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Opinion
Is 'Responsible Computing' an Oxymoron?
4/12/2007
Please, please don't put hovering or lasers into the OLPC: It might seem like a nice thing to do for the third world, but I'm sure this is how Skynet [from the Terminator series] is going to start.(The quotation above was cleaned up for grammar and style.)
Like all technologies, good things and bad things will happen. I think the poster, above, was either being humnorously sarcastic or has talked to too many neocons recently. (My vote’s on the former.) Sure, bad things can happen with technologies: For example, the e-mail scams we all see are apparently Nigeria’s fifth-largest revenue producing industry!
But there are lots of bright young kids out there waiting to contribute their brainshare to the world. Take China, for example: China’s got a subpopulation of “bright” kids larger than the population of all of our kids; add in all those African kids, and those kids from Brazil, and wow, this observer of the technology scene sees mostly good things coming. Let’s get that mindshare connected with the rest of us! If the project can get those laptops out there and in use by the children (the technology being the easy part), we are indeed going to see the positive power of this technology.
About the author: Terry Calhoun is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society
for College and University Planning (SCUP). You can contact him through CT's IT Trends forum by clicking here. View more articles by Terry Calhoun.
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