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The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, with a dual-mode display—both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white reflective and sunlight-readable at 3X the resolution. The laptop will have a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have four USB ports. The laptops will have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network. The laptops will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data.

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This reminds me so much of Jean Chretien going around back in '97 or '98 saying that every classroom needs a computer and the internet while 1 in 5 children lived in poverty in Canada.

Besides, more "plastic fantastic", half of which will end up in the landfill anyway.

How about a billion jackets or a billion beds for kids? Or a billion healthy meals or a billion glasses of water? Or a billion pieces of fruit? Or a billion houses for homeless, orphaned kids or kids who live in refugee camps? Or a billion years of peace?

I'm agreeing with the idea of feeding them, making sure they have decent drinking water, a place of shelter, someone to give them a cuddle and tell them they are wonderful treasures.

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Originally posted by anne cameron:
...and then who pays the monthly internet fee? Give impoverished kids a computer they won't be able to use because internet access costs more than the family has to spend on food?

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The laptop will have a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have four USB ports. The laptops will have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network. The laptops will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data.

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What about connectivity? Aren't telecommunications services expensive in the developing world?

When these machines pop out of the box, they will make a mesh network of their own, peer-to-peer. This is something initially developed at MIT and the Media Lab. We are also exploring ways to connect them to the backbone of the Internet at very low cost.

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[ 08 February 2006: Message edited by: Albireo ]

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Originally posted by cogito ergo sum:
No one is suggesting that those laptops should take priority over food so what's wrong with wanting to provide computers (and access to the modern world and education) to poor kids who aren't dying of hunger?

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Besides, I understand that the first countries in line (who buy the laptops themselves, by the way) are Brazil, South Africa, Thailand and Egypt - certainly not well off, but far better off than most developing countries.

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Originally posted by anne cameron:
. . . send a few crates of books.

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Originally posted by cogito ergo sum:
No one is suggesting that those laptops should take priority over food so what's wrong with wanting to provide computers (and access to the modern world and education) to poor kids who aren't dying of hunger?

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"The modern world"? What's that? Is that what we have here? Pollution? Traffic jams? Garbage in the streets? People getting fat and sick on fast food? People buying consumer goods (junk) that they don't need? Everybody working too hard and living too fast? Stuck in office towers all day breathing fake air where you can't even open a window? Our kids in daycares from birth? Driving too fast? Horrible car accidents? Drinking and driving and dying? Teenage angst and teenage drug use and teen suicides? And our version of poverty in the "modern" world? And food banks?

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Originally posted by nuclearfreezone:
Computers do not equal education. I was educated quite well without one, thank you very much.

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Yeah, I would like this project a lot more if teachers in the developing world had proposed it themselves. Instead, it sounds like another instance of one group making assumptions about what another group needs and then delivering it without asking.

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Originally posted by nuclearfreezone:
Oh yeah, and after you've introduced them to the "modern" world don't forget to send little packets of Ritalin and Prozac. They'll need it.

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Originally posted by nuclearfreezone:
Hungry kids can't learn.
So, instead of providing computers to poor kids who aren't hungry, why not take all that money and spend it on taking care of poor kids who are hungry, first, and then if there's anything left over, buy computers.
Besides, do we really need to "modernize" the whole world? Do we really need to turn the whole world into a consumer "heaven"?
Computers do not equal education. I was educated quite well without one, thank you very much. Yes, books are expensive. But they don't go out of date, they don't need new operating systems, and they work without batteries or electricity. And they don't have to be new books. There are millions of used books out there. Maybe they can do a book drop on their way to bombing the next country.

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Originally posted by Andrew_Jay:
I understand that that hideous green colour was chosen to deter thefts or trade on the black market - i.e. it makes them very idetifiable, and suspicious outside the hands of a kid.

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Originally posted by Papal Bull:

Not really. I'm on the computer more than most people and I've never been on either medication. That's just silly cynicism; it's irresponsible doctors that like to make the diagnosis that give you the medication that creates the problem. But whateva.

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Originally posted by AWd:

How do you propose we successfully feed starving kids? I'm not saying we should not try, but I have yet to hear 'how'. Can it be done without creating another famine in the future?

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We produce enough food right now to feed everyone. North Americans waste 40-50% of our food. It's thrown out or wasted. George Bush, instead of asking for $120 billion to feed the people, asks instead for $120 billion to kill the people. We have more wars now than ever before in the history of mankind and I suspect more are on the way.

Instead of sending planes full of bombs and soldiers we could send planes full of food or clothes or beds or whatever.

As for requiring electricity, these laptops don't require one to constantly change batteries or to be plugged in to the AC line current.

That's one reason why they decided to go with laptops rather than cast-off desktops from the developed world.

These laptops have a crank-up generator which charges an internal battery. This technology has been around for years and was most recently used in the "Baygen" series of portable radios built for use in the third world.

