Slashdot Mirror

I read an article a long time ago on how some Internet tools were changing things, but not the tools that you'd think. It was about Tripod and Google Earth. Tripod was taken over as the tool of the Underground. Google Earth had people in Arab countries (yeah, I know Iran's not Arabic, just read the article) question how their land policies favored the very few connected and screwed everyone else. One of the countries explicitly mentioned? Tunisia. I thought about that a lot during the Arab Spring.

So, even Google Earth is political. Remember when the Indians and Pakistanis were pissed at Microsoft on a few pixels that showed Kashmir belonging ever more slightly one than the other? This is much bigger.

You misinterpret the situation. Youtube won't be shut down because it has passed the cute cats litmus test.

Strong second for geekcorps.org. They've done exactly what it sounds like you're wanting to do, and they've done it in parts of Africa. (Mali, I believe, for one. A very different environment and culture than Togo, but still.) Ethan Zuckerman is a card-carrying geek, was involved with geekcorps, and has dozens of really useful Africa- and IT-related links. On a tangential note, as someone who's lived in monsoonal, rainforest places, I'll bet the biggest problem won't be raising money, finding local talent, or anything like that. It'll be keeping the bugs away from those nice new bug-houses you've altruistically provided, and stopping the mold and algae from changing the color scheme on your machines.

Most people in the U.S. can't use Fon's service anyway. Between this and handing out stock options to blogging pundits in return for a kind word, they seem to be a pretty shady company.

The current prototype accepts voltage from -23 to +23v

And the guy's writing the article for IEEE Spectrum. Good luck in your next job.

Nowadays the government calls it "socialism with Chinese characteristics," not because they think they're fooling anyone, but as a pretense to legitimacy. Socialism is being redefined as something roughly along the lines of Nordic-style welfare capitalism. It's not even clear that the burgeoning urban bourgeoisie would care if the Party apparatus were to repudiate socialism once and for all.

Certainly we should petition for greater freedoms in mainland China and in particular for the rights of imprisoned journalists, political opponents, and religious leaders. Still, considering how terribly China's citizens suffered under previous incarnations (Mao) of the present post-Tiananmen regime, I'm optimistic for the future. I believe the Party will continue on its path of liberalization as a younger, more cosmopolitan generation of Oxford- and Columbia-educated Chinese accedes to power. Who needs revolution, after all, when you can build democracy from within?

Most cell phones are not really sub-$100 devices. Their true cost of a web-enabled phone is often well over $100, but the true cost is hidden somewhere in the 1 to 2 year contract with the provider.

Well, this isn't a sub-$100 device, either, really.

The $100 price point for this device is based on unrealistic volume assumptions, in my opinion -- Ethan notes that it'll likely start off at $130 to $150 'not including any distribution costs, marketing, or any digital content that comes pre-installed on the box' assuming 5 countries sign up for a million laptops each.

IMO those are pretty optimistic prices. Having worked on a low-cost laptop-like device in the past, in our experience we found that the normal fluctuations of the component market can cause the price point to swing wildly.

Having said that, I wish them luck! Being Irish, I can tell you that adoption of high tech really can bring major benefits to a society...

BTW the worldchanging link seems slashdotted -- try Ethan's weblog post here: http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=241 . (and subscribe to his weblog while you're at it -- he regularly posts excellent insights into the meeting point of tech and the developing world. strongly recommended.)

Hell, here's the weblog post to mirror it...

'I took a day off from this years Pop!Tech conference to hang out with some friends in Portland. But before driving from Camden to Portland, I dropped into the Opera House to check email and bumped into Nicholas Negroponte, whod given a talk the day before on his work to produce a laptop that costs less than a hundred dollars.

Negroponte was an advisor to Geekcorps and was extremely helpful to me as we figured out whether the organization would be supported by corporate sponsorship, foundations or government largesse. So he knows about my long-standing interest in technology in the developing world. He asked whether I was interested in coming over to the lab and seeing a demo of the machine, and talking about strategies for deployment.

Hell yeah.

The demo was yesterday afternoon, and while it didnt include a functioning prototype, I learned a great deal more about machine than I have from previous articles, or Negropontes talk at Pop!Tech. He was able to answer a whole set of questions for me, and raise an entire set of new ones, which, I suspect, will take a number of years to answer accurately.

First, the name. Id been calling the project the sub-hundred dollar laptop the acronym of which is the unfortunate SHiL. Negropontes now calling the project OLPC - One Laptop Per Child. It does a better job of defining the project, I think - not taking the bottom out of the consumer laptop market, but providing a learning tool for students around the world.

On to the machine. While the actual prototype is being actively banged on (in preparation for a live, but tethered, demo at WSIS on November 16th), Negroponte keeps a cardboard mockup of the machine on the conference table in his office. Its a clever little thing - I had a hard time putting it down after picking it up. You can see a design close to the prototype I saw on the front page of Design Continuums site - theyre evidently doing the case design for the machine and, actually, pretty far from the design reported on in the AP story about the project.

The mockup I saw was about the size of a large paperback book. Theres a stiff rubber gasket around the edge of the machine, which can double as a stand. The keyboard on the

Most cell phones are not really sub-$100 devices. Their true cost of a web-enabled phone is often well over $100, but the true cost is hidden somewhere in the 1 to 2 year contract with the provider.

Well, this isn't a sub-$100 device, either, really.

