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During a small forum on open culture at the University of the
Philippines last month, the discussion veered toward the use of
technology in providing access to information and cultural products
to underprivileged communities. One example that was mentioned was
the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project. The idea of the OLPC was to
“create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest
children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power,
connected laptop with content and software designed for
collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning.”
It is indeed a heady solution to imagine. Think
of the possibilities of having computers that are linked to each
other in the hands of elementary students. Imagine what they can
share with each other. Imagine how the nearly 13 million elementary
and more than six million high-school students can benefit if such
technologies are available to them.
During the lively discussion several points
emerged. One was the creation of content, or simply put: what would
those laptops contain? Although one can digitize libraries and put
it in a hard disk, would publishers allow these to happen without a
stiff fee? There are alternatives to these such as sites like
Project Gutenberg that puts into the web books with copyrights that
have expired and materials that are in the public domain.
Software can be free. Free in the sense that it
is a matter of liberty, not price. Free software is a matter of the
users’ freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve
the software. In the same line of thought, artists and writers can
also create and write as freely as they can. They can put their
works under copyleft and Creative Commons licenses that allow
copying and use without fetters.
Still there is the issue of hardware. We do not
have the domestic capacity in the Philippines to produce the
requisite hardware to make such a machine and are left to the mercy
of the big chip makers and computer assembly corporations. Even the
OLPC had problems with its system when Intel decided to split from
the project and compete with a similar program of their own. The
response of computer makers is to produce netbooks, essentially
lightweight and lower end laptops, which are very popular nowadays.
Yet even these netbooks are still expensive for most families in the
country.
Even in the case of the OLPC and similar
projects, the cost of hardware, and thus access to it, becomes an
issue despite lower cost relative to higher end computers. If we
stick to the original target cost of the OLPC pegged at $100, the
price would still be equivalent to nearly half a month salary at the
nominal minimum wage of a working man (assuming that he is not part
of the 4.2 million unemployed and 6.6 million underemployed
Filipinos nowadays).
Looking even deeper on government’s
educational budget, we see that only around P9,250 were allotted in
2006 per elementary student. This would already cover teacher’s
salaries, infrastructure and support to the child’s educational
development. The infamous New York dinner taken in a few hours would
have already put a hundred students to school for a year. This
situation should already put into context technoprojects that we
think would solve the crisis our educational system is in.
Yet as with other problems in society, the
solution does not lie solely on technological fixes. If we blindside
ourselves and engage in technofetishism, we lose the essential
features of the problems and become embroiled in solving the
problems of the technological fix itself.
While projects like the OLPC or similar ones
that seek to put in a computer in every barangay are welcome, they
do not address the more fundamental lack of a school house, a school
teacher, desks, chairs and support in these barangays. Solutions
that depend solely on the deployment of technology are often
one-sided solutions that are vulnerable to the failings of access to
that technology itself.
Technology does play a part in development.
Saying that one should not engage in unnecessary technofetishism is
not saying that one should reject technology as part of the
solution. In fact, those who would want to make things better should
be adept with the available technologies at hand—from the high
tech to the low tech. We would like to think that technology should
make production activities and daily routine easier and more
meaningful but only a few can access these technologies, what value
is it for the rest of us? It seems that these new technologies that
could unfetter us from the daily grind is being developed not to
address our own problems but more for the companies that produce
them to profit from it.
Ricardo “Rick” Bahague Jr. is an AGHAM
member and the Coordinator of the Computer Professionals Union. CPU
will celebrate their eighth year anniversary tomorrow.
Prom.bound@gmail.com
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