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I prefer the idea of giving new Macs and PCs to kids in the third world. Computers and the internet are supposed to be a Great Equalizer, but that notion cannot

I prefer the idea of giving new Macs and PCs to kids in the third world. Computers and the internet are supposed to be a Great Equalizer, but that notion cannot come to fruition if the access tool provided to poor people is nowhere near as able as the access tool available to rich people. Moreover, we technologists understand the sense of identity taken up by a child who has access to devices that excite the mind and capture the imagination. For me, it was a Commodore 64. Sometimes, people in the first world take satisfaction in the act of helping, but forget that the impact of the help is the main object of importance. If someone were to give your kid an OLPC, you might say "it's better than nothing," but you might feel deep down that "they keep the good stuff for their own kids but they come to our country's kids with the dregs."

Closi 5y ago
This is great in principle, but in reality is probably over-idealistic. Funding is always the issue/constraint with these projects, so it’s not quite as easy as ‘just buying every child in the third world a Mac’ (if they cost three times more than an entry level PC, it’s not clear to me that 1 child with a Mac is better than 3 having entry level laptops). Ideally everyone would have the best equipment, but there is always a trade off given available resources and funds. Furthermore, even if you had the funding to buy every child in the third world a Mac, would it be a good distribution of resources? For instance that’s probably $700 more than an entry level PC, but putting that $700 towards teaching staff for instance rather than a higher-spec laptop might have better learning outcomes.
- totalZero 5y ago
  Your post is basically the logic behind OLPC, and many people share it. However, the logic features two weaknesses. First, inspiration. If you give three children $300 PCs, you may not inspire any of them. Give one lucky kid a Macbook Air, however, and they may feel so special at having something beautiful and unusual that it draws them into a lifetime of working with devices and technology. That kid may grow up to generate more utility for his community than the other three kids combined. Additionally, the presence of a Macbook Air may inspire other children or motivate the parents of those other children. Think of your first experience with the most important activities in your life. Often the first blush was a small encounter that sparked an inextinguishable passion (metaphorically). For a musician, it may be a particular concert. For a pilot, it may be a first passenger flight. For an engineer, it may be a first time dismantling an old radio. I suggest that the more nuanced that first experience, the more substantial its impact on the rest of your life. Second, frustration. A utility function that overvalues quantity over quality is obviously not workable. For every device costing $X we can imagine a device costing $X/k that could be purchased in greater quantity by a factor of k. However, at a certain level of cheapness, devices will frustrate users rather than empowering them. My viewpoint is that the resource constraints are not as tight as they have been drawn to appear. Rather, it's a question of priorities. Governments prioritize other things. The US government spends >$700 billion annually on defense. People prioritize other things, too. Many engineers who live in, say, San Francisco (one of many tech hubs) go on vacation in the third world. They could buy a Mac or PC before every long vacation, tuck it into their suitcase, and spend a day finding a poor family that seems deserving. That act would most likely change one or several lives for the better while costing a small fraction of the giver's annual salary. The resources exist, but we pretend that they cannot be apportioned for certain things while over-apportioning them to other things. I'm a firm believer that when we want to help someone, we have to help them in light of their needs and potential, rather than our own. Children are typically easier to help than adults, because they readily accept assistance as a matter of necessity, and they are less aware of the possibilities of gaming a system designed to help them. The number one challenge to affecting a child's life positively is not their buy-in, it's our own. We have to commit to helping individuals fully and meaningfully, rather than diluting the help down so much that the likelihood of lasting impact diminishes.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    The $125-ish Samsung Chromebook 4 is pretty darn good as an entry-level device. I got one as a throwaway device to not have to carry my heavier MBPro around. Even with that intention, I use (and enjoy) it more than I expected. It surely has way more than 5% the utility of the Mac.
  - Closi 5y ago
    The inspiration a MacBook will give you is great, but it's unlikely to be as important to that child's development as clean water, sanitisation and good nutrition. And because we are talking about resource allocation with fixed funds - it is absolutely a choice between giving a child a $1000 laptop and giving them a $300 laptop and $700 towards clean water, sanitisation and nutrition. And if we just say "do both", then we are just talking about solving world hunger. Sure it's easy to point at the money spent on defence and then infer that solving world hunger will be easy, but again that's a little overly simplistic too (and if it's that easy - you can be the person that solves world hunger once and for all!).
    - totalZero 5y ago
