Contradictheory: Digitalisation is not about giving everyone a smartphone

Post-Covid-19 and the world wants to move online. But technology is a part of the puzzle, not the solution. Photo: 123rf.com

It has been suggested that one way we can help narrow the digital divide between haves and have-nots in Malaysia is to simply give a laptop (or equivalent) to every child. As someone who once was involved in a project to give computers to nearly 100 school laboratories, I think this is potentially a very bad idea.

Actually, you don’t even have to listen to me. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, initiated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s luminary Nicholas Negroponte, has its own share of critics. The OLPC was a noble idea, that computers should be cheaper so everybody can have one and nobody is left behind. But there were issues with parts of the implementation, which began in the latter half of the 2000s. Specifically, if you give hardware without adequate training or support, it results in the technology not being used. Estimates given for some implementations were that computer usage actually saw a drop between 27% and 59% due to hardware problems and lack of knowledge.