One Hammer Per Child

As much of the high-tech world continues to focus its attention on the problem of the digital divide, two recent stories offer an instructive contrast in the priorities we choose for providing technology to children. eWeek reported on the efforts of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization to overcome the problem of building a $100 laptop with a display "that is rugged, inexpensive and readable in a wide variety of conditions from low light to bright sunlight." The article included an interview with Mary Lou Jepsen, the CTO of OLPC, who explained the technological choices that could make such a laptop economically feasible.
Three days later, the International Herald Tribune ran an article about child laborers in sub-Saharan Africa. More than 25 percent of children below the age of 14 in sub-Saharan Africa work for a living. Many of the children profiled -- some as young as 7 or 8 -- work in quarries, using hammers to beat "football-size chunks" of rock into powder, which can be sold for construction work at the rate of approximately $3 for half of a cement bag filled with powder. One nine-year-old boy who does not have a hammer uses a thick steel bolt to beat the rock. Still other child laborers are found in prostitution, hazardous jobs on plantations and mines, and other forms of work that are outlawed by international conventions and domestic law.
The issue is not whether it makes sense for OLPC to be pursuing a dream of $100 laptops for children around the world. In developing regions, low-cost computer and Internet access could be highly beneficial to children, and for that matter their parents and grandparents. But if some technologists can devote time and money to building and distributing cheaper laptops to the world, surely others could devote some more time to thinking about what affordable technologies might be developed for poorer regions of the world so children can survive -- and perhaps one day attend schools where those $100 laptops would be available.