The Failure of the $100 Laptop?

RobertinXinyang writes "MSN's MoneyCentral has an article on the possibility that the $100 laptop project fails to meet its goals, and the potential of the project to harm people in developing nations. The article goes on to liken the project to 'good-natured showboating', and cites the unreality of a family using the glow from the laptop's screen as the only source of light in their hut. Perhaps there are better things to do with our time and money in developing nations?" From the article: "The entire idea may be misguided and counterproductive. At least that's what Stanford journalism lecturer an Africa watcher G. Pascal Zachary thinks. The basic argument is that with $100 you could almost feed a village for a year, so why waste that sum on a laptop? What are they thinking? The fact that these people need electricity more than they need a laptop is only part of the problem. The real problem is lost mind share. The people are harmed because these sorts of schemes are sopping up mind-share time of the people who might be doing something actually useful."

Disagree with a point

The people are harmed because these sorts of schemes are sopping up mind-share time of the people who might be doing something actually useful.

Computer engineers and software developers are just that - they can create software and build computers.
They aren't molecular biologists or doctors or anything like that, so its not taking the mindshare from those kind of folks.

Re:Disagree with a point

Computer engineers and software developers are just that - they can create software and build computers. They aren't molecular biologists or doctors or anything like that, so its not taking the mindshare from those kind of folks.

Mod parent up

I previously discussed this topic on an older article about the $100 laptop. Yes, people need a lot of things besides laptops. Imagine the economy in the United States and its trade partners. Pick out all the elements besides money: labor/skill/organization, raw materials, facilities/tools. Now imagine all the money in that economy. We have a lot of money--more money than economic resources. Saying that we could throw more money into food for third world countries doesn't necessarily mean you will get the amount of food you valued your money at. Paying out money to have workers and facilities that are only able to produce computers and software gives third world countries a little something extra. Why? Because those economic resources could not have produced food, so they would otherwise be an untapped outlet. If all the money going into a project like that went into sending food over, you'd probably choke the food supply and incredibly diminish the value of the money you spent on it.

Computers suck

The people are harmed because these sorts of schemes are sopping up mind-share time of the people who might be doing something actually useful.

So true. I should've never gotten a computer; I might have accomplished something in my life.

Sure

MSN's MoneyCentral has an article on the possibility that the $100 laptop project fails to meet its goals

      Considering that this $100 laptop does not come bundled with a Microsoft OS, we can really expect impartial reporting from MSN.

a family using the glow from the laptop's screen as the only source of light in their hut.

      I wonder if this writer has ever been to the third world. This is simply disgusting. Yes sure, everyone in Africa still lives in huts, and Eskimos live in igloos, etc. Careful, you may be eaten by cannibals while you're out there, too! While there still are some few extremely poor indiginous communities who lack even electricity, I doubt they would have any use for a laptop - even as a source of light.

Re:Sure

So true! People only think of Africa and the Third World as if over there everyone is so poor they're starving to death, or they're fighting and killing eachother. This is the picture that's in the news. But this is only a small part of the truth. Many people in Africa have a good life, although maybe primitive in our eyes if they don't have proper roads and cable tv and microwaves and cell phones. But if they have a house, a proper meal, clean water and electricity, they have a good basis. Small businesses, students, schools, they all can profit from these laptops, whether they cost $100 or $150. So this laptop is not meant for homeless kids who sell it immediately for some food or glue, but it is a way of introducing kids and adults who have a basic standard of living with new technology that can really help them.

Re:Sure

Yeah, it's a pretty dumb argument. I've been to East Africa a few times in the last couple of years (Kenya & Tanzania), and was quite surprised at how popular mobile phones are over there. In many areas they never got full wired infrastructure, so skipped a generation and went wireless. Anyway, the point is there's a large market for mobiles there, despite the fact that it costs a sizable chunk of their income. If mobiles can succeed, a sub-$100 notebook should find a market. The argument that the money could be better spent on relieving poverty could surely be applied to any country with a population under the poverty line.

Re:Sure

Nigeria is a typical example of skipping a generation - due partly to the cost of laying cable, partly to the incompetence of the public telco that until recently had a monopoly, Nigeria has somewhere between one and two million landlines. But they now have about 20 million cellphones. The landlines were rolled out over decades, while the cellphones almost all came within the last 4-5 years.

Fact is, putting up cellphone towers to cover the urban areas is very cheap and provides high returns, while laying cable cost ridiculous amounts of money. Landlines are cheap in industrialized countries only because the telco's have had a hundred years to build their infrastructure and generate revenue to recoup their investments

Re:Sure

I think there is still a large a degree of colonial thinking left around, just under the surface, both in the subdued racism in Western societies (they do not deserve/will never understand laptops) but also in the 'victim mentality' of some ex-colonial states.

Some people have a dislike to the laptop project for two reasons:

1. FUD - They have not actually bothered to consider how revolutionary the laptop is, i.e. redesigning all the hardware, software and content.
For these people, salvation can only come through becoming a fat out-of-shape office worker, typing in Word using a crumb covered keyboard.

