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Thin Client With OSS for Developing Nations
FridayBob writes "The BBC has a story on a new, ultra-thin client that a group of not-for-profit developers, Ndiyo, hope will open up the potential of computing to people in the developing world. Not surprisingly, their system uses open source software. The system runs Ubuntu Linux with a Gnome/KDE deskto and OpenOffice. From the article: 'Licences for software are often a significant part of expenditure for smaller companies which rely on computers. But a recent UK government study, yet to be formally published, has shown that open source software can significantly reduce school budgets dedicated to computing set-ups.'"
What about thin clients for models? They regurgitate whatever information you feed them.
Glad to see a full desktop think client and not another Simputer.
...a novel concept.
Such a bootable cdrom (based on Slackware) is already available from LocustWorld.
Maybe the Ubuntu guys should port it over from Slackware.
Seastead this.
I read their white paper. It's not a diskless boot setup. Rather it sends the screen image over Ethernet.
I have no idea what this story is about. Seriously.
No.
Hmmm. Many many thin clients, all trying to do stuff (the same stuff) at the same times. Any bandwidth problems that could come up? I would guess that unless utilization is carefully watched, with overflow capacity readily available, it could be a problem. It would also require that the "thin server" (or maybe it's "thick server") be not too far away?
100 pounds!? Don't they understand that by using open source software their total cost of ownership will be much greater than if they used Windows. Get with program, poor people. Make Bill richer.
Why are these cheap entry-level systems always targeted at the "Third World", rather than poor people here in the US? They'd have much better chances of success in our society, already geared for computer-readiness, in becoming popular - or gaining entry at all. Poor Americans have less of a culture gap to close to become computer users, and are much more able to bootstrap themselves into becoming unsubsidized computer consumers like the rest of us. And American products filter out to the rest of the world after they're out of fashion here, so feeding the American poor would eventually feed the foreign poor, too. Without setting up the foreign poor as better competitors to our domestic poor, upon whom we all depend. The products would be easier to produce and distribute. Aren't our own poor people worth helping?
--
make install -not war
I wonder if Mark Shuttleworth has anything to do with this? What with the Ndiyo being another african word...
I wonder if their FPGA-based design is really cheaper than using a Geode or Xilleon.
This is answered in the presentation; 30 users consume less than 100Mbps.
The benefits of thin-clients are many. First, the client can be really bare bones (i.e. no HD, minimal RAM, low-end graphics, low processesor speeds, etc) so they can be cheap ($170 + monitor from WalMart or donated machines). Second, to upgrade all your workstations (perfomrance-wise) all you need to do is upgrade or add another server - not hundreds of workstations. Third, to upgrade all you clients (software-wise), you just upgrade the software on a few servers. Managing one or two Win2K3 servers for viruses, patches, malware, etc, beats the hell out of 200 WinXP workstations!
There are other benefits, but these are the ones that have really made a difference for us. Don't get me wrong, thin-clients aren't the answer for everything. There are many situations where you need to have a fully functioning workstation. However, with the money you save on thin-clients, you can afford to get really good workstations, which in turn can be turned into thin-clients when they are needing to be upgraded.
Most of our users simply need a means of doing basic office tasks like word-processing, spreadsheets, email, web-surfing, etc. Those are perfect for thin-clients.
What would I want to have to make it better? Easy. First, get OpenOffice to work properly on a Win2K3 terminal server, It's not real good in a multi-user environment like that (unless I'm doing something wrong - possible). And the number 1 thing that would make it better: can you say "Tiger Terminal Server Edition"?
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
-1: Google is your friend
I have never understood the idea that "third world" people want, need, or have to settle for "miraculous" $100 computers or thin clients. The truth is that in "third world" countries, bare bones PCs that run your choice of Windows or Linux simply don't cost a hell of a lot more than $100, and often less. It's all about what the market will bare. This thin client bull shit is just more of the same non-solution looking for a non-problem. People in "third world" countries that want computers have them, and those that don't know that they "need" them can get REAL computers cheap. And, thin client or not, it matters little if there is nothing to connect them together. You know, like phone lines, fiber, dish, wireless? Think about infrastructure, than give them REAL computers.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
WTF is a thin client ?
