Toyama 5-7

I really enjoyed continuing to read Kentaro Toyama, as I find a lot of his points about technology and advancement really interesting. In chapter 5 of his book Geek Heresy, he speaks of camera technology at a school in India and how it apparently was the cause of the schools and teachers success. What happened was they decided to document teacher attendance by camera, to ensure that the teachers were showing up to teach their classes. However, they attributed the full success of the class to the camera technology holding them accountable for their attendance. However, what they did not factor in was the years of hard work behind the teachers lessons. This goes to show how sometimes we give technology a lot more credit than it deserves. We have to remember that humans are still valuable too.
I also really enjoyed his analogy with the ant and the grasshopper. In this analogy about work and happiness, the grasshopper is content being warm and happy all summer while the ant works very hard to prepare for winter. And when winter comes, the ant is content because it worked hard to prepare and the grasshopper is cold and miserable. The moral of the story is that long term happiness does not come quickly or easily, it is something you have to work at. I think that this idea can not only be applied to happiness, but also to helping countries in need as well. Merely sending laptops in attempts to help education is not going to create long-term change or well being. Fixing the problem overnight might sound like a tempting way to help, but in reality it is not helping in the long run.