The $100 price point for this device is based on unrealistic volume assumptions, in my opinion -- Ethan notes that it'll likely start off at $130 to $150 'not including any distribution costs, marketing, or any digital content that comes pre-installed on the box' assuming 5 countries sign up for a million laptops each.

IMO those are pretty optimistic prices. Having worked on a low-cost laptop-like device in the past, in our experience we found that the normal fluctuations of the component market can cause the price point to swing wildly.

Having said that, I wish them luck! Being Irish, I can tell you that adoption of high tech really can bring major benefits to a society...

BTW the worldchanging link seems slashdotted -- try Ethan's weblog post here: http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=241 . (and subscribe to his weblog while you're at it -- he regularly posts excellent insights into the meeting point of tech and the developing world. strongly recommended.)

Hell, here's the weblog post to mirror it...

'I took a day off from this years Pop!Tech conference to hang out with some friends in Portland. But before driving from Camden to Portland, I dropped into the Opera House to check email and bumped into Nicholas Negroponte, whod given a talk the day before on his work to produce a laptop that costs less than a hundred dollars.

Negroponte was an advisor to Geekcorps and was extremely helpful to me as we figured out whether the organization would be supported by corporate sponsorship, foundations or government largesse. So he knows about my long-standing interest in technology in the developing world. He asked whether I was interested in coming over to the lab and seeing a demo of the machine, and talking about strategies for deployment.

Hell yeah.

The demo was yesterday afternoon, and while it didnt include a functioning prototype, I learned a great deal more about machine than I have from previous articles, or Negropontes talk at Pop!Tech. He was able to answer a whole set of questions for me, and raise an entire set of new ones, which, I suspect, will take a number of years to answer accurately.

First, the name. Id been calling the project the sub-hundred dollar laptop the acronym of which is the unfortunate SHiL. Negropontes now calling the project OLPC - One Laptop Per Child. It does a better job of defining the project, I think - not taking the bottom out of the consumer laptop market, but providing a learning tool for students around the world.

On to the machine. While the actual prototype is being actively banged on (in preparation for a live, but tethered, demo at WSIS on November 16th), Negroponte keeps a cardboard mockup of the machine on the conference table in his office. Its a clever little thing - I had a hard time putting it down after picking it up. You can see a design close to the prototype I saw on the front page of Design Continuums site - theyre evidently doing the case design for the machine and, actually, pretty far from the design reported on in the AP story about the project.

The mockup I saw was about the size of a large paperback book. Theres a stiff rubber gasket around the edge of the machine, which can double as a stand. The keyboard on the

Most cell phones are not really sub-$100 devices. Their true cost of a web-enabled phone is often well over $100, but the true cost is hidden somewhere in the 1 to 2 year contract with the provider.

Well, this isn't a sub-$100 device, either, really.

The $100 price point for this device is based on unrealistic volume assumptions, in my opinion -- Ethan notes that it'll likely start off at $130 to $150 'not including any distribution costs, marketing, or any digital content that comes pre-installed on the box' assuming 5 countries sign up for a million laptops each.

IMO those are pretty optimistic prices. Having worked on a low-cost laptop-like device in the past, in our experience we found that the normal fluctuations of the component market can cause the price point to swing wildly.

Having said that, I wish them luck! Being Irish, I can tell you that adoption of high tech really can bring major benefits to a society...

BTW the worldchanging link seems slashdotted -- try Ethan's weblog post here: http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=241 . (and subscribe to his weblog while you're at it -- he regularly posts excellent insights into the meeting point of tech and the developing world. strongly recommended.)

Hell, here's the weblog post to mirror it...

'I took a day off from this years Pop!Tech conference to hang out with some friends in Portland. But before driving from Camden to Portland, I dropped into the Opera House to check email and bumped into Nicholas Negroponte, whod given a talk the day before on his work to produce a laptop that costs less than a hundred dollars.

Negroponte was an advisor to Geekcorps and was extremely helpful to me as we figured out whether the organization would be supported by corporate sponsorship, foundations or government largesse. So he knows about my long-standing interest in technology in the developing world. He asked whether I was interested in coming over to the lab and seeing a demo of the machine, and talking about strategies for deployment.

Hell yeah.

The demo was yesterday afternoon, and while it didnt include a functioning prototype, I learned a great deal more about machine than I have from previous articles, or Negropontes talk at Pop!Tech. He was able to answer a whole set of questions for me, and raise an entire set of new ones, which, I suspect, will take a number of years to answer accurately.

First, the name. Id been calling the project the sub-hundred dollar laptop the acronym of which is the unfortunate SHiL. Negropontes now calling the project OLPC - One Laptop Per Child. It does a better job of defining the project, I think - not taking the bottom out of the consumer laptop market, but providing a learning tool for students around the world.

On to the machine. While the actual prototype is being actively banged on (in preparation for a live, but tethered, demo at WSIS on November 16th), Negroponte keeps a cardboard mockup of the machine on the conference table in his office. Its a clever little thing - I had a hard time putting it down after picking it up. You can see a design close to the prototype I saw on the front page of Design Continuums site - theyre evidently doing the case design for the machine and, actually, pretty far from the design reported on in the AP story about the project.

The mockup I saw was about the size of a large paperback book. Theres a stiff rubber gasket around the edge of the machine, which can double as a stand. The keyboard on the