A hardware platform ?
A browser ?
An malnourished third world inhabitant thanks to his corrupt backward government ?
Oh and a govenment study said OSS is cheaper. Well DUH.
crap crap crap
The people you're targeting get paid $50 a month, my friend, and their kids go to a school which is basically 4 walls, a floor, and a roof if they're lucky.
Oh yes, a server and some thin clients is really what's needed there.
Not paper and pens. Text books. Teachers. Electricity (what are they planning to plug these things into?).
The thing about developing nations, is not that they're poor, it's that the divide between the rich and the poor is vast.
At the other end of the scale, here, you have your rich, your ex-pats, etc - and you have your $5,000/term "International School" organisations who have wireless internet, computer labs, international standard teachers, and they don't need this. Nor do the businesses, most of which are thriving, thank you very much.
I'm sitting here next to a 3Tb server in my office and a server room full of Dual Xeons next door reading about how developing nations need some sort of solution for cheap computing?
These people have so lost direction they couldn't find it with both hands and a map.
It actually looks like a nice system, that would be ideal for reducing costs in schools and some businesses world-wide, I have NO idea what they're doing thinking they're doing this for the good of the "third world".
If they really want to do something "not for profit", try volunteering for an aids project, a humanitarian project, or a teaching project.
Sometimes I look at my driver - I pay him $65 a month, and I wonder what he would have been if he'd had the education I did. HE would be sitting in this chair, for a start. I could teach him in front of this PC for a month of Sundays, and it wouldn't make up for the fact he has no basic education.
In case you don't get it, there is not enough power in third-world countries to boot up your super-cool cases (with those nifty case-mods, of course), along with your 10,000 rpm disk farms and 2X power-sucking CPUs. Don't talk about bootable CDROMs as a solution and open your minds a little and consider that not every country in this world can afford rectangular foot-warmers for each of their computer users - if the "box" has a fan, CPU, or disk drive, it is not practical in large scale in third world countries.
Sun has had its ultra-thin (I hate these descriptions) client for years. No state at all maintained on the box, and very low power consumption. Sure, to be fair, you have to add in the power consumption of the server in the back room. But, these solutions do indeed make sense for power-deprived nations.
Pay attention to the beef which is OpenOffice. I am afraid that SUN may pull the plug on java, which OO.o has come to heavily rely on of late. SUN could simply change its license. Let's remember that SUN is practically in bed with M$ after having received some big cash ftom M$, and has never criticized SCO for its actions.
I personally advocate the forking of OO.o portions that are GPLed so that we can finally be free. How about that?
Probably the best thing for folks to do is just subscribe to the MeshAP user list and ask questions.
Seastead this.
I don't know about the 3rd world, but the ideal client for most libraries and schools would be:
1) video, keyboard, mouse, optionally local removable read/write storage
2) operating system, e.g. Linux, with essential utilities, e.g. firewall and antivirus software
3) web browser
4) most common lightweight apps, e.g. low end word processor, and perhaps software specific to the given installation, e.g. front end to a card catalog or other database.
5) remote access to heavyweight, lightly-used apps like OpenOffice, running on a nearby server
with hardware just beefy enough to run the local apps plus a few web browser windows plus a few remote-access windows.
All of this would boot from a read-only, or at least read-only without administrator action, medium, to all but eliminate the threat of malware and end-user malice - reboot and the damage is undone.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If you read past the headlines, you see that point of these projects is not just to make cheap computers -- though cost is certainly a factor. It's to design new computers that are better suited to local conditions.
Anybody has used a thin client linux distro with nice (ttf support) fonts? I've used LTSP, and while it works nice, the fonts look butt ugly. There seems to be a way to enable ttf, but it seems overly complicated last time I checked.
please excuse my apathy
I live in a third world country, just south of the border and computers cost a lot more than $100 dollars. Even if they cost $100(if you can get me this price then buy for me 1000 units), most of the population has to work 2 weeks to earn this money.