2. Paternalism - The laptop project is based on the idea that smart but poor kids can learn, create and program, for themselves.
This conflicts with embedded western psychological beliefs about how you need a nice western strong man/organistion/society (i.e. 'Hilter') to go and sort those foreigners out.

Re:Sure

Considering that this $100 laptop does not come bundled with a Microsoft OS, we can really expect impartial reporting from MSN.

Yeah, and I can confirm that. I just got back from other reality. Up there OLPC is shipping with Windows and Gates just made a statement, where he said:

"Yes, we know the problem with people lacking 100$, but just imagine how these kids will now have opportunity to achieve something what they wouldn't be otherwise. Computers were just dreams for those kids and now they just became reality which could potentially help them to secure their future.

We at Microsoft were working hard to achieve this goal to help those kids... [bunch of blahblah how MS worked hard on that project, so I simply cut it out]

This was a real win for us, because we helped world to understand that with commercial software there is opportunity for everyone to secure its future, intellectual property and other basic resources. This just shows that world is starting to understand that "Free Software" is nothing but promoting hunger to the future. We made sure to let them know that there is no payment if you do work for free. And they understood that fact almost without any questions.

For my final word, I have to say thanks to [bunch of other blahblah about IP awareness and companies/governments that respect it]. This is one project to secure better future to the world and ease future relations between nations."

MSN reports...

MSN's MoneyCentral has an article on the possibility that the $100 laptop project fails to meet its goals

Did they miss that running Vista was not one of the goals?

Africa?

Look at the list of countries that have expressed an interest so far:

        * Brazil
        * Thailand
        * Egypt
        * United States (specifically the states of Massachusetts and Maine)
        * Cambodia
        * Dominican Republic
        * Costa Rica
        * Tunisia
        * Argentina
        * Venezuela
        * Nigeria
        * Libya

Firstly, the minority are african, secondly most of them have basic housing and a working power infrastructure. This laptop idea is something that countries come in on when they want to improve education. It is not, and never has been, an alternative to buying food.

Re:Africa?

Indeed, it seems like a small minority are first world (USA as the most obvious example), most are second world and a very small minority, if any (depending on how you define these things) are third world.

These were never meant for people who are so poor they can't get water; these are for people who have established these and now want to get in on the big money act... I'm a little saddened that people would make these FUD claims against a good project based on either a lie or a lack of understanding. Sure there might be some criticisms you could legitimately level against it (like not thinking that computers help education, or the fear of cracking leading to massive bot nets) and then we could discuss them... but this is just terrible.

Re:Africa?

The term "second world" refers to states aligned with the Soviet Union, not with countries with economies between "third world" and "first world" countries.

Failure is the stepping ladder to success

Not everyone can become a success by marketshare and hype alone, and then never deliver the actual promised products. For most of us, failure is just another step towards success. So even if this $100 laptop becomes a failure, it doesn't matter. More exposure towards the poorer countries, more exposure that the Western countries take more money OUT of such countries, than is going in, more exposure to corrupt leaders which makes any sudden fix unattainable, and lots and lots learned from the project, which can result in even cheaper laptops with higher specs.

It's too easy to criticize when someone does good. That to actually do good in this world, you have to fight, and fight, and fight, and fight. And we get stronger every day.

Nothing to see here

This article was reported and written by John C. Dvorak for MarketWatch.

What bullshit!

I've been working in Africa for the last three years for several education development projects (Nigeria and now Kenya). I think the concept of the $100 computer is the best thing since the cell phone or wind-up radio.

OFCOURSE the problem with any project that uses things like computers/radios/video ect... is that its hard to make these programs sustainable. Typical projects have funding for 3-5 years in which time they distribute thousands of the things and then bam! one day the money runs out, the project ends, ... and then what? That is a problem with ALL development projects. The trick is to build sustainability.

Young people in a poor village in Africa are no different than anywhere else, and if you give them access to a networked computer with access to internet the possibilities are endless.

There are many successful projects implementing cell phones to help farmers get better prices for their crops. There are radio shows that teach people about HIV with call in shows using text messaging. The possibilities are endless. The next step is to integrate computers and internet into the matrix.

The truth is, you could probably buy a lot of flour for a single village for $100 for a year-- but once they have eaten it, they will still be hungry. Give a village a cheap device such as the $100 laptop and access to a network, the possibilities to exchange knowledge, generate ideas, and problem solve for THEMSELVES is limitless. This is how you create sustainability. Give them the tools and ideas, the rest can follow.

give a fish...

fed for a day, teach to fish ...

The goal is not to give kids toys. It's to give them the means to explore education.

Obviously "feeding a village" isn't solving the problem, it's just keeping uneducated poor masses alive.

I'd rather educate them so they can help themselves.

