There’s nothing left to explore.

The whole world has the internet and computers. Everyone’s communicating together quicker than ever, but we still haven’t done anything worthwhile with the power of instant communication. We’ve got all this technology, but it’s not improving the world as much as we thought it would.

Now we’re giving kids in the third world computers through the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program. Countries are buying up cheap laptops to give to kids, in the new computer arms race. What exactly, these computers are supposed to magically do is beyond anyone. Looking ahead, the laptops will probably do exactly what affordable PC’s did to the United States in the nineties.

Kids will get hypnotized by the screen, and disconnect from the world around them.

Giving a young poor kid a computer is like giving them a ticket out of all of the worries of the world. All they have to do is learn how to use it, and they’ll permanently escape all poverty. I know, because I was a young poor kid who got a computer.

When I was twelve, I got my first computer. It was a Pentium 75Mhz with 32 megs of RAM. Cell phones today have more computing power. But I got it and I knew it was something significant. I spent hundreds of hours on it, installing Linux, installing Windows, compiling, learning to program. I became very proficient, and developed an attitude.

Whatever time I spent on the computer away from family, away from friends was justified. It was my ticket to the easy life.

And so, days passed and years passed, and still I worked on the computer, absorbing everything. I waited for the day where I could redeem my check for all of the hard work.

Only, every other kid in the United States did the same damn thing. So, when it came time to cash in on all that knowledge, it wasn’t very highly valued. Years of life into a machine, with nothing back out.

This is what the kids in the third world are really getting with that laptop.

Because it’s inescapable, we live within the physical world. We thrive on human connection, the kind that doesn’t glow through a screen. This is forgotten when kids think they live within the plastic bubble of the computer and the screen. Instead of valuing and paying attention to what matters—time with family, volunteer work, school, etc—kids will go away into their own worlds, through the screens.

And it’s this disconnection with reality that causes a whole lot of problems. Television was bad, we thought, because it was just such a passive activity. Now, the internet is even worse, because the content is just as stupid as on TV, but it’s accepted as a productive activity.

What’s really being sold with these laptops is distraction. Give the third world laptops, and watch them waste their hours away on the internet instead of focusing on bettering their world, their land. It’s a distraction, plain and simple, and it will work. They’re thinking it’s a gift.

What the kids should do, instead, is focus on the things that matter, the things that make them different from the first world. Focus on healthy soil, focus on clean water, focus on clean air. A world view is being sold through these computers and the internet, one in which your land doesn’t matter. But in reality, your land is what matters the most. Just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you can stop eating food or drinking water or breathing.

The United States and the rest of the modern world has forgotten this, and mega corporations grow genetically engineered food for us. In fifty years we’ve become a nation in debt and on our way to a depression. Now none of us grow food, and the soil’s been abused. It will take hundreds of years to repair the damage done.

So save yourself, kids. Get out before you get sucked in like we did. Get sucked into believing the computers could redeem you from the world. It’s a lie, none of us get to escape its inconveniences. Embrace the world instead, and make it a better place. We need it more than we need an internet.

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