In the other side, we don't have problems with software's cost, piracy is almost legal.
"Just south of the border"? Guatemala, Brazil, Argentina, or any number of countries SOUTH OF MEXICO. So go fuck yourself.
What are you talking about? I can get a P3 with a decent hard drive right here in the USA _right_fucking_now_ for damn near $100. If you are suggesting that a P3 is not a "real" computer, and that no one could possibly make use of one, than you are a snob. However, having been to certain parts of Guatemala (admittedly, the more inhabited parts), I can tell you that an adequate P3 box with monitor will in fact cost you around $100. Sure you can't play the latest video games, but you know? So what, it's a REAL computer, not some bull shit thin client or glorified PDA.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
If Apple decides to do this MS is in for some serious problems. That would be the BEST presentation layer for 95% of users.
Your Average Joe
Jesus. What kind of box are you trying to buy? $1000 US? Maybe you should set your sights a little lower and realize that not everyone needs a game box.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Ndiyo
Ndiyo conference presentation (pdf)
First, the client can be really bare bones (i.e. no HD, minimal RAM, low-end graphics, low processesor speeds, etc) so they can be cheap ($170 + monitor from WalMart or donated machines).
Yep, thin clients are great, when used in the right places. And they have many advantages. But... price isn't one of them. Not yet, anyway.
Where I live, PC's up to around 200 MHz. (original Pentium and below) are effectively free. You want one? Look around, hand over a sixpack of beer, and you have one.
Now with a $170 budget, I can get you a (used) PC that includes monitor, and beats the crap out of any thin client you can find for same money.
How come? Well, we all know electronics today are 'cheap' thanks to the sheer numbers they're produced in. Apparantly in today's world, a standard beige box with off-the-shelf components, is still cheaper (to produce, or second-hand), than a book-sized thin client produced in limited numbers.
For a business, the numbers may differ. If you'd use old hardware in a thin-client like fashion, you might have to hire someone, to manage parts, build and repair boxes fulltime. In that scenario, it may be cheaper to spend $170 once on thin clients, and very little after that on managing the hardware. But the savings here are not hardware, but management costs. Which I think is the advantage of thin clients anyway.
I hope some day (maybe soon) these economics will change, and make smaller/smarter boxes cheaper than equal performing WalMart beige boxes. Because they have many advantages, and I happen to like small+smart boxes. Even if they're still a bit bigger, like Mini-ITX or Shuttle XPC's.Furthermore, an old and cheap PC may not be good enough for a modern UNIX-like system, but an old Windows 95 system will be fine on it. Can we recommend Redhat 3.0 to anyone, going back in time? Can we suggest to run it in console mode only, without X? But Win98SE is not a bad choice, given the old PC in question. I still have Win98SE on an old notebook; it runs very snappy. But when I tried RH (8 or 9) on the same notebook it was visibly sluggish, and generally the usability of the system dropped.
It took a government study to figure out that open source software is cheaper? The setup looks pretty smart for that price though. Will this actually make any difference for third-world countries? I have no idea.. but I don't see anything wrong with computers becoming available to more people for less money.
Linux Forum
They do not even have reliable electricity. More important is immunization, clean water and facilities for waste disposal. NOT COMPUTERS!
Your Average Joe
With all due respect OOo is huge. Why not consider Abiword, the 2.2.x versions and up are considerably improved.
Also props to these cats! It's nice to see some geeks out there both care about the world and are not all wrapped up in greed or a post dotcom hangover. Keep up the foreward thinking!
I like the idea of removing all of the intelligence from the client.
Essentially they have set it up so that the client processes a compressed stream of pixel updates.
The idea is eventually the entire thing is one ASIC and the supporting doodads required to interface with the I/O and power.
Sounds like a great solution for POS and remote displays.
If not then how can they use it?
Good point.
So match parent up with the earlier article, which said the place cheap systems are really needed is in lower-class American schools. Add to that American shoe-string startup companies that don't have venture capital. And add American state and federal government departments that are downsizing.
