One Laptop per Child

OLPC: http://laptop.org/en/
"
Mission Statement: To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning. When children have access to this type of tool they get engaged in their own education. They learn, share, create, and collaborate. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future."

Is it so simple? Give a laptop, change the world... I'm not sure about the functionality of this project. Of course it is good to encourage people to contribute the development process of the third world but I guess these type of projects are like annexes. People always tend to help the poor with the things like giving money, clothes or laptops. How can we provide a help for fundamentality?

outline

Computer Science: Third World Vs. First World

*Definitions of Third World-First World and the situations that seperates them (Digital Divide)
*How much computer science developed in these countries (Concrete information)
*Internet Usage
*Education
*The status of free software in third world
*The approachs of First World to the Third World in computer technology
*Conclusion

What does "third world" mean?

The definition, “third world” was born during the Cold War (a military and political tension that existed between Soviet Union and the western countries [in the first instance USA], from the mid-1940s to the early 1990s). There were no first or second world definition before third world. French demographer Alfred Sauvy coined the term third world in referring to countries currently called either "developing" or "under-developed". And now the term is using to define the countries which are in the outside of the industrially developed countries (and of course a developed industry brings a developed economy, health, education and so on) which can be called the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Because of being an outsider, these countries are generally exposed to be controlled by some powerful ones. If I try to possess or absorb the etymology of the term, probably I need many things, such as larger time, a library, deeper and deeper research etc… But the general definition should satisfy me to search for a different aspect of the third world. Actually it is not hard to understand the categorization of the countries with this way but I’m not sure about the authority that decides which country is a part of the third world. These answers are a little bit helpful for me:
"http://www.wisegeek.com/who-decides-which-countries-are-part-of-the-third-world.htm"
"http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-third-world-and-why-is-it-called-that.htm"

While reading some other things about third world, I jumped to interest times of Cold War and that brought me to Iron Curtain, then I realized I make myself to go that controversial part of the history. Every event in the history are connected with each other so it is not surprising that I'm jumping here from there, there from here... Time is everything now for doing my jobs however again I’m sitting on the Berlin Wall…

"http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,,-80627,00.html"
"http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-wor3.htm"
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World"
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War"
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc"
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989"

Ramanujan.

A great mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan is from India:
This means that he is from one of the "third world countries". Probably his nationality has a meaning to many people who finds important the nationalities of persons. However, I believe a nationality is a hypocrite. In this case, it looks necessary to examine the Ramanujan's life for concidering the situation between "the individuals" and "the nations" while trying to develop a main theme for my major research paper.

Young Ramanujan:

the real beginning

It was hard to choose my research topics because it was necessary to foresee which one would be better for me. In some way I chose them and my first presentation is already done last week. Maybe it would give a clear shape to my research diary blog if I write my research topics:

-Text Analysis: “The Emperor's Old Clothes” by Tony Hoare (March 3rd)

-Major Research Project: Computer Science: First World versus Third World (March 31st)

-Prominent Person Profile: Kevin Kelly (May 5th)

I was familiar with “Hoare” from first year researchs (not much), that's why I chose his paper. I thought impoving that little information must be necessary. I love Hoare's gradually developed career and learning that steps from his own expressions was useful and enjoyable. Because of the same reason, I chose Kevin Kelly, I knew more about him. I think “We are the web” is a really visionary article and it is attractive for me to research about its writer.

I think my major project will get me in trouble. I realized this when I started to search about it. The first sources that I found are generally mentioned to the economical and political discussions.This issue is related with the big inequality in the world and I guess trying to cover the whole topic is going to be a big work. Pessimism is my faithful friend... Anyway, there are 20 days in front of me to the deadline!

Finally this blog is now activated...

Hoare's intensive speech

"The Emperor's Old Clothes" is an award acceptence speech which Hoare did at the ACM Annual Conference, in 1980 and it was published in Communications of the ACM in 1981. He won the Turing Award "for his fundamental contributions to the definition and design of programming languages." While reading this long speech, I was a little surprised to see that the speech includes many personal experiences of Hoare and some of his emotional stories. Although being personal things, all of them gives ideas related with programming, computing or being a programmer, briefly the needed things for a computer science student. Actually I feel more as a computer science student when I read these type of things because we see the improving processes of big computer scientists. But also I want to feel like a programmer (when will it happen??)..
From The Emperor's Old Clothes:
"Programmers are always surrounded by complexity; we cannot avoid it. Our applications are complex because we are ambitious to use our computers in ever more sophisticated ways. Programming is complex because of the large number of conflicting objectives for each of our programming projects. If our basic tool, the language in which we design and code our programs, is also complicated, the language itself becomes part of the problem rather than part of its solution. "

For me it is really important to be aware of what is simplicity and complexity, and how they are related with each other. I don't know the level of awareness of myself yet. However, from the difficulties that I've been going through in programming, I can see how hard to provide simplicty while designing. And this makes me close to the past experiences of programming people.
There is a writing which mentioned to some of Hoare's ideas:
http://americas.springone.com/blog/rod_johnson/2008/01/happy_birthday_tony_hoare.html
While writing my paper it was helped me to evaluate the text.

I misunderstood the story that Hoare tells in the end of his speech, Emperor's Old Clothes. I read again after learning what he really tried to express with using and changing that old story. And second time was more clear and meaningful. Yes, simple is the best and kings should be naked.