Questioning the $100 laptop project (tentatively).

(WORLD) The One Laptop per Child project is simply amazing—’a potent learning tool created expressly for the world’s poorest children living in its most remote environments’.

Nicholas Negroponte is founder and chairman of the One Laptop per Child non-profit association:

It’s an education project, not a laptop project.

The development of these machines will no doubt increase the educational opportunities for so many young people all over the globe, however, am I the only one asking whether it’s not a case of ‘can’ we do this but more whether we ‘should’?

The potential negative impacts from the project is tackled on their project wiki, however, even they admit to not knowing its true effect on the people, culture and heritage of the nation which buys into the project.

My hesitancy comes from a simple understanding that these little laptops will be internet enabled, therefore offering a window to a world which at best will be confusing, at worst, scary and negative to those who haven’t been socialised with technology and media—where is the (digital/media) literacy programme to assist with this issue? Surely it should be offered with the hardware (like some social-software programme)?

Are we enabling a developing nation to take a big ‘evolutionary-tech leap’ and hoping it will be a case of them just catching up with the rest of the world?

This is not about denying or limiting access, more raising a debate regarding its true impact on the culture, heritage, expectations, youth generation psyche etc.

Then again I can’t wait for the young people I work with come back and tell me about their new friends who they met on myspace, or chatted to over MSN, or watched over on YouTube…

BBC article link: Libyan pupils ‘to have laptops’

[ED NOTE: I understand the controversial nature to question such a project, especially as I see technology and media as tools for empowerment for the youth generation, but something just ain't sitting right with me.]

Author: DK - 11/10/06