      Both theoretically and practically, your argument about allocating resources falls short of answering the question about whether to provide fewer excellent devices or many substandard devices. As a matter of theory, your argument goes "B is more pressing than A, so we should allocate resources to B rather than A." But you present no comparative advantage between the two versions of solution A. Either we give three $300 computers or one $900 computer. Your argument does not help to make that decision. Clean water is important. But if we are to provide computers, what is the most growth-inducing and impactful way to do so? As a matter of practice, families in the third world tend to prioritize things in ways that make sense to them but may not make sense to an outside observer. For example, I met a family with several children for whom the father had purchased the latest smartphones, but the family home lacked an indoor toilet. Access to internet and social media is a basic social imperative and it ranks as a high priority. If the governments of the US and Canada really wanted to, they could foster growth and advancement in the rest of the Americas. The resources are available. What's lacking is a desire to help, rooted in a sense of friendship or Pan-American kinship. That defense money could be spent on devices, sanitation, and the other things you mention. We choose to spend it on warfare and cool stuff from Raytheon and Lockheed instead. The resources are available, but we spend them on less fruitful pursuits.
morganya 5y ago
But two really significant issues are maintenance and repair - those are, unfortunately, very expensive problems to address!
- totalZero 5y ago
  It seems true to me that the easiest way to maintain a device is to build it well in the first place. This is quite challenging if your primary concern is cost. Most people who have ever purchased a Sony Vaio laptop can probably attest that they got great specs at a reasonable price, but every Sony Vaio laptop that I have purchased ended up with parts (the charger port, the power button, etc) falling off or minor components failing. You probably noticed that in Paraguay at least, the problem you describe has some cultural roots. Disadvantaged communities have at times received free stuff that they either rejected, failed to care for, or altogether destroyed. It may be due to a sense of resentment for having received the gift, or perhaps they lacked sufficient buy-in to understand the market value of the free items. Sometimes, the free stuff does not actually fit the needs of the recipient. And usually, there is a sense of contempt from Paraguayan society at large no matter how the recipients respond (a la "look at these ungrateful paupers who don't dance for joy as we spend resources on them"). Furthermore, in Paraguay a gift given without strings attached is often doubted anyway, because it may be viewed as a means to manipulate the recipient by making them feel indebted. The smooth way to give someone a thing of value in Paraguay is to make them believe that they have somehow earned it due to preexisting factors, or alternatively to state an innocuous and clear expectation for how the gesture will be reciprocated in the future. Anywhere you go, the recipient of a gift values the gift based on his or her own understanding and needs. Look up the construction of houses in Itaguá for residents of the Chacarita for one example. https://www.cronica.com.py/2015/07/23/cartes-les-regalo-una-casa-y-la-rechazaron/ https://www.cronica.com.py/2015/07/23/cartes-les-regalo-una-... I can't find the text right now, but I recall reading about houses built for indigenous folks in the Chaco. When representatives of the organization that had built the structures returned the following year, they saw that the recipients had dismantled the wooden doors and burnt them for warmth during the winter. There's also the factor of theft, and sometimes the stolen items are surprising. The school in Cateura where the famous Recycled Orchestra came to be is one such case. At a certain point in time, they had been gifted many instruments (think Yamaha and Vincent Bach) but someone had broken in at night to uninstall and steal the school's only toilet. There does exist some parts and repair infrastructure in many Latin American countries, as well as a secondary market for devices. There are challenges in finding parts that are neither counterfeit nor stolen, and in my experience the most capable technicians (in terms of tools and knowledge) tend to be located nearer to affluent communities. Traditional devices have a better chance of tapping into that extant marketplace than do purpose-built devices designed intentionally for the economically disadvantaged.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
I feel a little arrogant even proffering an opinion about what the Third World needs, but I would prefer giving books and meals to kids in the Third World. I think it is simply education that is the "Great Equalizer", computers have little to do with it. That was the whole failure of the project in my mind.
- totalZero 5y ago
  You can't dynamically solve a problem without acknowledging your own capacity to identify the problem. In my view arrogance comes in when there is inflexibility or a lack of attention to the problem. If anything, it takes some courage to proffer an opinion about how to really help improve a problematic situation. Books are important. Undeniably, so are meals. A laptop can provide both books and meals in the long term. Speaking for myself, laptops were the most important (physical) tool in my educational and professional development. Nowadays, it's tough to get a first-rate education without a computer...especially in (for example) Latin America, where physical access to informational resources can be challenging but data infrastructure tends to be present wherever you go.

