On Sep 14, 2011, at 5:12 PM, Wolfgang Spraul wrote:
The open community is expert at doing stuff simultaneously,
unaware of each other. Which is good for intellectual development,
but bad if they don't come into the general spotlight and become
a part of the community knowledge base.
He. This is the day of great wisdoms on our list, and I couldn't
agree more with you.
Slightly related I am trying to aggregate anything interesting and
truly about 'open' hardware on the planet feed. In order to avoid
the duplication you are talking about.
http://en.qi-hardware.com/planet/
I'm planning a similar feature but focused on the concept of "open" in
general and what impacts it has had, has and will have and try to draw
conclusions of what will happen when you combine projects X, Y and Z.
Something like Open Society Watch, mimicing Human Rights Watch. I feel
there is a need for that.
At least I haven't found a source for "open" that takes it seriously
enough, most are just "news". As far as I can tell, "open" will be the
next/global societal foundation, it challenges both top-down and down-
top centralised authorative political models as it is decentralised
and chaotic/evolutionary at the core.
It's a bit amusing to see both the US and EU run around like crazy
chicken trying to find out what went wrong, and trying to patch holes
in the iceberg of bureocracy that's massed up over the decades. Noone
seems to realise that information technology replaces bureocracy and
in effect representative democracy. I think there will be some form of
meritocracy as a ruling model and non-profit organisations as
upholders of infrastructure in the transition years.
Wish Ayn Rand and Karl Marx was around to see that technology would
fuse their political visions. Pure socialism and pure capitalism are
not so different after all when individuals become free with the help
of free technology and information. But they had no way of knowing
that so can't blame them for being overly optimistic about their
respective views.
Any particular details you are thinking of?
Well. Your list is pretty far fetched still. What do you actually
want to do?
I want to create a first generation completely FLOSS one-size-fits-all
computer. And I mean "all", not just the 30% of the "world" population
that has access to the "world" wide web.
Requsites so far:
- Fixed hardware - To achieve the same focus as Apple has achieved by
controlling hardware themselves.
- Remote storage/processing - To be able to run it on GSM networks for
global access.
- Max three programming languages - To minimise the learning curve
(VHDL?, C/C++, JS should do it?).
- Robust documentation - To allow school kids and global corporations
to reengineer together.
- Start small - Focus on giving the hard-working open researchers
something nice to play/work with, tinkerers will inherit the earth
when the nerds go out of busyness.
What's your part, what do you expect others to do?
Well, don't know what I'm supposed to do yet. There's so many
different initiatives and development is so fast that it feels better
to just stand by and watch for the time being. And I think just
discussing (and inspiring) is a venture in itself. The web needs it's
spiders.
What you say there is something like we want to have Apple's cash
reserves, RedHat's openess, and Intel's high-tech, somehow all
combined into one. Wouldn't that be cool? Well, yes, it would. So?
We have Apple's cash reserves, it's called tax money. Just need to
convince politicians it's our cash.
We have openess, we just need to have a unified way of presenting our
projects to each other.
We have Intel's high-tech of yesterday today and we will have todays
technology in a couple of years. The speed of processors are becoming
increasingly irrelevant because we can now do what we need to do and
heavy processing moving into the clouds.
It WILL be cool! I'm a designer/manager myself and after 13 years of
hard working as an entrepreneur I finally realised there is starting
to emerge a place for my peer group. So I sold my company and will now
devote the rest of my life to try and design/manage where I'm wanted.
You could take a Milkymist One board, and strip it down to the bare
essentials needed for your device. But what exactly are the criteria
for your device?
Specifications
- Processor (fast enough to run Linux + Chromium)
- RAM (enough)
- Flash Memory (enough)
- GSM (this is the hardest part?)
Connectivity
1 x Ethernet
2 x USB
1 x MiniUSB (like power adapters required in modern mobile phones)
1 x HDMI (if it's free to use?)
1 x Audio In
1 x Audio Out
+ Digital/Analogue I/O pins like on the Arduino
Think that should cut it?
Hardware is not as configurable as software...
Which is why planning from a general perspective is so important. (Ie.
not from an egoistic "I-want-to-tinker" perspective.) It must adher to
the goal to give kids of all ages everywhere in the world a basic
computer that can be used to read WikiPedia, run FreeTube-movies and
be a source of understanding how information and technology is
changing society in itself.
Case or just plain board?
Plain board. Cases can be done by people who need to put food on the
table for their kids. And also other accessories.
No hardware at all? Which price do you
try to achieve?
As cheap as possible. Don't think it's relevant to make it before
price point dips below 50 USD/EUR. If it's cheap enough, it's not too
hard to convince schools to buy batches if there is a clear goal to
increase interest for electronics and programming among kids (and
girls especially).
Small volume or large volume?
Huge volume. :)
Who manufactures, who
sells?
The instructions and information on how to build it will be open and
free, so I guess anyone can manufacture and sell? Don't think the
Chinese will object to getting all the profit...
Who spreads the word?
We do!
Rasmus
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