly.
Those are things that are within themselves. They are people with the same abilities as anyone, and they are crippled by false charity and bad government and global regulations. Western grain shipments put their farmers out of business, western clothes shipments their tailors. Further, they keep despots in power.
The bottom line is, people need to be responsible for the results and effects of their actions, not of their intentions. That is my underlying problem with Nicholas Negroponte.
My Lord, what criteria do you use to measure benefit? Let’s recap your post, shall we?
-Over budget (2x)
-Lower demand (30x)
“That doesn’t make the program any less beneficial.”
If that’s the case, we could’ve gone in together on a single machine for a single person, and it would have been no less beneficial. Again, exactly the problem. No criteria, just feelings. No results, just intentions. The word, ‘benefit’ has a meaning– try using it correctly. As does the word ‘bigot’. Get a grip on reality, and the language.
And by the way, you’re leaving out:
-Less functionality
Listen– you want to gloss over a MILLION dead every year in Africa as a stereotype, you go ahead. 100,000 laptops might just solve that for them, maybe they can turn the screens into bug zappers.
This has nothing to do with stereotypes. This has to do with a human holocaust. A MILLION or more every year!
I’m talking about priorities. I am talking about results. I am talking about not fawning over a guy that likes to think he’s saving the world, when what he’s claimed is neither important, nor coming to fruition, nor a good value for real money that could help save real lives.
If that’s a stereotype, and you’ve got the proof, ante up. Or else just call me a bigot.
Morgan:
Yes, these kids are dealing with genocide, lack of food, etc. How does this mean nobody should be putting effort into their education?
Are you saying our efforts would be better focused on dealing with all of the problems that are already firmly entrenched with a country’s (armed) adults than with the poor education and lack of alternatives for its children (i.e. future adults)?
You mention rickets as one of the problems that should receive attention before laptops. Considering most of your arguments are belief-based:
Do you believe that the average Rwandan charged with keeping kids healthy is up-to-date on the latest medical findings on rickets treatment and prevention, or even the fact that exposure to sunlight can help?
Do you believe that the average Rwandan community even knows what foods will help cut down on rickets if they’re available?
Giving computer hardware to people that shouldn’t have it in the first place is extremely dangerous.
Hacking and phising from africa is going increase sharply, not to mention competition in the workplace…..and computer crime….is gonna skyrocket…
Once again, I’m not saying education is not important. What I am saying has nothing to do with a particular disease:
I am saying almost any disease, or infrastructure, would be a better priority to use billions of dollars for than laptops and the self-aggrandizement of one man.
There are competing technologies as well– books maybe? They don’t need the electrical infrastructure that the OLPC does, now that it has no human charging.
All of that doesn’t matter anyway. The only thing that matters is that when money that is spent on the betterment of a people, the people managing that money have a responsibility to the results.
I’m happy to revisit this issue months or years down the road. Let’s note the amount of money spent on this guy’s ego, and let’s see how the project transforms the landscape of Africa.
And yes, even Rwandans do know what to eat to keep themselves relatively disease free and alive. They are sentient just like us.
I think they should have computers, the moment a computer becomes a priority for them based on their budget. That’s what’s so interesting about the whole OLPC project. A huge pack of know-it-all people telling these silly Africans what they need. In fact, the OLPC crew know, so much better than the Africans themselves, what Africans need, that there’s no need to ask them. Just sell to the government instead.
On one point you’re right. Most of these laptops, having gone through the government, once the PR blitz is off, will end up in the hands of the government’s people, not the people intended. And I doubt those are the people that ’should’ have them.
But in general a person is a person is a person, and I’d love to see that continent lit up with people on the Internet.
I’m out on this article, I’ve probably not enunciated my position well enough, and I doubt that any of us are bigots or intend ill for any third-world group. I just have a particular distaste for this project and its head. I believe he’s in it for himself, and I just wish he’d be called to the carpet more about the project’s shortcomings. I could be 100% wrong in the long-run, and I suppose we’ll all do what we believe is best to help.
Take care to all.