Then add the lower classes in Japan and the EU, where people do have working powerlines: I just got back from a year as an exchange student in Sapporo. One friend of mine there has extra PCs to throw away, and it would have cost him--so I took and got them all working with decent software for students. Guess what: I had no trouble finding plenty of classmates with no computer of their own, who were more than happy to have something in the sub-$500 range.
The lower classes are alive and growing in "rich" countries. And if those lower classes aren't encouraged to get cheap computing access, where is B-b-b-Bill [and friends] going to get his next batch of Microserfs? How will they continue turning IT into a McJobs industry?
I'm sick and tired of anti usa flame.
Here in our university(UP), we've been using LTSP to create thin clients. We run a powerful server (2ghz, 1gb ram) and it can host up to 20 Pentium computers.
What's nice about the thin client setup is that once an application is loaded, it boots really fast on all the clients. For instance, we start OpenOffice on the server and it boots with a second on a client.
Another advantage with this setup is control. Since all the clients run on the server, we can restrict access and prioritize security.
nice, this is positive but i'd rather see Zen Linux being used instead of ubuntu.
Let's see:
Ndijo has OpenOffice, Firefox, GAIM, Thunderbird.
BeatrIX has OpenOffice, Firefox, GAIM, Evolution.
Ndijo runs Ubuntu Linux with a Gnome/KDE desktop. BeatrIX is Ubuntu derivative with a Gnome desktop.
And Ndijo is a "new, ultra-thin client"? Give me a break - there is nothing new.
That's why smart people use low-end PCs as thin clients.
The people you're targeting get paid $50 a month (..) The thing about developing nations, is not that they're poor, it's that the divide between the rich and the poor is vast.
Personally I have no problem with a vast difference in wealth between the richest and poorest in this world. It's not the size of this scale that matters, but how low the bottom end is.
Differences in income between $50 or $50K a month don't worry me, but that $50 a month lower end, not enough to provide you with food in your mouth, a roof over your head, clean drinking water, basic healthcare or education, does worry me.
And for what it's worth, poor people that wander the streets with nothing but the clothes on their back, that don't know where their next meal comes from, can be found anywhere. There's just more of them in 3rd world countries.
And there are other reasons people don't have PC's, like that the box + monitor + wiring + CD's + papers doesn't fit in their interior, or that they don't like gaming or have better things to do than surf the internets 5 hours a day. Or don't want to spend the time on dealing with dialog boxes, hardware/OS upgrades or spyware cleanup.
$100 for a computer should be enough for everyone.
Cheap and abundant net cafes. People in the developing world don't need to play quake. If they can rent a pc for some period of time, it helps them communicate. Just like the communal pay phone at the general store worked decades ago. Abundancy means they don't have to walk a long distance.
I'm all for this kind of experiments, but unless they are able to get above a critical volume and sell for profit and continue to develop the product, the project will die after some time. Either because the funders get fed up pouring money into the project, or because other standards will take over. A better approach may be to design and sell a cheap computer for the industrialised world to get the volume up. They could then set aside part of the production, and sell it for low-profit prices in the third world. Unless the price/feature ratio is good enough for the rich world, it won't be good enough for the poor one either.
We all would like cheaper computer, and I'm sure these will do a lot of good where they're going. But what a lot of third world nations need more than cheap computers, is a sane economy. To that you need to eliminate the corrupt politics, excessive taxes and barriers to trade (both internally and externally). Yes, the US and Europe have these problems as well, but the reason we're not third world is because we don't have them in excess.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
But a recent UK government study, yet to be formally published, has shown that open source software can significantly reduce school budgets dedicated to computing set-ups.'"
So, in other words, mostly free software can save money?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
You, my friend, gave me this idea for Thin Screen Computer - namely, to avoid outrageous import duties, only LCD screens would be imported (and keyboard/mouse, too) and the actual computer will remain in the U.S. or wherever.
Why is everybody here focusing on price and not on total cost of ownership and environmental costs, which are the real point here IMO?
13-4=54/6
Basically you want a good application platform that can get its apps downloaded as web pages and cached locally.
