Who needs a $100 laptop?

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Click on the picture. See the boy on the right, smiling, the one with all his teeth? He looks so Brazilian.

I go to Brazil almost every year, sometime twice. My wife, a neuroscientist in Oxford, is from Rio (yes, sometime even Hollywood gets it right: there is a gorgeous Brazilian top-scientist in Oxford). We have been involved with kids from orphanages. It is not fun. The kids in the street live on nothing. They collect cans, plastic bottles, tourists' wallets, coconuts, your towel if you are swimming. Most of them cannot read or write. They are smart, in the usual street (sorry, it's Rio) beach way. They can trick anyone, they fight, they know and often handle guns, they survive, they are loyal to the group. Jorge Amado's Captains of the Sand (1988) is still a reliable picture of their lives, hopes and fears. You only need to add more violence, drugs (especially cheap ones, like glue) and weapons of all sorts. We are talking about kids between five and fifteeen.

When you are there, say in Copacabana, you do not give them money, because you do not know what it will be used for, or by whom. But you can buy them food. One day, I ordered a hotdog for one of them. He was hungry in a way I don't think I've ever experienced. It's hunger that not only lacks food, but that fears there might never be food. He waited for the other friends. And when the hotdog was ready, he had it cut into three pieces. It took a second to disappear, while they were running away, noisy and cheerful, under the sun and the blue sky.

Here in Oxford, under gray and rainy clouds, I wonder: do they need a laptop? What Rio would look like, with thousands of cheap computers given away with public money to kids who haven't even got shoes on?

If you think I'm being pointlessly pathetic, there are two alternatives. You may fly to Rio. Or perhaps you may read what the Copenhagen Consensus has to say about spending public money effectively. Free cheap laptops are not in the list.

PS
In the FAQ one can read that "The laptops will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most [sic] everything except store huge amounts of data."
Most everything. I guess "almost" was the intended word, but that most everything is what promoted this blog. Most. Not all. Not almost. Not quite. Not at all.

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