Monday, February 02, 2009

New Year, Same Hopes

I am now in Singapore after a long and relaxing holiday back home. Home sweet home, I start to miss it now. :)

As a first article for all of you during this uncertain 2009, India seems to have good news for the world's poor people: a 10-buck laptop. That is right, a laptop for ten US dollar and they (the Indian government, and a few Indian colleges) claim this laptop has 2GB of RAM, WiFi, Ethernet, and even expandable memory. Articles on this news abound, but the following two are interesting (and short). Click here and here.

What sets me wondering is why they stopped at the price, they can go on and claim this laptop is insanely powerful, and even can end world hunger and bring peace to the middle east.

I am quite saddened and disappointed by their humbleness this time.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What is the point of giving every kid a computer? The only thing I know would happen is that they start surfing the web, and chat all day, apart from checking out the pr0n sites.


I remember the days when knowledge is learned and used with just a pen, paper, and a ruler. Sometimes, even without a ruler. Computer is only useful for college-level work. Otherwise, stick to traning good ol' human brain for the basics.

Cuppa Chai said...

I agree with you, giving each kid a computer definitely is not a wise thing to do. The only skills most of them will learn are how to search for porns, mp3's, and online chatting. ;)

The Soothsayer said...

I agree somewhat.

Computers and the Internet do present a lot of learning opportunities. We can't just say that it'll be a negative influence. It can be a tremendous force for good.

I think it's vital that the students have a well-trained adult guiding or supervising them. That'll exclude most teachers in Malaysian schools nowadays, sadly enough.

That said, I still prefer a good book to curl up to or pen and paper when I'm deriving or solving math problems. Nothing tops dead trees for certain joys in life. :)