[wsfii-discuss] olpc presentation

Thu Jan 5 14:48:14 UTC 2006

Poverty tends to be experienced as an endless struggle against a sea of
obstacles and wealth reduces resistance (you can "throw money" at
problems and get someone else to shovel the shit for you), so naturally
the wealthy don't consider themselves oppressed/unfree whilst the poor
usually do.

I know people who've "made it" from poor backgrounds who work with
commitment for the advancement of all whilst others "pull up the
ladder", adapt to the most right-wing middle-class values and start
berating their former communities for failure and moral delinqunecy.
It's worth noting that the consensus of African-American political
lobbies in the USA, for example, has drifted away from the left as the
black middle-class expands and the first few black millionaires have
created themselves. An American journalist cynically remarked, during
the rise of Jessie Jackson's radical democrat platform, that "Jessie
Jackson will not change politics, politics will change Jessie Jackson".
This is inevitably true, but I'd still rather Jessie Jackson's ilk was
in power than the current crew.

Either poor or wealthy people may or may not be idealistic. Either may
dream of a different world of individual and community development,
dignity and progress -- or indulge halfwit fantasies of owning some
shiny car they can drive into their swimming pool next time their
judgment is trashed on Bolly and Charlie. These dreams will still be
influenced by local conditions, though -- for most people, even dreams
require some degree of credibility for their glamour to "bite".  You
only have to do a headcount of the number of black people who've got
shiny cars via science and technology vs narcotics industry . . . you
don't need much education to perform *that* feat.

Power corrupts, but wealth is relative. Even I'm wealthy in comparison
with 9 out of 10 people I met on a recent trip to Morocco. At least I
can get my teeth fixed, a hot bath whenever I want, and my very own
laptop. I don't do my laundry up to my knees in a chilly river. But what
tends to happen is that everyone naturalises and universalises their own
response to their own conditions and has difficulty extending themselves
beyond their own experience except in a picturesque way. I lost count of
the number of backpackers who informed me that the "Biblical" culture of
Morocco was thoroughly charming. Personally, I would not be at all
charmed by thrashing my laundry in a river and being unable to afford
even an aspirin for the pain in my decaying teeth. As far as Moroccan
opinion on the problem goes, this ranged from blaming USA/EU and
evacuating any responsibilty on the part of Moroccans themselves to
shrewd complaints that people who, for example, ran the extremely
profitable private bus companies, screwed all the money out as profit
and didn't invest in developing infrastructure, partly because there's
sod-all faith in the national context. The EU plans to spend a ton of
money developing the beach fronts for tourism whilst what most Moroccans
want is fairer agricultural trade and industrial infrastructural
development. Frankly, I'm not at all sure I'd give kids in Tanja laptops
and expect them to stay in the same hands for long. It might work OK in
a village, if properly supervised by local community groups. Though I've
got a feeling that even then they might well be commandeered to more
pressing adult needs.  It's very hard to get a real sense of what's
practicable or desirable through the lense of one's own desires and
disappointments from my own relation to a different cultural context.

Neither wealth not poverty confer absolute morality and neither state is
homogenous. Cheap laptops may work in stable situations (of poverty or
not) where education is valued by the community as a whole and
opportunities available for the educated to take up. Unstable urban
environments where populations are shifting and expanding rapidly, where
education is not respected because it's  widely perceived *not* to
provide significant opportunities -- for example because unemployment is
above 50% with jobs reserved, effectively, for the kids of the existing
wealthy classes, where crime as the most profitable and respected career
structure and there are very immediate and pressing economic needs to be
addressed -- then *relatively* cheap laptops may be ineffective or only
increase problems.

Each situtation needs to be assessed and addressed individually and
defined by local communities to address their own needs. I agree that
involving kids in engineering tasks which will immediately benefit their
communities will often be the best way to provide effective training as
well as localised solutions to well-understood problems.

When a project put recycled computers into rural Indian villages without
providing expensive training or support, the kids were able to figure it
out for themselves -- against received judgment. Well, the boys were
able to pick it up for themselves -- the girls were firmly told they
weren't even allowed to enter the shed where the computer had been
deployed. I saw film of the boys crowding around the terminal whilst a
couple of girls lurked about longingly outside the shed and most girls
retreated to discuss the novelty at a safe distance. The boys treated
the equipment with respect and formed heirarchies amongst themselves for
access to the computer and for the provision of solutions to problems
they encountered. However, in urban situations with high crime-rates,
the computers might have been vandalised or stolen etc etc. Some would
argue that these computers will soon break down and not be fixed and
that thin client setups in community centres which can be easily
maintained are the answer. Others would argue that this reduces
community control over technology.

I tend to the latter view, but also understand that, realistically, most
people seem uninterested in controlling technology and just want to make
limited use of it to further other economic aims. We need to try to
provide what's realistically wanted and useful rather than what fits in
with a particular world view of ours.  And although the boys narrated
the exclusion of the girls in terms of "propriety" (they shouldn't mix
with boys in physical proximity around the computer) I'd be willing to
bet a fair sum that if two sheds with two computers had been provided
and labelled "girls" and "boys", the boys would commandeer both if
unsupervised. Why? Because they *can* -- and that's the sense in which
power corrupts. The boys would, of course, figure out some new narrative
which makes it seem OK to exclude girls from resources on grounds of
propriety -- cos that's what ideology is.

Issues of equality and advancement can't be solved by developing a
single approach because conditions of poverty in the developing (or in
the developed) world vary enormously from situation to situation and
from place to place. There maybe many barriers to participation which
have nothing to do with physical resources.

Power and resources are not divided along a smooth horizontal and nor is
morality or practical hope. Solutions need to be flexible, locally
determined and practicable to local needs.

Paula

Karel Kulhavy wrote:

>On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 05:20:13PM +0100, miluz wrote:
>  
>
>>Karel Kulhavy a écrit :
>>    
>>
>>>On Mon, Jan 02, 2006 at 11:17:09PM +0100, miluz wrote:
>>>      
>>>
>>>>Karel Kulhavy a écrit :
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>>>Kids don't think like economists to plan secured future. They are social
>>>>>animals (homo sapiens). 
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>>>>All children in africa dreamed about school.
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>Question is if the content of their dream is realistic. To be realistic
>>>they would have to dream about boredom, bullying, lots of wasted time,
>>>and a bit of education.
>>>      
>>>
>>Even they ignore what school means - you can't imagine how fast and how
>>far informations are flowing in the world - they know what a pencil and
>>a paper are (really fabulous drawings anyway. We are only trying to make
>>the same today).
>>
>>Children are living in a world of dreams, do you remember?
>>Do you really think that they dream about prostitution, drugs, violence,
>>scare, hungry, cold,...? That's all our "developped" countries have to
>>give them for instance. I'm ashamed, sometime afraid, of what they are
>>thinking of us.
>>    
>>
>>>>Joke for joke:
>>>>In "Darwing Nightmare", do you think that the prostitute questionned has
>>>>a single chance one day to learn computer sciences as she would like to?
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>And do they have realistic expectations for computer science? Don't they
>>>think that computer scientist is just a well-paid secretary?
>>>      
>>>
>>When you will see the film - I hope for you - you will see her eyes when
>>she says that. Far away from money, power, all things that she knows
>>perfectly... only freedom.
>>    
>>
>
>But they dream about freedom only when they are poor. As soon as you
>give a human money or power, he usually gets corrupted.
>
>  
>
>>Don't forget that contempt is the only one feeling entirely shared.
>>    
>>
>
>Can you prove this?
>
>CL<
>
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>  
>