I -on the other hand- would not support any church’s “proselytizing expedition”. It’s a well documented fact that apart from wars, famine and disease, one of the prominent reasons why sub-Saharan African can’t get out of the mud is the so called “foreign aid”, it competes with the local producers, closing them down, in both food, clothing and clean water. There is no business incentive and people should have works to survive and for that there must be a working economy, the food and the clothes you sent “disheartens” their economy from rising. Better give them the tools to become competitive and then you won’t understand how fast they’ll solve their own problems, sth that philanthropists failed to do there for more than a half a century.
For an added bonus, let it be know that Africa was well and breathing 100 years ago and prior to that, from the time we started to be overly excessive over their savior they plummeted to the levels of poverty and misery they are today.
“There are competing technologies as well– books maybe? They don’t need the electrical infrastructure that the OLPC does, now that it has no human charging.”
Right. There are some things that real-life books have over laptops. But the problem with physical books is that they need to be printed and shipped. With laptops these costs disappear.
“And yes, even Rwandans do know what to eat to keep themselves relatively disease free and alive. They are sentient just like us.”
If all sentient beings know the effects the things they eat can have on their health, why does the United States government require that most pre-packaged foods list nutrition facts?
Since I’ve worked with the XO and spoken to many of the people involved in the project, I think I can have a decent say in this discussion.
In regards to the first post, it’s true that there are children in the world who impoverished and hungry, but if you take the child population of the world, that number is relatively small. The same goes for war-torn countries. And there are other people working on those problems.
What’s special about the OLPC project is that it has the potential to solve these problems through another avenue: education. Much of the criticism of this project comes out of fear of what children (as well as adults) in other countries will have the ability to do. And this is mostly because there has never been a project this radical.
In terms of who actually will get the laptops, you should notice that these machines are mobile, meaning that they are meant to be brought home with the children. Without doubt, parents are going to use these machines as well.
And as far as the hardware goes, the XO can be powered a number of ways and requires neither Internet or electricity infrastructure.
Like Nicholas said, it’s an education project. And the OLPC is the medium for that education. It’s a turing machine that will help spread knowledge, which in my opinion is one of the most noble of philanthropic pursuits.
First, my only “experience” with third-world countries is talking with American visitors.
While it is certainly true that there are places that need food and other necessities first, once they have those necessities, the people in those regions are stuck there. The education system doesn’t exist to create industries, and industries don’t exist to create revenue, and the revenue doesn’t exist to create education. There are three missing pieces here. Let’s look at all three:
Money: Giving away free money rarely helps. With the widespread corruption in the third world, little to none of the money would actually reach its intended targets. Yet we still try. There are many foreign aid programs that aim to give millions of dollars to third-world countries. They do very little good overall.
Industry: Just landing a company in a small African town will do no good. It gives the locals jobs, but without training they can’t produce anything of value. Yet we try this, too. There is a project, called the Full Belly Project, that seeks to simultaneously create a food source and an industry, through the use of a human-powered nut sheller. At first, it provides a simple way of increasing the food supply without much training. Once the locals are fed, excess nuts can be sold off, providing stable income for the area.
Education: While the nut sheller is great, it is only a single industry. There is no chance for expansion. No new industries can be spawned off of it. No improvements can be made (without engineering knowledge) and there is no change in the long-term condition of the local people. Education is the way to fix this. Printed books only contain a limited amount of knowledge. Once you learn that information, it never changes. Computers, when networked, can supply a limitless amount of knowledge. Most importantly, they allow the users to actively seek out knowledge, rather than have it dropped on them, as happens in church missions and volunteer organizations. Curiosity is rewarded with information. With a lightweight framework for education, the possibilities for change open wide.
A few more points:
* Malaria is a common problem in Ghana (where my girlfriend visited for a year in high school, and will be returning next year). There, they accept malaria as commonplace. If you get sick, it is accepted that you may not survive. While we see the statistics and think they’re terrible, we don’t realize that that’s just life. As a side note, there is an attachment in development to turn the XO into a portable disease tester.
* Elsewhere (Zambia, where my girlfriend’s cousin visited as part of an educational volunteer group) a major health problem is simply misinformation. The local church sponsors campaigns spreading completely false claims (try telling an American teenager that sex before marriage will immediately kill you). More educational resources are the best way to fix this.
