What about America?

While I think it's wonderful that Negroponte has created the OLPC program to get technology into the hands of children across the world, it always seemed to me there was something greater missing. When I was a child, my mom always said, "make sure your room is clean before you say someone else's is dirty". Well I feel this is true for an array of problems, one of them being able to try to give the gift of technology.

Again, I don't have anything against giving laptops to needy children, but what about America? Before we go and try to save the world, maybe we should go and try to save ourselves. In our colleges, technically inclined Masters Degrees are being earned by foreigners instead of our citizens. Jobs are being outsourced to foreign countries, not because they are cheaper but because our own children no longer seem to have an interest in it. If we're not careful, we may not be leaders in inventions and technology any longer.


All of this says that we need to educate our children. While school programs and computers in school are great for education, there's something direly missing in this equation. If you're in a computer profession you know exactly what I mean. I didn't learn to use a computer because there was a computer in the classroom, I learned to use a computer by taking apart the one I had at home. Thus, it is the goal of this organization to give everyone in America the opportunity to take apart their own computer. If the children of today become interested in their own machines, we will have secured the engineers of tomorrow.