I have a crank-up powered radio myself...that also runs off of solar power.

The other thing that these laptops will do is provide a light source in homes that currently don't have electricity. They are currently being tested now in remote Cambodian villages.

They also have built-in wi-fi cards so that local area networks can easily be built and yes over the long haul they can be connected wirelessly to the internet.

They also have a very rugged design so that they won't break if they get dropped or rained-on or whatever.

Is supplying kids with laptop computers going to solve every single problem in the third world? Of course not. Nobody claims it will.

But it will help deal with the "digital divide" between those who are "connected" to the world and those who are not...to those who have access to information and those who do not.

Information is power and power is something that folks in the third world don't have.

Books are incredibly expensive and cost alot of money to ship. So is paper, blackboards, chalk, pens, pencils etc. The need for alot of this stuff is eliminated. Ever calculated the shipping cost of sending 10,000 math textbooks from say London, England to Nairobi, Kenya? But that math textbook can be shrunk down to say a one or two megabyte .pdf file and instantly transferred to every kid in a classroom.

Hell kids in Ontario have a hard time getting textbooks. Third world kids will wait forever.

The machines run on Linux which can easily be adapted to local languages that Microsoft and other big software vendors aren't interested in. Window$ is not currently available in Yoruba.

In fact I understand that Bill Gates is rather pissed that he's been left out of the project.

They can become an economic development tool. A kid might be able to help one of their parents sell local crafts on the net for instance.

They can help with the dissemination of basic health, agricultural, environmental and other sorts of information.

Sending food aid might help in the short run to deal with a crisis but it doesn't help over the long run. In fact, often times donated food puts local farmers out of business.

Korea, Taiwan, China and Singapore were third and fourth world nations with hundreds of millions of hungry people leading up to the 1950's. How did they transform themselves into the Asian Tiger economies that they are today ?. Did the IMF suddenly decide to create a billionaire investor class to make all the right moves in those countries?. Why are IMF darlings Thailand, East Timor or Argentina still struggling with basic infrastructure, and why does Singapore, with very few natural resources own the lowest infant mortality rate and oil-rich Angola, one of the worst ?.

[ 08 February 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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It's a weirdly consumerist approach to solving a problem, isn't it? The idea that acquisition of a material good is the solution? It just seems strange to think that the ability to provide power to third world people, or education to children, lies in the aquisition of a plastic box.

That's not necessarily a criticism. Just more of an observation about our value system (materialistic) and how that's being translated in global education efforts.

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No more so than giving someone a shovel. Its alot easier to dig a hole in the ground with a shovel then it is to try to do it with your bare hands.

If there's a need that laptops will meet, that's great. If people in the third world are thinking "I would love to accomplish x but I don't have the material object required to do so, and that object is a laptop," then I say give laptops to everybody! I just haven't read much to indicate that is the case. What I have read suggests that this is a great idea cooked up in an MIT lab, not one initiated by the laptop recipients themselves, and the recipients frankly aren't that sure how helpful the laptops are going to be.

The reasoning seems to be "these people don't know what they are missing, they don't know enough to know that they need this technology, and once they get it everything will change!" and I'm dubious about that.

[ 08 February 2006: Message edited by: vmichel ]

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Originally posted by radiorahim:
The computers are a tool...albeit a pretty powerful tool that this project puts into the hands of third world kids.

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The computers are a tool...albeit a pretty powerful tool that this project puts into the hands of third world kids.

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I agree with everything radiorahim has said in this thread, with the possible exception of spelling it "Window$" .

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I agree with everything radiorahim has said in this thread, with the possible exception of spelling it "Window$"

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Hey...I've got a reputation to live up to

Saw an interview on the boob tube recently with a grade school teacher in Mozambique. What was the first thing on his "school room shopping list"? He wanted a computer. He didn't even have electricity in his rural school yet. The guy would probably kill for a beatup old 486.

Last time I was in Cuba (and I visited a couple of schools) what did they really want more of? Computers! And that was ten years ago.

What is the Brazilian government doing right now in poor neigbhourhoods? Setting up free internet cafes...running Linux and free open source software to cut costs. I've read about similar cafes being setup in Ghana...even though the AC is so unreliable that they keep frying the power supplies.

Books are nice. I read them all the time. But they're heavy and schools need lots of them. Know what it costs to send a 30 kilogram parcel from Toronto to Kenya via surface parcel post these days? $180.

How many books can one store as .pdf files even on a puny little 500 megabyte flash memory card?

Lots!...and on every subject imaginable.

A teacher can easily zap a book around a classroom using the network created by the built-in Wi-Fi cards in a matter of minutes. That's powerful stuff.

Where is the open source software revolution really going on these days? In Asia, Africa and Latin America. Where does the world's most popular desktop Linux distro come from? Not from the U.S. or Europe but from South Africa. And the third most popular distro is a French/Brazilian distro.