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

[Dmitry Strakovsky]

Andreas,

Followed your advice. Signed up for the wiki. Figured I should do  
more reading before I start posting (to avoid RTFM answers :)
Started looking through documentation again.  Found this gem that  
addresses my thought #1 (bring in a Blackwater consultant):

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Guerrilla_Warfare_and_the_OLPC#Military_use

Wow!

POINT: It would be immoral to supply a tool that can be used in this  
way to a conflict zone. Or even: it would be immoral to build this  
tool because it may one day filter to a conflict zone.

COUNTERPOINT: I think this argument can be largely dismissed. An OLPC  
will never directly kill anyone; as a tool, it is more like a  
screwdriver than a gun or even a sledgehammer, with many more  
constructive than destructive uses. By this logic, we would stop  
making screwdrivers.

...and in the meantime we are rolling the computers of the assembly  
line.


Before I jump into any list, wiki, forum situation I try to evaluate  
if this is a community of like-minded people or am I just going to  
waist my breath/time. I am currently of the opinion that I will be  
doing the later. The more I read the more it seems like a soft/ 
hardware project first and an educational project distant second  
(completely contradicting NN of course :)


Why is there such a HUGE rhetorical GAP between iDC list and  
OLPCwiki? In some ways, I think this is a bigger cultural question  
then impact of a piece of hardware on a small-scale society.



On Jan 3, 2008, at 4:38 PM, Andreas Schiffler wrote:

> Dmitry Strakovsky wrote:
>> Maybe all this has already been done. Maybe not.  These types of   
>> ideas however, are not reflected in the documentation on the website.
>>
> It is a Wiki ... you could just hit the Edit button and paste your  
> ideas in. :-)
>
> In fact, may I suggest that someone volunteers to assemble the  
> whole - very engaging I might add - OLPC thread from this mailing  
> list and post it there.
>
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Dmitry (Dima) Strakovsky
www.shiftingplanes.org
Assistant Professor of Intermedia
University of Kentucky