Closi 5y ago

This is great in principle, but in reality is probably over-idealistic. Funding is always the issue/constraint with these projects, so it’s not quite as easy as ‘just buying every child in the third world a Mac’ (if they cost three times more than an entry level PC, it’s not clear to me that 1 child with a Mac is better than 3 having entry level laptops). Ideally everyone would have the best equipment, but there is always a trade off given available resources and funds. Furthermore, even if you had the funding to buy every child in the third world a Mac, would it be a good distribution of resources? For instance that’s probably $700 more than an entry level PC, but putting that $700 towards teaching staff for instance rather than a higher-spec laptop might have better learning outcomes.

totalZero 5y ago
Your post is basically the logic behind OLPC, and many people share it. However, the logic features two weaknesses. First, inspiration. If you give three children $300 PCs, you may not inspire any of them. Give one lucky kid a Macbook Air, however, and they may feel so special at having something beautiful and unusual that it draws them into a lifetime of working with devices and technology. That kid may grow up to generate more utility for his community than the other three kids combined. Additionally, the presence of a Macbook Air may inspire other children or motivate the parents of those other children. Think of your first experience with the most important activities in your life. Often the first blush was a small encounter that sparked an inextinguishable passion (metaphorically). For a musician, it may be a particular concert. For a pilot, it may be a first passenger flight. For an engineer, it may be a first time dismantling an old radio. I suggest that the more nuanced that first experience, the more substantial its impact on the rest of your life. Second, frustration. A utility function that overvalues quantity over quality is obviously not workable. For every device costing $X we can imagine a device costing $X/k that could be purchased in greater quantity by a factor of k. However, at a certain level of cheapness, devices will frustrate users rather than empowering them. My viewpoint is that the resource constraints are not as tight as they have been drawn to appear. Rather, it's a question of priorities. Governments prioritize other things. The US government spends >$700 billion annually on defense. People prioritize other things, too. Many engineers who live in, say, San Francisco (one of many tech hubs) go on vacation in the third world. They could buy a Mac or PC before every long vacation, tuck it into their suitcase, and spend a day finding a poor family that seems deserving. That act would most likely change one or several lives for the better while costing a small fraction of the giver's annual salary. The resources exist, but we pretend that they cannot be apportioned for certain things while over-apportioning them to other things. I'm a firm believer that when we want to help someone, we have to help them in light of their needs and potential, rather than our own. Children are typically easier to help than adults, because they readily accept assistance as a matter of necessity, and they are less aware of the possibilities of gaming a system designed to help them. The number one challenge to affecting a child's life positively is not their buy-in, it's our own. We have to commit to helping individuals fully and meaningfully, rather than diluting the help down so much that the likelihood of lasting impact diminishes.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  The $125-ish Samsung Chromebook 4 is pretty darn good as an entry-level device. I got one as a throwaway device to not have to carry my heavier MBPro around. Even with that intention, I use (and enjoy) it more than I expected. It surely has way more than 5% the utility of the Mac.
- Closi 5y ago
  The inspiration a MacBook will give you is great, but it's unlikely to be as important to that child's development as clean water, sanitisation and good nutrition. And because we are talking about resource allocation with fixed funds - it is absolutely a choice between giving a child a $1000 laptop and giving them a $300 laptop and $700 towards clean water, sanitisation and nutrition. And if we just say "do both", then we are just talking about solving world hunger. Sure it's easy to point at the money spent on defence and then infer that solving world hunger will be easy, but again that's a little overly simplistic too (and if it's that easy - you can be the person that solves world hunger once and for all!).
  - totalZero 5y ago
    Both theoretically and practically, your argument about allocating resources falls short of answering the question about whether to provide fewer excellent devices or many substandard devices. As a matter of theory, your argument goes "B is more pressing than A, so we should allocate resources to B rather than A." But you present no comparative advantage between the two versions of solution A. Either we give three $300 computers or one $900 computer. Your argument does not help to make that decision. Clean water is important. But if we are to provide computers, what is the most growth-inducing and impactful way to do so? As a matter of practice, families in the third world tend to prioritize things in ways that make sense to them but may not make sense to an outside observer. For example, I met a family with several children for whom the father had purchased the latest smartphones, but the family home lacked an indoor toilet. Access to internet and social media is a basic social imperative and it ranks as a high priority. If the governments of the US and Canada really wanted to, they could foster growth and advancement in the rest of the Americas. The resources are available. What's lacking is a desire to help, rooted in a sense of friendship or Pan-American kinship. That defense money could be spent on devices, sanitation, and the other things you mention. We choose to spend it on warfare and cool stuff from Raytheon and Lockheed instead. The resources are available, but we spend them on less fruitful pursuits.

