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Breaking the mold
masukuma
#1 Posted : Wednesday, February 08, 2017 2:07:02 PM
Rank: Elder


Joined: 10/4/2006
Posts: 13,821
Location: Nairobi
I saw this photo

and unlike most of you who asked questions such as "Priority are upside down. Where are the chairs and desks?"

I remembered a certain statement i once heard... Africans have always kept 2 technologies running
1) Cars
2) Mobile Phones
regardless of where it is on this dry and desparate continent... you know why? those two have VALUE and i came up with a conculusion that if tech has value to the users - they will figure a way to keep it running.

I suddenly remembered this video...


Kid's figure it on their own and remembered a statement from the biography of Steve Jobs I was reading juzi as he recalls a visit to a Turkish Bath in Istanbul:
Quote:

I had a real revelation. We were all in robes, and they made some Turkish coffee for us. The professor explained how the coffee was made very different from everywhere else, and I realized, “So f***ing what?” Which kids even in Turkey give a shit about Turkish coffee? All day I had looked at young people in Istanbul. They were all drinking what every other kid in the world drinks, and they were wearing clothes that looked like they were bought at the Gap, and they were all using cell phones. They were like kids everywhere else. When we’re making products, there is no such thing as a Turkish phone, or a music player that young people in Turkey would want that’s different from one young people elsewhere would want. We’re just one world now.

and another one
Quote:
We’re going to end up with a generic world. Where everybody is going to be exactly the same…Even Africa is becoming like that…seeing everything leveled down to the same attitude is going to be most depressing. I look forward to the differences. I need them, I respect them. So, if everything levels out it will be boring. I don’t know what I’ll do for a living.
All Mushrooms are edible! Some Mushroom are only edible ONCE!
Wakanyugi
#2 Posted : Wednesday, February 08, 2017 5:21:30 PM
Rank: Veteran


Joined: 7/3/2007
Posts: 1,634
This is very interesting. I too think those who are arguing that we should provide classrooms, desks and even schools first before we give laptops to children are missing the point. Life is not a linear process. The opportunity offered by those laptops to young people may end being more important to them that the fact that they learned under a tree. If Africa has proven anything to the world it is the capacity to leapfrog stages of so called development.

I remember a statement that Mandela made in 1996 or thereabouts at a communications conference. He said something like 3 quarters of Africans have never made a phone call. Those were the days of analogue technology. Can the same be said today? What would have happened if we had agreed, like some argued, that Africa should focus on wiring the continent first before demanding the, then new, expensive and unproven, digital technology?
"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." (Niels Bohr)
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