Thursday, October 18, 2007

"Impacts of Technology (3): MIT - One Laptop per Child?!?"

The MIT has recently developed a program called "One Laptop per Child" (http://laptop.media.mit.edu). Its main goal is to provide every kid of the so-called "developing world" with a portable computer to learn and work on and gain certain knowledge from. What kind of knowledge? Wiki-knowledge.
Initially most people wouldn't object to that idea. It cannot hurt, can it? And hey, maybe it finally helps them to improve their situation, right? Let's be generous, we can afford it. We need more clever kids all over the world for a good future of this planet, don't we?

No offense, guys, really, BUT:
Did it ever occur to you that (ab-)using a whole continents population as lab-rats is not necessarily the best thing to do? Don't get me wrong, I am all for good intentions and helping people to help themselves, but isn't it a bit presumptuous to assume that what is eventually good for us (and even that is still debatable ...) has to be good for the rest of the world, too?

The whole so-called "Third World" can be compared to a human body that is constantly held on our medication, intoxicated via various kinds of different pills. And if one pill doesn't work the way we want it to work, let's try another one, the lab-rat will swallow it anyways - a process that is going on over the last decades, another never-ending story.
Did we ever consider that this body's natural ability to produce the right antibody against whatever illness it suffers from is weakened by the constant injection of our medicine? Did we ever consider that some improvements have to come from within a system itself in order to be truly stable?
It seems to be a neat solution for the American economy to make another continent further dependent on their technology, as it is neat for the pharmaceutical industry to have people depending on medication for a long period of time, but honestly, do we really still see the "white man's burden of good intentions" in this gesture? Do we?

Look into the mirror and think twice about that one, folks!

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