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

[Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten]

Hi David and Nicolas Negroponte,

I think what Tony Fish meant to say was that you should ask these  
questions directly to Nicolas Negroponte to give him a change to reply  
instead of implying/concluding that he doesn't know the answers. It is  
a bit easy to accuse Negroponte of cultural and technological  
imperialism in the relative safety of a mailinglist. My guess is he  
would be perfectly capable of telling you his ideas and be quite  
convincing too. He had to, after all, convince thousands of people and  
politicians of this project.

So here we go: how about it Mr Negroponte? Are you an cultural and  
technological imperialist ignorant of the effects of your actions? If  
not could you take some of your precious time to explain, in a  
sentence or two, to some of the extremely worried people on this list  
that your OLPC project is not the Doomsdaymachine?

Thanks in advance,

Boris





> On Wed, 2 Jan 2008, Tony Fish wrote:
>
>> Knowing Nicholas personally, I suggest you ask rather than offer  
>> opinion.
>> Who was it that said "War is borne out of ignorance"
>
> it's a brief comment, but I find it fascinating. We should not be  
> free to
> criticize one of the largest and most culturally-invasive projects  
> ever
> conceived?
>
> And it is we who are ignorant? How much time has Nicholas spent
> investigating the history of cultural and technological imperialism?  
> How
> much time did he spend reading on these topics *prior* to formulating
> OLPC? I see very few marks of such reading in NN's discourse or in
> that of project supporters.
>
> Whose war, and war on whom and what? I know quite a few who have
> put it in quite a similar way: OLPC is a kind of war *on* many  
> cultures.
>
> Who gets to decide if a project like this is a good idea? How about  
> the
> many countries that have refused OLPC--despite which, NN has  
> persisted in
> forcing the project to move forward?
>
> DG
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