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

[Brian Holmes]

America's drive to remake the world in its own image began around 1944, 
with the foundation of the Bretton Woods institutions and George 
Kennan's theory of containment. The Marshall Plan was the first step, 
NATO and the Korean War were the second ones. Sure, there are some 
fabulous accomplishments along that rocky road. But I don't really see 
the use of dreams like this so-called MIT initiative, not since the 
Americans set out to remake the Middle East in their own image. We don't 
need to export this model anymore, we need to fix it at home, where the 
breakdown is.

Everyone knows that poor people are living on one or two dollars a day. 
How much do you have to earn before you have savings? And why not spend 
them on the next-generation Chinese machine, which will obviously be 
cheaper? The people who are gonna buy these 200 dollar computers - or 
more likely, have the free ones funneled into their living rooms - are 
supposed to be the future administrators and activators of a sunset 
empire, a system that's never gonna work for anyone. Do you really want 
to design the inside of their minds? Any village kid from the lower 
classes that gets one of these things by accident or a deft bit of 
robbery is obviously not going to look at the education package. They 
can find all they need somewhere else. They may have a lot of work to do 
just surviving, you know. Especially with AFRICOM coming down the pipe.

subversively yours, Brian