[iDC] One Laptop Per Child - MIT/Negroponte Initiative

[Kimberly De Vries]

I'm waiting until I hear/read field reports before making up my mind on most
of these questions, but I do want to point out that the project has been
developed in the context of MIT's extensive and longstanding tradition of
service:

http://global.mit.edu/development.html

In fact this initiative is one of many carried out and happens to be one of
the geekiest, one that best fits the image of MIT, which may be why it gets
more press than the innovative wheelchair designs (
http://web.mit.edu/mitpsc/news/) or social justice and anti-poverty
initiatives that also come out of MIT's global development programs:
http://web.mit.edu/d-lab/. <http://web.mit.edu/d-lab/>

Best,

Kim

On 10/23/07, David Golumbia <dgolumbia at virginia.edu> wrote:
>
> Some of the recent remarks on OLPC have started to touch on what I find
> especially disturbing about this project, despite its benefits.
>
> The people behind it have, to my knowledge, never been overtly interested
> in issues of developing/"global south" countries, poor people, etc., until
> now. They are not members of NGOs, activists, or social workers/theorists
> who have a goal of improving the radical inequality of our world.
>
> Instead, they are technophiles. They are people who have become convinced
> that the computer is a transformative tool, and from that observation (one
> that is largely not subjected to close criticism and self-examination), they
> have determined that everybody in the world needs a computer. From what
> intellectual basis have they come to this conclusion, other than the sense
> of personal power which the computer provides for them?
>
> Imagine that the tool of which they (and we) were so enamored was another
> one, more familiar to us today: "one television per child"; "one toaster per
> child"; "one typewriter per child"; "one telephone per child." Not only are
> these enthusiasms more or less incomprehensible: they help to disclose the
> ideology that underwrites the OLPC idea: that everyone should become like
> us.
>
> Unfortunately, to those of us who study it carefully, it is clear that our
> contemporary so-called "globalization" includes the destruction, even what
> could be called the "cultural genocide," of the world's diversity of
> languages and cultures that have somehow managed to persist into our present
> day. The OLPC effort fits too neatly into this pattern: it gives members of
> minority and indigenous cultures even more reason to suspect (wrongly) that
> their cultures are "backwards" and so-called "modern" cultures are
> "advanced."
>
> I don't deny that giving a laptop to every child might be fun, and might
> be beneficial in many ways, and I don't in any way want to deny any person
> who wants a computer access to one. But until and unless things like
> OLPC become efforts stemming *from* indigenous and minority culture members,
> rather than from technophiles, and an effort that does not provide dramatic
> incentives for minority and indigenous peoples to sacrifice their languages
> and cultural practices to engage with "the machine," I am forced to view it
> with the deepest suspicion and concern.
>
> DG
>
> --
> David Golumbia
> Assistant Professor
> Media Studies, English, and Linguistics
> University of Virginia
>
>
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