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Netsquared Profile: Michalis Bletsas
Michalis Bletsas is the Chief Connectivity Officer for One Laptop per Child, a non-profit association. One Laptop per Child has the goal of creating a $100 human-powered laptop to be distributed to children in the developing world. Michalis speaks a bit about the rationale and challenges for the $100 Laptop.
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Give them Guns not PC's in Africa and Mom and Dad in the USA
Yet another technologist with a mission. A disciple of techno-marxist Nicholas Negroponte Michalis tells us they decided "out of the blue" to address how the pc's would be used in developing countries. "Out of the blue" is an apt description of Negroponte's now $130 laptop.
What I find most amusing about guys like Michalis, is that they sit there with a straight face and tell us that kids in the developing world need these PC's to communicate, for education, for their "creativity". Never mind that pre-natal care is non-existent in many impoverished nations... These myopic technologists seldom address history, culture, anthropology or politics.
The mission to see the developing world with PC's may well have success in the BRIC nations. But the UDC's where it is needed most, have zero need for a PC. Let us take the Congo, where according to Time magazine 4 million people have been slaughtered since 1998. (No typo. 4 million since 1998). Starvation and rebels have murdered so many. Michalis and his altruisitic friends would do well to give the children of the Congo Guns not PC's that have zero use in their lives. A bag of wheat.....not an iPod. Learning about personal hygeine over an MP3 player.
Still the starry eyed technologists like Negroponte, Hector Ruiz and others long to "save the world" by giving children PC's. Bring your PC's here to Los Angeles Michalis. Los Angeles where upwards of 40% of Hispanic kids drop out of high school. Los Angeles where the county illiteracy is estimated at near 40% according to the Los Angeles Times.
I say give them a book. The English language. A mom and a dad in the home. Civic responsibility. Family values. A church. A stable community. And a voucher for a private school.
Forget this feel good non-sense that Bletas and his deluded friends are pushing.
Mike aronson
Altadena, Ca.
Mike Aronson<s remark
I remember reading an article in a daily paper a few years back about T.V. coming to Indonesia so the people could see how the rest of the world lived, a young man had seen an advertisment for a shiny new motorcycle,he had to get one so he sold the family ox and bought one. The neighbours were very impressed by this new marvel and so was the young man for the first few tanks of gas ,at this point it dawned on the young man or his family that the ox provided all the labour to feed his whole family.
your comment
Dear Mike,
I dare to disagree with you. I am not convinced that it is the education and technological progress that will "save the world," but in the times when our country is undergoing financial and spiritual crisis, the resurrection of the Marxist theory couldn't have better timing and it is certainly the better means to save the world than guns, as the war in Iraq has demonstrated.
The great writer Dostoevsky said in the early 1900s that "it is beauty that will save the world," and in my opinion it is a better solution than guns.
Stranger