this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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There was a story years ago about some scientists who dropped a box of tablets into a village somewhere that had no previous contact with modern tech. They went back some time later, and the kids had figured out, not only how to use them, but had networked them too. I wonder what ever happened with that, or if it was even true? I suppose I should google it.
https://www.fastcompany.com/2681011/ethiopian-kids-hacked-their-donated-tablets-in-just-five-months
Jfc, the racism oozing from that statement.. 🤢
Even this first paragraph by the author. These kids clearly already know how to fucking read, there’s written words in the background of the photos, including stuff that looks written by a child.
Yeah, the whole framing is just so white-saviour/noble savage esque..
E: and before I get a "well how are they supposed to frame it??!1" - "kids given tablets for the first time easily learn not only how to use them, but personalise them too". Simple.
The first bolded part, that's just lol. But for the second, the youth literacy rate there is 55%. It's low enough that it might not be that horrible of an assumption. But combined with the first part, yeah...
The literacy rate in the US has 54% of the adult population reading under an 8th grade comprehension level. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2020/09/09/low-literacy-levels-among-us-adults-could-be-costing-the-economy-22-trillion-a-year/?sh=5c4986554c90
Not sure what the US has to do with this. But I guess if you wanted to compare the literacy rates, Ethiopia is at 51.8 adult literacy rate and the US at 86%.
Not sure what we get out of that comparison though.
That line reads like some Boomer who has no idea how computers work. Doing what they did to those tablets required the prior ability to read.
whoever dropped off those tablets and wrote this article should probably try it again on North Sentinel Island. I think that's the effect they were hoping for.
I think it was about the kids never having seen computers, so the tablets would be meaningless to them.
And boxes are fun
My cat likes to play with boxes.
But she likes to play on the keyboard too… 🤔
a village with no modern technology. How did they keep the tablets charged?
OLPC’s latest trial in DIY education involved delivering Motorola Xoom tablets and solar chargers with custom software to two remote rural villages in Ethiopia where literacy rates are close to zero.
Maybe they had electricity
Electricity is pretty old
I wouldn’t even count early computers as modern technology. If it took up an entire room, that’s not really modern.
Ethiopian village running a mainframe
Every morning at 4am, the village children wake up. With swatters in hand, they race into the memory banks, ready to debug the relays before the morning batch job is run.
So are computers
https://feddit.uk/comment/6006965 They were given solar chargers with the tablets.