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Simputer Runs Into Problems
dejaffa writes "It seems that an Indian Linux-based "computer for the poor" is having financial issues. This has implications for the world digital divide. The story is here (MSNBC, I know, I know). There were originally great hopes for it, as seen here, but money is proving to be the stumbling block."
when you try to base a real world business plan on sim-dollars(simoleans). The sims may be a pretty impressive environment, but it's not reality yet.
On the other hand, $200 would be a nice change for a cheap sim-puter. I always thought $999 was a bit steep for an entry-level model.
lysergically yours
there's plenty of food for the entire human being (as reported by the recent FAO meeting) but people are starving because feeding the poor doesn't pay back.
there's plenty of money for the simputer but it has financial issues because, well, poor people won't put money into the economy of the internet.
so sad.
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
Does anyone else see the irony here? An idea conceived to help a nation with some of the poorest people in the world recover at least somewhat financially, and the people wanting to manufacture it cannot even afford to have it produced.
Wonderful.
-Peapod
you actually bring up a good point. While the creators seem to have put in a lot of thought into how to get funding and distrubute it to rural locations, what about literacy? I know it is supposed to have an intuitive user interface, but what if the users are entirely illiterate? While the computer might be cheap and give them access to the web it won't do them much good if they can't read it
we can rebuild this sig. we have the technology
...this article from the BBC details a different approach to the problem of taking computers to the masses - make the internet accessible through one person, who goes round villages on a motorbike with a laptop which has some pre-downloaded web pages at the villagers' request.
It seems a strange concept: you might think that the things the article mentions the service being used for (local news, crop prices, government forms etc) were already catered for through newspapers and the postal system. But then I don't live out in a rural village in India, so I wouldn't know.
What both this and the Simputer project show, is that there is demand for such a service, regardless of whether or not we, who are totally isolated from the situation, think there is.
Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error.
There are other problems that will happen as Simputer wretsles its way into market. First, Microsoft is very popular in India, not important why. Second, and much important, is the problem of corruption. To reach the sales goals for a $200 system, Simputer are going to have to have political friends, and that I just cannot see happening. Corruption is so ingrained in Indian government there are even special laws to address it. Microsoft is not unique, just uniquely wealthy.