Seastead this.
Hopefully however these cultures can learn from the sickness pervading the developed world as a result of urbanization and retain some of their roots while they admit technology as a defensive measure.
And developed peoples need to stop thinking of "poverty" in terms of monetary income -- but rather in terms of security of food, water, shelter and viable families -- something many people in developed countries have lost due to dependence on money without adequate security of money supplies.
Seastead this.
Well I was surprised when I visited my country of origin. Software piracy is as widespread as it'll ever be, and good cheap HW is hard to find, but these folks get creative and use whatever they can get their hands on from their network of friends or hookups. But the malls are a different story. Entire sections of the mall are boarded off to host CounterStrike tourneys, and your 'local PC rental store' as ubiquitous as Starbucks here in America. Abundancy, indeed, and just barebones cafes.
The solution that eventually occured was that IBM donated a number of G40e laptops (thank you guys!) so we were able to put low-power, fancy computers out in the field.
Now the crux of the issue to me, and this is something which I've brought up earlier, so bear with me, is the question, Now What?
I've got a 2.8 gig 802.11g machine with 512 MB of RAM sitting here, doing what?
The hard part is making it useful. Not many people out in the villages enjoy reading slashdot regularly, so we have to find useful things that they can use these beasts for.
Essentially, what we did was to create an information portal, data was downloaded every day over a CDMA 1x connection, and presented in a form which was accesible to people. Weather forecasts, crop and vegetable prices, information about government schemes, employment opportunities in the nearest town and so on. If you want to know more, then drop me a mail and I would be happy to give you full details. Better yet, if you are involved in something similiar, please do get in touch.
Now the technology part is cool. I designed it to work completely in our favourite browser - Firefox - *ducks*, I used CSS to make sure that when you print out the information it's in an easy to read form. Also, since Open Office, FF, the Linux distro itself a number of other applications have recently been translated into the local language (Tamil) it has been easy for the people themselves to use it, rather than needing either an external person, or to have to painfully learn a new language.
Just to quickly respond to the infrastructure part, India has been really good at providing communications infrastructure at a grassroots level. Every village is linked with a 2 mbps pipe, and wireless internet using CDMA is fairly easily available. This is a god-send for us, who want to put an IT project in, without having to build this stuff up from scratch. I speak from experience in Indonesia, where we had to transmit using VHF. Fuck, that hurt.
Now sub-$100 machines are good. But, like someone else was saying here, the people themselves are NOT going to be buying this. It's more likely to be governements, NGOs and the like who do bulk-purchases and then provide them in conjuntion with various other schemes. Remember that in many parts of the world the annual income is less than $350. This is equivalent to somebody paying about $13'000 for a computer in the US (if they earn about $40k, which I assume an IT manager will).
The technology is cool for us. How useful is it for them?
R.
Montreal!?
hahhahhaha
I feel like I'm taking CRAZY pills!
Depends on the FPGA, you can get one from Xilinx in low quanity that'll run a soft-core processor for about $7 (Spartan-3 series, newest (90 nm) chip in their low cost/high volume line), in production quanity is a lot cheaper.
...
In response to the other posters, I have not seen much in terms of open source software for FPGA design, and 0 that worked for creating the hardware bitstream to dump into a chip. There are free versions of the tools avilable from Xilinx and Altera for their respective chips.
And, FPGAs are really useful as an implementation, not just for prototyping. It can cost up to $30M to set up an ASIC line, not counting engineering or the $100K+ for the tools
I always prefer to start the year off with a bang - or, to be more precise, a series of loud hums, a crackle or two, and
sells papers.
But it's really not all that bad.
And however bad it is, it's much better than high infant mortality and short lifespans (and don't forget brutal dictators and violent religious strife).
The only thing worse I can think of than dying young due to an easily preventable disease or lack of food is having your child die from an easily preventable disease or lack of food.
I guess maybe all of the above while the dictator's kids grow fat and healthy and the local gang cuts your arms off to claim their rights to the diamond mine, I guess that could be worse.
