Most people in the world don't have these things. They don't have a lot of things. Redistributing between some Americans and other Americans hardly does anything to reduce inequality, and it's naive to think otherwise.
As the offspring of one of those low-income families I reject your argument. Low-income families are incredibly resourceful. I also went to schools where the majority of students were low-income and the schoolboard still managed to install and network computers. Some students used them, most did not.
Just saying there should be more access to computers is pretty useless because with no desire to use one it's just an expensive paperweight (facebook terminal). Trust me, if those low-income students wanted a computer they could get one. We have 20 years of computer spare computer parts. There are enough computers produced to give to every person on the planet.
The bigger problem was how to use them. This was one of the goals of the OLPC program before it got caught in a proxy war with netbooks.
those kids that happen to not have access to technology are behind the ones who do by more than any time in history, including yesterday, including 5 minutes ago.
Offtopic: everytime I land on startuplessonslearned.com I get an IE Operation Aborted dialog and an error page. This has occured every time for at least 6 months. Shame, I really want to read the articles. Browser: IE 7.0.5730.13 on XP Pro. (Work PC so no control over the setup)
Decisions like this should be made at the local level... The author should talk to his local school district before pushing his untested ideas on the entire country.
The future strength of our economy depends on our ability to foster the experimentation and competition of ideas.
hey, for what it's worth, I commented on this blog post, when it originally went up, saying that it's better to be the change you wish to see, HINT HINT, which means (in other words) I think it would be cool to actually DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS as opposed to chin-stroking about it all day long. (Or indeed, as it turned out, chin-stroking about it for years to come.)
If anybody feels the same way, e-mail me (gilesb@gmail.com), because I'm totally not kidding. Actions speak louder than words. Less yammering, less yanking our weiners about how futuristic and enlightened we are, and absolutely NO MORE of the boring nitpicky dickwads saying why it won't work for some blah blah blah bullshit "I'll say anything to avoid getting off my ass and helping people" reason.
Fuck all that. Let's teach some kids tech literacy who wouldn't otherwise learn it and change the world already, even if it's just some tiny little piece of the world. Still better than nothing.
An entrepreneur is not always a computer geek who starts a software company :)
And I think some of the more outgoing and sociable kids might be great entrepreneur too - you have to sell and selling requires energy to deal with people.
You can pick up cell phones for next to nothing and many of them run Java apps.
I learnt to program on a BBC B (8bit, 32kb memory) computer I shared with my family and books from the local library. I'm not sure how "kids today don't have access to computers" compared to then. Back then computers and phones were expensive and now they are cheap. Also the internet is full of communities to help people learn programming.
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[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 41.7 ms ] thread"today" kids have greater access to technology than any time in history, including yesterday. Including 5 minutes ago.
Furthermore, if all the machine has IE6, web-based developer tools might be limited as well.
It's good that people can use library computers, but it's absolutely not the same thing as having your own computer.
Just saying there should be more access to computers is pretty useless because with no desire to use one it's just an expensive paperweight (facebook terminal). Trust me, if those low-income students wanted a computer they could get one. We have 20 years of computer spare computer parts. There are enough computers produced to give to every person on the planet.
The bigger problem was how to use them. This was one of the goals of the OLPC program before it got caught in a proxy war with netbooks.
This piece is about catering to a niche subset of the potential future entrepreneurs not a superset of the future entrepreneurs as claimed.
The future strength of our economy depends on our ability to foster the experimentation and competition of ideas.
If anybody feels the same way, e-mail me (gilesb@gmail.com), because I'm totally not kidding. Actions speak louder than words. Less yammering, less yanking our weiners about how futuristic and enlightened we are, and absolutely NO MORE of the boring nitpicky dickwads saying why it won't work for some blah blah blah bullshit "I'll say anything to avoid getting off my ass and helping people" reason.
Fuck all that. Let's teach some kids tech literacy who wouldn't otherwise learn it and change the world already, even if it's just some tiny little piece of the world. Still better than nothing.
And I think some of the more outgoing and sociable kids might be great entrepreneur too - you have to sell and selling requires energy to deal with people.
There are plenty of computers similar to the one I use every day on eBay for under $50 http://computers.shop.ebay.com/PC-Desktops-/179/i.html?LH_BI... Old CRT monitors, keyboards, mice can usually be picked up for next to nothing. And if that is still too expensive there is always http://www.freecycle.org/ . If someone wants a free up to date OS, then Ubuntu will ship CDs for free: https://shipit.ubuntu.com/
You can pick up a Xbox with games for $35 http://cgi.ebay.com/Microsoft-Xbox-8-GB-Black-14-games_W0QQi... and they are hackable with Linux
You can pick up cell phones for next to nothing and many of them run Java apps.
I learnt to program on a BBC B (8bit, 32kb memory) computer I shared with my family and books from the local library. I'm not sure how "kids today don't have access to computers" compared to then. Back then computers and phones were expensive and now they are cheap. Also the internet is full of communities to help people learn programming.