Message-ID: <01I4QIEDR35Q8ZEZK6@ptag2.pt.Cyanamid.COM> Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 12:21:00 -0500 From: Bruce Freeman <mailto:freemanb@PT.CYANAMID.COM> Subject: Re[3]: Computers to Africa To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
I should probably refrain from comment, here, but perhaps apathy is worse than criticism. I have been following this thread, now, for a couple of days and have an unpleasant gut reaction to the direction some people seem to be going with it. I wish to emphasize that I speak ONLY for myself here.What is being said by some people is: don't send old technology. Fine. But is that to say that old technology is useless? Would you object to being sent clothes sewn by hand of cloth weaved by hand if you were naked? Perhaps it is too coarse for you tastes? (I'll refrain from further rhetoric and trust that the reader gets the gist from just one such example.)
What's the difference? Granted ten-year-old computers are less capable than modern ones, but they're vastly more capable than what was available twenty-five years ago when I was in college.
It seems to me that part of the problem may be people who don't want to go to the trouble of learning HOW to make ten-year-old technology work for them. Yet it is in just such an exercise that one learns the basics of modern technology, and just what level of technology is really needed to accomplish a given task.
Let's get things into perspective. Ten-year-old computers are perfectly fine for word processing, computer programming, exchanging email or controlling CNC machinery. Are these uses outmoded?
I understand the frustration expressed by some of having equipment and no manuals. But with the ability to transmit information world-wide in minutes, I fail to see how that should long remain an obstacle. Ask for the documentation over a Usenet and you might get it.
Bruce Freeman