Tom

feed a village - goodness

"The basic argument is that with $100 you could almost feed a village for a year"

Ok I am from India so $100 = 4500 Rs, now I would be really delighted to learn how one can feed a village for a year with that much of money. No,I really would like to know...considering the fact that villages in developing countries are genrally big( I can speak for India here, I spend half of my childhood in the most backward region of India, :) )

I really appreciate intelligence of Mr.John C. Dvorak, but wait...

Foreign People harldy get developing countries

I am brazilian. As such, I've seen that most foreign people simply don't understand the socio-economics of developing countries.

An anedoctal evidence: I have some relatives in Italy, and I visited there once or twice. They live in the most developed and well-fared north, somewhere near Brescia, not too far from Milano. Brescia itself has some 200k habitants, and the city they lived in should have some 20-30k. One night, after showing me around, they asked me (quite seriously) if I was distressed from the "big cities", seeing so many people and cars and so on. I looked back at them nonplused, I suppose. I grew up in Sao Paulo, go look in wikipedia how big is that. But I understand that people from Europe and US mostly believe that all Brazilians live either in huts around the Amazon forest or in very poor "favelas" around Rio de Janeiro, where they can conveniently get dressed up (or down?) for Carnaval. Well, I am not trying to say there is a large percentage of the population in Brazil and other developing countries that is indeed very poor and has not access to technology (a recent survey says around 40% of brazilians never used a computer, and 60% never entered "the Internets"). But most people here have some kind of access to school, however poor and lacking resources they might be, and they are not naive helpless savages as you might guess. People need opportunities to grow. Sending US$100 worth of food to poor people might do some well to those that indeed do not have enough to eat, and I'd urge responsible people to donate (or even better, get engaged in) reliable organizations that do that task. But giving away food won't put the poor people around here, India or Africa in the right way, where they can build a self-sustainable industry and technology to compete with today developed countries. So, either some people are simply ignorant or naive enough to understand this, or perhaps they are beginning to get worried that someday the countries that supply food and raw materials to them today at bargain prices won't be there anymore.

Squeak in Extremadura

From the article: "And in today's world the real value of a computer is it being networked," says Zachary. "Finding a network in the poor areas is either impossible or very expensive." Obviously, the writer missed the point that these laptops are capable of forming wireless mesh networks in the classroom. Also, Squeak is being bundled with OLPC. See http://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/2006/11/17/squea k-in-extremadura/ [wordpress.com] for a nice video about what is already being done with Spanish school children.

Poor XOR Rich

The MSN article is completely correct. Everyone knows that people are either poor, and thus live in mud huts with only a single goat to keep them company; or they are rich, in which case they can afford to buy as many computers as they can fit inside their trendy apartments.

The creators of the $100 laptop are under the delusion that wealth is not a binary condition. For some strange reason, they seem to think that there are poor people in this world that have enough money to feed themselves and buy essentials, but not enough money or infrastructure to support buying the latest Pentium from Dell. This is clearly ridiculous, and I applaud MSN Money for reminding us that the world really is black and white (no pun intended, ahem).

The flaw in his thinking

A flaw in his thinking is to assume that there is a fixed amount of help available. Another flaw is to assume that the laptop actually costs money. If used as an electronic book, then it substitutes for hundreds of dollars worth of books (over the course of its lifetime). Another flaw is to suggest that all expenditures are the same, blurring the difference between spending for investment and spending for consumption.

Because they can't *possibly* want technology...

Nigeria is one of a small minority of African countries on the list of countries that have expressed interest. While Nigeria is certainly poor - a lot of people live on next to nothing - it is not a country with much starvation. Food isn't the first priority. It's got a GDP of $1400 - low, but far above the poorest countries. It's also got a GDP growth rate of 6.9% - far above most first world countries these days (the US recently was at around 3.2%, for example)

Nigeria is also a country with reasonable cashflow - they're one of the largest oil exporters in the world. They also recently finished paying off $10 billions in loans and negotiated debt relief for another $18 billion. The $10 billions were paid off with increases in their oil revenues thanks to the rising oil price, and was paid off as a requisite for the $18 billion in relief. So thanks to the oil price they've got billions more tax revenues AND they've massively cut their interest rate payments.

They are paying for these machines themselves because they think it is useful to improve education, and they can afford a million or two with just a month or two worth of the increased revenues.

It is also a tiny investment compared to what Nigerians themselves are spending on cell phones: Currently there are more than 20 million cellphones (population of 130 million). Practically ALL of those have come in the last 4-5 years, and Nigeria has one of the highest cellphone growth rates in the world - miles ahead of the US for instance - and is rapidly catching up to the cellphone penetration in more developed countries.

Re:There's one difference...

How about they give them a free pick-axe and some seeds with every laptop purchase?

That would help, but only if the west would abolish farm subsidies for their own farmers.

Re:The main problem

Like the people here on Slashdot, everybody got opinions, but nobody DOES ANYTHING.

      I dunno. I live here in the third world. I'm a physician. I have passed the US medical licensing exams. I could be in the US, earning over $150,000 a year. Nonetheless here I am in the third world, working twice as hard for about $30k a year. But I feel that I am DOING something. What are YOU doing, exactly?