Difference between revisions of "325--2011--Week 13 Questions/Comments"
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At first, I was a bit confused by this slideshow; it would seem as if computers and other machinery are being donated by Europe and the United States in order to “reduce the digital divide,” but it certainly doesn’t appear that the citizens of Ghana are using these donations in the way in which they were intended. Instead, the citizens of Ghana have decided that they would rather tear the machines apart, and extract copper, brass, and aluminum. My question is this: When the United States and Europe decided to make these donations did they honestly think that the citizens of Ghana were going to know how to use computers? Or did they know that the people were only going to want to tear the computers apart for their materials? Considering the U.S. and Europe intended to “reduce the digital divide,” this leads me to believe that they thought poor countries like Ghana would welcome the donations with open arms, and immediately begin their journey in becoming technologically savvy like the rest of the civilized world. This, in my opinion, is completely ridiculous. You cannot simply drop off a bunch of a bunch of old computers in a very poor country and expect the citizens to be able to use them. It almost seems as if the United States and Europe were only donating all of these old machines because they had no other place to put them, and could improve their image a little bit by acting philanthropic. Again, it is hard for me to believe that the U.S. and Europe didn't know what the citizens were really going to do with all of the machines, and so I wonder why the "hope for reducing the digital divide" statement was made in the first place. ~Kevin Gottschalk | At first, I was a bit confused by this slideshow; it would seem as if computers and other machinery are being donated by Europe and the United States in order to “reduce the digital divide,” but it certainly doesn’t appear that the citizens of Ghana are using these donations in the way in which they were intended. Instead, the citizens of Ghana have decided that they would rather tear the machines apart, and extract copper, brass, and aluminum. My question is this: When the United States and Europe decided to make these donations did they honestly think that the citizens of Ghana were going to know how to use computers? Or did they know that the people were only going to want to tear the computers apart for their materials? Considering the U.S. and Europe intended to “reduce the digital divide,” this leads me to believe that they thought poor countries like Ghana would welcome the donations with open arms, and immediately begin their journey in becoming technologically savvy like the rest of the civilized world. This, in my opinion, is completely ridiculous. You cannot simply drop off a bunch of a bunch of old computers in a very poor country and expect the citizens to be able to use them. It almost seems as if the United States and Europe were only donating all of these old machines because they had no other place to put them, and could improve their image a little bit by acting philanthropic. Again, it is hard for me to believe that the U.S. and Europe didn't know what the citizens were really going to do with all of the machines, and so I wonder why the "hope for reducing the digital divide" statement was made in the first place. ~Kevin Gottschalk | ||
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| + | The slide that struck me the most was the one that spoke of how the computers in the dump were sent there to reduce the digital divide. I can see what Europe and America is trying to do but clearly the people living there need the money earned from the metal salvaged from the computers more than the anything they could get through the computer. It shows the differences between the cultures of America and Ghana. –Megan Mc. | ||
