One Laptop Per Child Solve’s Africa’s Farmville Shortage
SENIOR TECHNOLOGY WRITER, JAZZ TWEMLOW, EXPLORES THE SUCCESS OF THE OLPC.
The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) charity scheme has recently been praised for being so terrible that the children who receive the laptops no longer feel bad about their life situation as they have realised that being rich obviously causes the kind of utter stupidity that led to the scheme in the first place. The unwitting success of its failure is so embarrassing/uplifting that many are calling for the scheme to be scrapped entirely/developed further.
“It’s simply overwhelming,” former NSW Senator Mark Abib stated. “The amazing things these children are doing with an utterly ridiculous laptop is astounding. They’ve already uploaded, via instagram, thousands of photographs of the water they don’t have.”
Soon after the laptops - affectionately described by children as looking like a “Transformer’s Abortion” - were received, children were posting thousands of tweets that hinted the scheme was successful for entirely the wrong reasons.
@aidsorphan011 tweeted: “Entire village is now dead. RMFLAO #denguefever. Thank goodness I’ve got this laptop to tweet about it.”
This was shortly followed by @wheresmymalariameds tweeting: “Man in a big white hat said condoms were bad. My dad’s dead from AIDS now, but I can build a memorial garden to him on Farmville. TNX #OLPC”
Far from turning children into high-flying software developers, as OLPC had hoped, the project has instead honed their ability to be ruthlessly sarcastic and bitchy via social media. “It’s worked so badly that it’s really going well,” Nicholas Negroponte, OLPC Chairman, said. “Sarcasm, and self-aggrandising messages via social media are usually the province of the developed world, so the fact that these malnourished kids are doing it too means our mission to get them developed has been an inadvertent success.”
Additionally, in a bid to lift the spirits of those under the control of Joseph Kony, the charity is also considering implementing “One Laptop Per Child Soldier.”
“If we can just offer a glimpse of hope to these children that being rich and whitemakes you a completely clueless arsehole,” Negroponte added, “then maybe they won’t feel so bad about being armed slaves.”
