Objections to the $100 Laptop

I've read a few things about the "$100 Laptop" and how it will approach the problem of poverty and illteracy in the third world. It is indeed a very altruistic initiative in its nature; I'm surprised at how they reduced the price of a laptop so low to something somewhat attainable by the poor.

There seems to be a number of problems with this initiative, however. There are obvious problems laying underneath all of the altruism, such as selling them directly to governments which relies too much on the government's own plan of massive distribution and trustworthiness. I am, however, more worried about the underlaying ethical issues that come with distributing such a machine to millions of children living in third world countries.

The laptops that are being distributed are meant as a sort of one way passage to all modes of learning; it will contain electronic textbooks, programs that allow to write up presentations, programs that will allow for children to learn various concepts, etc. This solves the problem of printing costly textbooks that may or may not be as good as textbooks that are already extremely expensive over here in the United States, as well as helping children solidfy their thoughts in a standard medium. However, this also creates an environment that relies on technological dependence; we shouldn't of course assume that the environment will become nearly as extreme as America's dependence on technology, but it will still cultivate a sense of technopositivism. Technopositivism, in general, destroys human culture; it breeds a sense of mechanism within the person that will influence him to deviate far from culture as possible. It is, however, essential that third world countries have some sort of educational initiative; throwing in a laptop, however, will not solve the entire problem. There has to be some sort of grassroots transformation of society so that they are more accepting of such changes without compromising culture and humanity.

E. F. Schumacher might disagree with me in this point as he postulates in Small is Beautiful that in order for countries to evolve as humanly as possible, the techology introduced must be able to be employed by the individual, it must help cultivate creativity, and it must be small enough for man to use. This device does indeed meet those criteria, yet long term dependence on technology will certainly hurt the third world. It is possible that they will start to demand services that will rely on a central system rather than the individual; and if such a society becomes dependent on computer technology, then surely the mechanism that arises from such dependence will only harbor uncreativeness. In other words, interdependence on computer technology will foster a parasitic relationship larger than man himself.

Perhaps deploying the $100 laptop with complementary initiatives that transform the society into something that will both accept technology and stretch itself to not become consumed by said technology will be the best way to go about doing it. However, it seems to be contradictory to wish that such a society will accept technology and not be consumed by it, as it seems to be a nasty part of human nature to be consumed by something that is desired and depended upon so much.

Eh, that's all I'll bother to write for now. I'll try to motivate the ideas a bit more later down the line.