[lug] One laptop per child

[Nate Duehr]

dio2002 at indra.com wrote:

> Technology that withstands an honest challenge is stronger for enaging in
> the process.

[Choke on coffee, gag...]

I can think of plenty of bad technologies out there that have withstood 
many challenges from better ones, where the better ones lost because of 
the status quo.

To try to back up in history far enough to give a good example without 
picking a modern controversial one, the story of the Tucker automobile 
might be far enough back.  Cadillacs and other high-end brands now have 
steerable headlights...

You're saying that the technology that stands -- even if it's worse than 
the challenger -- is made better by people's general mass ignorance?

What a horrible phrase, mostly because it might actually be true.  We 
all know "first to market" almost always trumps "best to market".

Your attempt to clean it up with the word "honest" simply doesn't work 
in real life -- what's an "honest" challenge?  Has there ever been one?

As far as the laptop project goes...

People look after their own best interests.  Period.  If these guys feel 
better, wake up happy, and generally have shinier hair and gleaming 
white teeth because they're shipping laptops to the third world, more 
power to 'em.

They won't fix the real root-cause problems of many poverty stricken 
places, because they are related to the pro-creation instinct hard-coded 
into our DNA.

That instinct (and many others - selfish hunter/gatherer instincts we 
base our entire society off of) rarely serve us well anymore, but 
haven't disappeared from our genetic makeup, yet.

They may not be gone from our genetic code soon enough to keep us from 
killing our species or our planet.  Certainly not soon enough to save 
the next few generations from ourselves.

So let people ship kids laptops or find people find clean water, or 
whatever... none of them will address the root-cause problems, inherent 
inside us.  Let them do it because it makes them feel better about 
themselves.

There's a very real chance that in order to build these cheap laptops, 
they're enslaving a whole new group of people to build them, while 
attempting to help others out of poverty.  Just moving the pain around.

How's that for deep?

Nate