May 03, 2007

• I've seen a few of these, and I'm impressed with all of them. Basic needs, simple solutions, indeed. The Mad Housers gave me a jolt--great inventions for the 3rd world in...Atlanta, GA. Hard to have that smug feeling when we have our own poverty and homelessness, and most of us fail/refuse to acknowledge it. *waiting for some gummint arsehole to shut them down
• Those are impressive. I particularly like the brilliant simplicity of the Q-drum!
• Seconding the tick on the q-drum; that was the stand-out for me. Not so hot in hilly regions I suppose though. When we did the baseline then follow-up studies for some of the projects at the lot I used to work with, one of the things that always struck me was the amount of time spent fetching water and the distances involved (molly-coddled by piped drinking water as I was when young); the savings made there after a gravity flow water pipe project were factored into rising family incomes and better health outcomes - the women had that little bit less strain and they used the time they had freed up to nurture the household in other ways. The shack at the end was a sweet fort too though.
• All good. The only one i had trouble buying into was that $100 laptop. Gov'ts in poor country would do well to spend their limited resources on textbooks and teachers?
• But isn't a laptop . . many textbooks? *Dr. Evil-style pinkie chew*
• Quite a bit of snarking on the OtherFilter about the laptop. I be thinkin' that you could maybe pull lots of innovative ideas of the intarwebs with this--such as how to build a cooling pot, had you not been introduced to one previously. While I really feel that the basics are the most important--clean, plentiful, accessible water, food, shelter, basic education--I still think the sooner a country is up to speed with regard to 21st century adaptations, the better they are. Intarweb access can provide how-to, news, books, teaching methods, communication, weather--whatever you can down/upload. Isn't there some saying about giving a man a fish and a mouse and he can get crumbs in the keyboard or sumpin? Not to mention, we need those computers HERE in our US schools. Never seen such piss poor excuses for computers or programs on the middle school level as we have here.
• I think the benefits to internet access apply more for adults than for young children. (Educated) adults have the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff, know how to integrate new knowledge into their intellectual context. Kids, not so much. e.g. this from today's NY Times - Seeing no progress, some schools abandon laptops
• There's a fine case to be made for laptops without network connections. Laptops provide not only high storage levels of data (Library of Congress, anyone?) but dynamic links to local-path resources is still very helpful. Also, simple skills like understanding files & folders, right-mouse-click-menus and control panel things. Stuff like that. The final exam is configuring a Linux kernel properly. Sweet. Free flow of information is a noble idea when people are re@#${{{[]]NO CARRIER
• I totally agree that laptops are great tools. What i disagree with is the decision that poor countries should spend $150 US on one laptop when they could use the same money to employ more teachers, buy textbooks and so on. In impoverished countries, how long is that laptop going to stay in the child's hands? $150 is more than the annual income of most poor families. That machine is going to end up being sold on the black market.
• You dang kids fetch me some water now!
• But what if the kids are, say, too sick or weak to "play" on the wheel? Or they're off gathering whatever sticks they can find for firewood. This product assumes a village full of happy, healthy, carefree child labor.
• Or whips!