Even worse than a 2 hour commute with a dead iPod battery, even worse than that...
Brutal dictators and violent religious strife aren't characteristics of traditional tribal culture -- they're characteristics of development gone awry as it so often does.
High infant mortality and short lifespans have been with humans for a very long time. People are built to suffer those losses more than they're built to not even know why they're trying to fill some vague void with their 2 hour commutes to meaningless jobs to pay for gadgets.
And how the hell are you supposed to get a job delivering papers with all the third world slaves coming into the country, driven from their homelands by "development", to deliver papers for less than minimum wage?
Seastead this.
LOL!
than delivering papers with all the free educational opportunities that the developed world provides, there are a number of social programs that will help you get on your feet. Even if you can't read, if you can just speak the language you have a great advantage over a recent immigrant.
The real issue is coming in the next 100 years as labor itself becomes automated, then there will be no more reason for 'jobs', and the only limits on supply will be artificial ones.
Then what are you going to do for your self-worth?
Brutal dictators and violent religious strife aren't characteristics of traditional tribal culture
You are working from a rather unusual version of history, there. Did you start reading at 1600 and just totally ignore everything before that? You never heard of Romans? Of the crusades? Of Constantinople? Of the Aztecs? Brutality and religious strife have been with us since the beginning of civilization, of course. In the last few hundred years more people have been thinking..it doesn't have to be that way.
People are built to suffer those losses
People aren't "built" to suffer losses without finding solutions for them, from the time Ogg poked a pointed stick at the lion that was trying to eat his child. We may well die trying, but that is no excuse for accepting a bad situation.
Hi,
Your comment is very true, but the one thing to consider is that a correctly designed thin-client will be dead silent, small (portable) and easy to move around, lock-down, etc.
An older PC, while fully capable, will probably have more than one fan, a 5400 RPM+ disk drive, and a noticable case that takes up room.
Mini-ITX is sort of a solution, but a thin-client really does work well -- for instance, a library for a card look-up system, web browsing, etc.
America, in the types of schools that can barely afford a computer Lab in the first place. That's where they'd be really useful.
If you'll excuse me, Amnesty is doing a fair at my college and I promised I'd help out...
X11 sends draw commands, VNC sends screen pixels..
Though agreed, VNC isnt exactally 'news' either.
Their hardware is the news item. And id love to get my hands on one to work with. Could easily change out the code in the FPGA to emulate other processors. Development boards with the same are much more then $100.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Any chance there will be a distributor where you can get just one or 2 of these things, with out the display?
Having a cheap FPGA development board with these features would be great..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I think these sound really good. Not for the third world but the first. It would mean that I could have a computer in every room in the house, feeding tv, music, voip, web, video conferencing etc.
And, FPGAs are really useful as an implementation, not just for prototyping. It can cost up to $30M to set up an ASIC line, not counting engineering or the $100K+ for the tools ...
Yep, some FPGA's are cheap enough that they can be used for both prototyping and production. But comparing one of the least expensive FPGA's in the world with a near maximum "up to" price for ASIC development is not useful. And yes, I'm an FPGA engineer as well (waiting impatiently for 7.1.2i to be released), so I'm not saying this for my love of ASIC's.
Competitive ASIC's can be developed for WELL under $1M (probably even well under $500k for a good number of devices) including tools and NRE/prototype costs. Still doesn't remove the fact that it takes considerable volume to come out ahead against a $7 FPGA. Against a 2VP50, at closing in on $1k a piece, it's a completely different story.
-- PGP keyID: 0x4C95994D
We've just got around, after rather too long, to updating the Ndiyo site. It's still rather minimal, but a good deal more informative than it was before!
NX is great for running over slow connections (sub-cable modem), but it doesn't seem to drop frames if the CPU can't keep up... I don't know though, I'm not an expert in this stuff.
Anyway, it looks like the big advantage of the Ndiyol is that they've done a lot of work to come up with a custom protocol and/or cheap hardware set-up that actually work out of the box for $170. I noticed that they ship with 2MB of RAM. Also, they plan to move the whole thing on to one chip... that should cut cost significantly.
