You buy two of the computers one goes to a kid in a third world country or whatever and one goes to your child (or to a childish adult). The $100 laptop (currently $188) will cost you just under $400 dollars but you or someone you love will be extra cool with a laptop that nobody else on the block will have. And you will be helping educate the worlds youth (more kids need to learn Linux so Microsoft can be destroyed)

Those dedicated to technology will understandably offer technological solutions to the world’s problems. Those who concern themselves with food, nutrition and development will offer solutions couched in providing food, nutrition and means of self-development. While neither is a complete solution (and each by itself could bring disastrous side-outcomes), we need both approaches (and others) if we are seriously concerned.

So I applaud the makers of this device and recognize their intent. Some of you think that all that is relevant to Africans is to reach out and receive food, live and die in obscurity “over there” and keep their hungry faces off our Western TV screens. Well, like another writer said, each one of those hungry babes is born with the same intrinsic potential as any of us, and to watch them die un-realized is to be not just heartless and selfish, but is disrespecting the potential of ALL LIFE, for their sake AS WELL AS OURS.

This is a technological experiment, but more importantly a social experiment, the outcome of which I will watch with great interest.

I’ve been looking for a pic of this for a while.

Thanks for sharing !

Xander

This is a very narrow sighted way of someone with a lot of money trying to convince himself he can change the world. A laptop has no place in a country without electricity (even if it can be powered by alternate means). I’m sure there are better ways to improve living conditions in a third world country. Laptops would certainly be jumping the gun. There are more immediate concerns.

It might be worthwhile for people to research the food supplies that they do get. Most are hijacked by the gov’t and then sold at obscene prices. And also its good to know that they are in the current situation because of us. Third world countries used to be some of the riches places of the world and many still are. But the riches have been and are plundered by the so called developed countries. They deserve much more than food from us. And hopefully this new resource will reach them and they can learn enough to survive in this technological world we now live in. This is definetely a great way to help prepare them.

Unfortunately, I skimmed through the comments and happened upon some of the dumbest crap I’ve ever read on the Internet.

Troy

You’re right that we shouldn’t view this as a panacea (although I don’t think many people are guilty of that mistake), but your reservations echo those that have been voiced over the introduction of very many technologies in the past; the telephone, the television, heck, probably even the steam engine.

Computer are tools; there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. People can get obsessed by tools though, and end up almost serving them – that’s not so good, but there’s no obligation to go down that path here.