Malaria, TB and Laptops

In an effort to explain just how monumental the Internet is and will become, Phil Noble asked if you would rather be a Harvard-educated kid in America with no computer or a peasant in India with one. His answer: the peasant in India. He went on to say that he predicts that in the future, poor kids all over the world will be getting $100 laptops.

This may be a first, but I am not the idealist in this debate.

I asked during tonight’s “The Future of Politics Online” dinner discussion, if we - as in wealthy Westerners - have failed to get enough mosquito nets and malaria pills to the world’s poorest children, who’s going to give them laptops?

And even if they get a laptop, what about Internet access? Electricity? Education on how to use the laptop effectively? Northwestern University professor Eszter Hargittai argued at USC on April 16 that technological advances have not lead to a Tom Friedman “flat world” but rather to more social inequalities and a deeper digital divide.

Some journalists in the audience responded that the poor already have these technological capabilities. The widespread use of cell phones - rather than land lines - was given as an example.

But a cell phone is not a laptop. It does not require electricity or much training.

Furthermore, is that really where wealthy donors should be spending their limited funds? Yes, it is better to teach a man to fish, and maybe the poor would greatly benefit from being connected to the global community. But if millions of children are dying from malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS and starvation, what good is a laptop?