[Novalug] Conversation topic: laptops in India for $10

[Clif Flynt]

On Tue, Feb 03, 2009 at 03:03:30PM -0500, Megan Larko wrote:
> paraquote ... potential Govt/University subsidized laptops ...

  I spent a month in India in 1999 delivering web and Tcl/Tk training.

  At the time, the big push in India was for IT training.  Ads on all
the buildings, television, radio, etc.  The basic message was "Get an
IT degree and go overseas and send home money."

  India is not a rich country, but it has a lot of people: three times
the US population (last I checked) in 1/3 the area.

  They don't have a lot of physical resources, but given a normal curve
intelligence distribution, there's a lot of mental resources.

  What I saw lacking was a way to 'play' with computers.  The companies
where I did training had computers at work, but only 1 programmer in 20
had a computer at home.

  I don't know about the rest of you, but I've learned much more about
computing by playing in my spare time than I ever did in school or on
the job.  The undirected "study" leads me deeper into problems and 
solutions than broad-but-shallow school experience or the "find an
answer quickly and move on" focus of an employer. 

  I can easily see that the govt would decide that encouraging the
brighter subset of the population (the ones who pass whatever they have
for an SAT) to play and learn about computing is a good thing for the
country in the long run.

  The next question will be whether all these kids are trying to learn
Microsoft skills to get a job in Bangalore, or if they will gravitate
to the free software world.

  Clif

-- 
... Clif Flynt ... http://www.cwflynt.com ... clif at cflynt.com ...
.. Tcl/Tk: A Developer's Guide (2nd edition) - Morgan Kauffman ..
.... 16'th Annual Tcl/Tk Conference:  2009,  West Coast, USA ....
.............  http://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2008/  ............