Thursday, July 27, 2006
Negroponte Smacked by Reality
Wow. Barely out the gate, Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child program is smacked by reality, in the form of the Indian government's rejection of OLPC. There's lots here to consider--the government thought the $100MM pricetag a bit steep for a completely unproven technology--but what leaves you breathless is the flat rejection of what the Indians saw as unvarnished western paternalism:
(The Indian Education Ministry) also finds it intriguing as to "why no developed country has been chosen" for MIT's OLPC experiment "given the fact that most of the developed world is far from universalising the possession and use of laptops among children of 6-12 age group".
Wow. Barely out the gate, Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child program is smacked by reality, in the form of the Indian government's rejection of OLPC. There's lots here to consider--the government thought the $100MM pricetag a bit steep for a completely unproven technology--but what leaves you breathless is the flat rejection of what the Indians saw as unvarnished western paternalism:
(The Indian Education Ministry) also finds it intriguing as to "why no developed country has been chosen" for MIT's OLPC experiment "given the fact that most of the developed world is far from universalising the possession and use of laptops among children of 6-12 age group".
# posted by vicbastard @ 2:35 PM 