morganya 5y ago

But two really significant issues are maintenance and repair - those are, unfortunately, very expensive problems to address!

totalZero 5y ago
It seems true to me that the easiest way to maintain a device is to build it well in the first place. This is quite challenging if your primary concern is cost. Most people who have ever purchased a Sony Vaio laptop can probably attest that they got great specs at a reasonable price, but every Sony Vaio laptop that I have purchased ended up with parts (the charger port, the power button, etc) falling off or minor components failing. You probably noticed that in Paraguay at least, the problem you describe has some cultural roots. Disadvantaged communities have at times received free stuff that they either rejected, failed to care for, or altogether destroyed. It may be due to a sense of resentment for having received the gift, or perhaps they lacked sufficient buy-in to understand the market value of the free items. Sometimes, the free stuff does not actually fit the needs of the recipient. And usually, there is a sense of contempt from Paraguayan society at large no matter how the recipients respond (a la "look at these ungrateful paupers who don't dance for joy as we spend resources on them"). Furthermore, in Paraguay a gift given without strings attached is often doubted anyway, because it may be viewed as a means to manipulate the recipient by making them feel indebted. The smooth way to give someone a thing of value in Paraguay is to make them believe that they have somehow earned it due to preexisting factors, or alternatively to state an innocuous and clear expectation for how the gesture will be reciprocated in the future. Anywhere you go, the recipient of a gift values the gift based on his or her own understanding and needs. Look up the construction of houses in Itaguá for residents of the Chacarita for one example. https://www.cronica.com.py/2015/07/23/cartes-les-regalo-una-casa-y-la-rechazaron/ https://www.cronica.com.py/2015/07/23/cartes-les-regalo-una-... I can't find the text right now, but I recall reading about houses built for indigenous folks in the Chaco. When representatives of the organization that had built the structures returned the following year, they saw that the recipients had dismantled the wooden doors and burnt them for warmth during the winter. There's also the factor of theft, and sometimes the stolen items are surprising. The school in Cateura where the famous Recycled Orchestra came to be is one such case. At a certain point in time, they had been gifted many instruments (think Yamaha and Vincent Bach) but someone had broken in at night to uninstall and steal the school's only toilet. There does exist some parts and repair infrastructure in many Latin American countries, as well as a secondary market for devices. There are challenges in finding parts that are neither counterfeit nor stolen, and in my experience the most capable technicians (in terms of tools and knowledge) tend to be located nearer to affluent communities. Traditional devices have a better chance of tapping into that extant marketplace than do purpose-built devices designed intentionally for the economically disadvantaged.

JKCalhoun 5y ago

I feel a little arrogant even proffering an opinion about what the Third World needs, but I would prefer giving books and meals to kids in the Third World. I think it is simply education that is the "Great Equalizer", computers have little to do with it. That was the whole failure of the project in my mind.

totalZero 5y ago
You can't dynamically solve a problem without acknowledging your own capacity to identify the problem. In my view arrogance comes in when there is inflexibility or a lack of attention to the problem. If anything, it takes some courage to proffer an opinion about how to really help improve a problematic situation. Books are important. Undeniably, so are meals. A laptop can provide both books and meals in the long term. Speaking for myself, laptops were the most important (physical) tool in my educational and professional development. Nowadays, it's tough to get a first-rate education without a computer...especially in (for example) Latin America, where physical access to informational resources can be challenging but data infrastructure tends to be present wherever you go.