As for the OLPC project itself, I will echo what others have said: What have you done? I personally have done very little, and I am aware of this. It is good that Negroponte is actually doing something. It is late and higher than the $100 that was hoped for, but I have seen few projects that come in on time and cost less than expected.
Being a computer scientist myself, I can tell you that there is nothing I see in the XO laptop designed to make a profit. Quite the contrary, its hardware is comparable (and in many ways, superior) to the $900 laptop I’m using at this moment. That’s not even counting the structural integrity of the system. I’ve had to have this laptop (a Thinkpad R60) repaired twice already. The XOs are designed to withstand much higher stress than this thing is.
In summary, to outright ignore the benefit of the project, citing only its flaws, helps nobody. Instead, we should do what we can to rationally consider what makes conditions in the third world as they are, and attempt to improve them by putting our aid where it helps the most: a brighter future.
From my first-hand experiences with Negroponte at MIT, I must accept the fact that he loves to exaggerate. If you don’t take everything he says literally, then he’s an OK guy. Stubborn and not willing to admit to his own errors are his trademark.
Sorry about the double-post.
why are north americans the only ones able to participate in the give one get one program?
I suspect it’s legal issues. It’s a pain to do overseas commerce, both legally and logistically.
Legal issues include exchange rates (North America has very few currencies compared to the rest of the world), trade restrictions (making sure you don’t let anything get into the “wrong hands”), and the normal business trouble (What if they don’t pay? Or the laptop gets lost in shipping?).
Logistically, there’s the hassle of local economies (what’s worth a week’s pay here is a year’s pay elsewhere, and people will complain if you don’t pay attention to that), shipping (including costs), and the joy of languages (no extra comment here).
why do you have to be so ignorant?
What flies?
@morgan
have a little optimism, will ya?
Social change starts with small holes in the fabric called “what’s wrong”… then bigger holes develop and before you know it you have social change.
So lighten up and stop thinking in absolutes, as there is no absolute solution to changing the world. It’s one step at a time.
D
The thread of the comments reminds me a lot of the principles at issue in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. As a South African I am everyday confronted with both first world and third world circumstances, in the same town, same neighbourhood.
There is a lot to be said for all of the arguments for and against as made by everyone so it will be pointless repeating them.
What I want to say is this: I can see the point which Morgan is trying to emphasize, I see everyday in South Africa the sad results of an incompetent government that uses the media to spread their propaganda and lies about democracy and a rainbow nation while in real economic terms more than half of South Africans is half as poor and living under the $1 a day standard for poverty as they were before these insincere frauds took over.
The ANC regime and it’s latching on to Mandela charisma is wearing thin and the world is laughing at all the shenenigans; from a Minister of Health prescribing garlic and beetroot as a cure for AIDS to the multibillion dollar weapons scandal where R50 billion South African rand is spent on lining the pockets of corrupt politicians and their buddies in the big MNC’s who get the contracts
The police commissioner is a suspected friend of organised crime bosses and people suspected of assasinating a mine magnate recently
The president fires those who have sense and reason and try to do the right thing and speak up against abuse, curruption and incompetence
The black people in the country act as if they have the exclusive moral right to claim having been treated badly in the past
Everything is reduced to the lowest common denominator and mediocrity has become the new standard of excellence, all the stupid and tasteless crap gets aired and supported and promoted
Those who try to work to do things properly, openly, decently and constructively are ignored and bad-mouthed and called racist and fascist, just so the “mob” “community” “people” can claim rights and privileges and no one has to work or do anything because it is just provided for nothing because we have been treated so bad in the past
I really fear for this continent, there does not seem to be the kind of people in charge who can make good decisions that will benefit the people of the country as a whole and not just a few connected politicians and their networks of hangers-on
And I am not a white racist, I am a mixed race coloured person who have seen his community destroyed in the Western Cape by people who have a vested interest in suppressing to the world the fact that the descendants of the indigenous San peoples of Southern Africa are the legitimate claimants to rights and privileges before they are overswarmed and smothered out of existence.