That is the reason why I think we should look at information access in a different context. (I have a smiliar 'thinking' posting in the $100 PC thread)
How many computers can we give out? We always miss out somebody. But what if people can access information via the TV for example?? No matter how poor a person is, there is a TV in the house. Some have more than one. And the nice thing about it is, one can swithc between watching entertainment the normal way (TV), and using the same monitor for home work and internet access. All with the same piece of equipment for a price of 200 USD. And it is sitting there in the living room. Remember the time when we were using dumb terminals on a company intra net? In the 70s, 80s?? (just to show you I am no longer young!). There is really nothing wrong with using a dumb terminal as long as everyone can have equal access to information. And as long as one can access internet via the TV screen.... These days there is wireless keyboard therefore nobody has to hang a keyboard to the TV... Key board is cheap, TV monitor is cheap and is available, plus 50$ per month for ADSL, and in actual fact cable ADSL comes in from the same pipe... There are many clever people in the IT world, I am sure they can think up some way to do it. That is, if they want to. Personally I think the whole problem with IT/DDN is because it is market and money making driven. After all these companies such as Microsoft want to make money. If we can access information using dumb terminal, that would mean they will not be able to sell their products to millions of people. Can they? And this crazy concept of mine is not just to bridge the DD in the US. Just like I said, no matter how poor a person is, any where in the world, the first luxurious thing the family can afford to buy, 99% is a TV. NOT a computer. I harp on the same thing. DDN is not a technological problem. It is a social and human problems. I strongly believe if WE really want to achieve improving DDN in any part of the world, we have to look at things differently. Instead of looking at producing product for EACH and every individual, we have to start looking at how to work to SHARE resources. Instead of looking at distributed model, we have to look at how to benifit from CENTRALIZED resouces. Cindy [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ 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.