If they can get full screen video streaming + sound to work, and provide a connector that lets me plug in a remote control, I'm putting one of these in my living room. Assuming that it can run in hot environments, it would outperform all of the sub $2,000 systems that I've been able to find on the market these days.
(I've been trying to find something that can run as a mythtv frontend, and be silent, small and stable in a 95F room. There are probably some systems out there, but it is really hard to find out the operating temperature range or noise level of prebuilt computer systems.)
A group of Linux fans are sitting in a bar. One says, "I really like the performance of Linux #180." The next one replies "yes, but Linux #87's package system is better." Another one says "I really like Linux #298's lightweightness."
One guy says "What do you think about Linux #315's features?" One programmer starts looking totally impressed, stutters "wow, is thaaaat cool" and "man, I didn't know they could do that." All the other Linuxers start looking at each other. "Why? What's with Linux #315?"
"I didn't know that one yet."
...we have yet another case of the first world looking at its needs and mistaking them for being identical to those of the third world. Now entering the beating-a-dead-horse-with-sarcasm-dept:
Yup, that kind of thinking sure helped the BIA do bang-up work on Indian reservations right here in the US. We'll just invent a concept and throw that at the problem. No need to actually investigate anything with respect to those you're foisting the (non)solution to the (non)problem.
Definitely kept the third world from being overrun by despots and tyrants, starvation and chaos, etc over the centuries. The third world is truly identical to the first thanks to this simple thinking. A few spiffy PCs and they'll be all set.
(I vaguelly recall this sentiment being used over the centuries in various forms... "if they drank tea like us, they'd be better off... if they dressed like us, they'd be better off... if they did X like us, they'd be better off...")
If my eyes roll up any more, they won't come back down out of my head.
Information access is not now nor has it ever been a problem solved by computers. We used to have a much more educated populace here in the first world before personal computers ever were a gleam in the eye of any but science fiction writers. We had books. And people took the time to learn to read them and then actually read.
We now have a society where all the information you could ever use and a million times the information you could never use is at their fingertips and the average chucklehead at McDonald's can't spell their own last name consistently.
The problem is attitude and priority, tyrants know this, and as long as the people are kept divided, kept occupied with basic survival, kept from information in whatever form, they will remain more malleable than otherwise which is what makes them easy prey for out-and-out dictators as well as subversive and subliminal schmucks who bring them to ruin just as surely all the while being lauded by that international brain trust called the United Nations.
Look at the US. Number one problem isn't information access, it's attitude towards that information and the priority of accessing it. If the people don't want to spend the time or can't spend the time to learn that the area of information exists in the first place, see any relevance to their lives in the second, and have the information spotty and hashed in the third, then they might as well not have it at all because as far as they are concerned, it doesn't exist.
What the third world needs is to have the time, interest, and desire to go after the information and absorb it whether online or through books/scrolls which have held us in good stead as a species for thousands of years.
I think showing them the glut of wonderful opportunties first worlders have yet are willfully squandered by them should be one visceral tool. I also think relentlessly pounding non-democratic-forces until they relent to the people is another, but no one can seem to agree on how to do it.
Thin clients with wireless Internet is the idea in the heads of yuppies with too much time on their hands over at the coffee area at Borders (which is itself a wonderful new expansion of the word "irony"). This is not the idea come up with by someone who is walking a half mile from their village and back several times a day to bring clean water back for the daily doings. This is not the idea in the minds of people who have to damn near rebuild the roof of their hut from scratch every other storm. This is not on the minds of people watching raw sewage in an eight inch deep trench running past their window. "Hmmm, if only we had an old Aptiva to boot a Kubuntu CD with so we could look at how well Sheffield Wednseday is doing... Oh well, better get back to town with my crops..."
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
I'm going to post about some other parts of this article, so I can't moderate the parent post up, but it's really good.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I probably should have noticed the troll tags...
I'd like to develop a nation, but I'm missing a couple of key elements, land and people.
I guess I could simulate them, but if that's all it's talking about then this is really old news.