After reading the AP story about the OLPC pilot, and the more detailed field report, I decided that despite some initial flaws, the OLPC program is moving in the right direction.
So I donated 2 more laptops. Now there’ll be three kids out there getting their first taste of computers and the internet.
When I was growing up, one thing I dreamed of more than anything else was to own a computer of my own. I remember looking dreamily at catalogs, even drooling over the Radio Shack calculators that had a couple K of RAM which allowed small BASIC programs to run. But until my teenage years, computers were always out of my family’s price range.
So $200 a pop seems a pretty reasonable price to give impovrished kids the opportunity I always wished for.
You can donate from the OLPC site.
If you donate before New Years, you can choose to purchase an X01 OLPC laptop for yourself (like I did the first time), or you can just make a straight donation (like I did the second time).
It also makes me think of a sci-fi short story I read once that stuck with me, called “For I have touched the sky” where a tribal medicine man, who secretly knows about technology, has a little girl clean his hut. The girl learns how to read his books and use his computer, and becomes aware that there is so much to learn outside of her village. It’s a moving story that is worth a read.
Anyway, it’s a good cause, and a reasonable price to change a life.