Pardon my late response, I've been a bit busy to answer this properly. I just had the time.
Just a brief intro. I love caramel. I always have. One day, growing up, I learned how to make caramel by boiling cans of condensed milk for 4 hours at low heat in a cast iron pot. I learned how to make what I needed, and I spent less money buying it and invested my time in making it instead. I saved some money, and I could spend money on computer parts and magazines. So learning how to meet my own 'need' helped me to become somewhat computer literate, enough so that people still pay me to do things related to computers. Is making caramel from condensed milk going to decrease the digital divide? Probably not (though it is a neat trick that requires some experimentation). What will is people being able to focus their time, energy and money on more technical pursuits. Dr. Steve Eskow wrote: >(Disclaimer: I have interest,commercial or otherwise, in Dell Computers. I >have great interest in machines and practices that will narrow the digital >divide.) > >Nicholas Negroponte preaches the values of the "personal" computer: each >child,each parent, each farmer,each soldier should have a private computer. >Thus his quest for the $100 computer, thus the search for the Simputer. > >I believe that the universal "personal" computer should be the ultimate >goal. > > I partially agree. I believe that the 'ultimate goal' in this context is really to have a personal computer that can be maintained locally, and doesn't require maintenance (the hidden cost). I've heard a lot of echoes of Negroponte's words. From these echoes, I can only surmise that Negroponte understands less than half of the problem quite well (I welcome his correction on this) - since his push *seems* to be to create a system which does not allow local people to repair and maintain their own systems. Attacking the problems of power cells is a big problem, but is hardly an issue which much effort has to be expended upon considering the vast amount of research that is happening outside of the Digital Divide. The battle for better batteries is a commercial issue, as well as an issue for the regions of the world where dependable electricity is a problem. The commercial entities are spending lots of money on R&D - and there has been progress. As far as solar powered, or wind-up powered - these are not new things either. A simple DC dynamo can be used to power many things; I've personally set up a desktop system that ran off of solar power as an experiment. The screen technology the laptop project brags of - well, that remains to be seen, but unless there's a drastic (greater than 30%) reduction in power requirement of the screen, I don't see what the big deal is. If it's such a quantum leap, I expect the technology will be deployed in commercial products that will lower the cost of the commercial products. Wait. Maybe this is just to market a commercial product. That makes sense. Answers to questions like, "Who is funding the MIT Project?", "What will the minimum order be?", "What are the specifics of these technologies that will advance computing for the developing world?", "Who will own these technologies?", and, "If you can get a Dell Laptop for $289 now with Windows XP, couldn't it be closer to $100 with Linux instead?" remain unanswered, and in not being answered they seem to have an uncanny likeness to a commercial product. Maybe this article will be of some use: http://infotech.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1116359.cms And what about this? http://openflows.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/27/1339254 Then there's the Mobilis, for $230: http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=12067&hed=%24230+Portable+PC+Hits+Market (incidentally, this would be a better comparison against that Dell, Steve) And, unless you missed the article in Red Herring about MIT's $100 laptop: http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=11203&hed=The+hundred-buck+PC "Only orders of 1 million or more units will be accepted." To a farmer in the developing world, this is a $100,000,000 laptop. And the odds of him finding 999,999 friends who want one and will mass order with s/he is probably somewhere near the range of impossibility (unless they get a website, start a discussion board, buy some GoogleAds, and maybe even do a few SPAM attacks). My mother has a word for this that upon discussing this, I finally understand: "Peh." >There are, however, "proximate" as well as "ultimate" goals, there are >"appropriate" and "intermediate" technologies as well as "advanced" >technologies--there are, that is, advantages to using bicycles rather than >automobiles for certain situations calling for transport. > > Well, if you want to sell fish, that's fine. I'd rather that the world used to learn to use their own resources to fish. We can decorate our statements, I suppose, but Logic of a Set can only be demonstrated to work within a Set. >So: a village, on the wrong side of the digital divide, deserves access to >computers and the benefits they bring. > >One possibility is that we--a donor agency-- generate some $10,000 US and >purchase 20 Amida Simputers for 20 of the villagers. > >Another possibility is that we spend $300 US or $600 or $900 and put one, >two, or three entry level desktop computers in a school or church or other >public space. > > I'd rather that the country that the villages exist in develop their own infrastructure to supply their own demand. Until a PC costs the same amount as one stick of sugar cane, or one hand of bananas, or whatever these countries produce - they will always be economically disadvantaged, they will always be technologically disadvantaged, they will always suffer brain drain (unless all these lovely immigration laws continue to change the way they have been - or really smart people who could do the world some real good will be cultivating crops), and they will always suffer being on the wrong side of the digital divide. Cost? We're really talking about economics. That's the logic that exists outside of the set. And that logic exists only if there is demand for the products. And do we really expect to create computer literate people and expect them NOT to want to work in their own country dealing with the latest in technologies? >Negroponte explicitly resists the idea of shared and public computing, and >wants immediately to move to personal computing. > > Good for Negroponte. I hope he enjoys whatever he's doing. I have yet to be convinced that he's not just advancing the technology of the Digital Divide. >The down sides of personal computing are obvious, and extend well beyond the >matter of initial cost. Personal computing tends to make maintenance and >repair problems and costs also personal, for example, while social computing >allows a community of users to share such costs. > > I'm of the opinion that societies of made up of individuals, and that personal computers in a network can be social computing. Frankly, without support within a country for the machines that MIT Media lab is allegedly trying to create, I think it's pretty anti-social computing. I'll revise my opinion with sufficient data, of course. >Personal or social computing: which is the right road for those without >computers and their benefits to get access to them? > > It goes beyond computing; it's the ability to self-sustain computing within contexts of countries, regions, languages, specializations - and in some very obvious places, even gender. This is where the Simputer can be used... to train and develop an infrastructure that can build, maintain and service the Simputer and it's evolutions (or machines like the Simputer). It was developed with this in mind! It was developed so that local companies around the world could build and modify it. It's completely open! And as far as the caramel... as soon as I figure out how to grow a mobile coffee tree, I'll be sure to spread the word. :-) -- Taran Rampersad Presently in: San Jose, Costa Rica [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.knowprose.com http://www.easylum.net http://www.digitaldivide.net/profile/Taran "Criticize by creating." — Michelangelo _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
