The $100 notebook
Here's another breathless story on the $100 (actually, looks like it will be $200) notebook. There's some cool things about this, including the fact that it can be powered by a hand crank. However, there are a number of simple problems too -
- For the truly poor, access to laptops isn't a solution. Access to clean water is way, way higher on the scale
- Tech support. Ok - you hand out a few hundred in some remote village. What the heck do the new users do when there are problems?
This is a pie in the sky solution, IMHO. It's like deciding to hand out cheap cars, and only later noticing that there are no gas stations for the recipients to use. I understand that the people behind this are well intentioned - but laptops are only useful when there's a hell of a lot of other infrastructure supporting them. The well intentioned folks behind this plan need to aim a lot lower.
Comments
I think you're being too harsh
[sean] November 17, 2005 10:41:50.779
The "breathless" stories grate on me too, but this will be a big step forward for a lot of communities (the ones who are past the "access to clean water" stage).
As for tech support: I've never called tech support in my life and I still manage to scrape by. They'll figure it out because they have no other option. Humans are pretty much the same everywhere - smart.
To assume that we (the educated world) needs to lead them by the hand into the tech age reeks of an elitism that indicates that you've never visited a place where people live without running water and electricity.
I disagree
[Kevin Hostelley] November 17, 2005 11:04:12.068
First off, a little sucking up, I really enjoy reading your Blog.
However, I disagree with your opinion that they should be aiming lower. It seems to me that plenty of people have been aiming lower for an awfully long time. Maybe by aiming high it will shake things up enough to get the disadvantaged out of the "rut" of poverty they've been in.
Well...
[Ian Prince] November 17, 2005 12:56:45.464
James, there are quite a few good comments on just the issues you bring up over here. I tend to agree with Fred Mudhai here: at this stage journalists shouldn't be too sceptical - or a potentially great idea could be stopped dead in its tracks.
Besides, as I've reported, it comes installed with Smalltalk so maybe some more optimism is called for!
I thought the problem it was trying to solve...
[Sean M] November 17, 2005 17:47:13.452
Was in places where they do have access to clean water, but are so remote, that trucking paper/books into them is more expsnsive than providing each kid with a cdma/sat connected laptop, and having them download the books to their laptop.
At least that is what they're doing with the refurbished laptops at the moment. These $100 laptops are just going to end up being cheaper than refurbishing 100 million second hand laptops.
But you are right, in those places where they don't even have access to clean water, who cares about a laptop
I'm a big fan of the $100 laptop. It might even shake up the western worlds education systems
It will only get cheaper
[Carl Gundel] November 18, 2005 10:31:06.322
If this computer provides the true essentials of computing and doesn't stack feature on feature, it should become slowly less and less expensive. Five years from now it may be a $50 computer. There are some places in the world where clean water is hard to find, but there are also tons of places that aren't so hard up but are poor. They would benefit from this. I imagine that the real purpose of this computer isn't to teach office software skills but to give people a real medium for realizing what is computer is really good for. I'm sure Papert and Kay wouldn't be involved if they didn't have some plan for making this happen. It's an imagination machine.