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MIT Unveils Prototype for $100 Linux Laptop
Examancer2 writes "MIT is showing off a prototype of a $100 laptop. It uses a 500MHz AMD processor, stores everything on flash memory, and runs Linux. The AC adapter acts as the carrying strap, and there is a hand crank so if you can't find a source of electricity you can charge it kinetically. The prototype laptop is also much more flexible and durable than your average notebook. In addition the unit has a screen that has a special daylight-friendly black & white mode that makes a great ebook." From the article: "Nicholas Negroponte, the co-founder of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, detailed specifications for a $100 windup-powered laptop targeted at children in developing nations. Negroponte, who laid out his original proposal at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, said MIT and his nonprofit group, called One Laptop Per Child, is in discussions with five countries--Brazil, China, Thailand, Egypt and South Africa--to distribute up to 15 million test systems to children." More coverage of this story available from ITWorld, InformationWeek, BBC, ZDNet, and the Associated Press.
They are really pursuing a great cause but I would like to see some of these features, like the hand crank and black and white screen mode, in other laptops as well. Not paying out of your ass for higher levels of durability would be cool too...
My first concern is that once given away, a very poor family might look towards selling the laptop on the black market for food, clothing, etc. How much expense would be added if biometrics were incorporated into the design so that once a laptop is "mated" to a child, only that child can operate it, thus rendering its worth on the black market so much less?
If a family is so poor that they can't even afford food or clothing, shouldn't we be spending money to provide them with this, rather than spending money on biometrics to prevent them from acquiring these basic needs?
If everyone sells off these laptops in order to buy food, the conclusion to draw is that they need food more than they need laptops.
As for the hand crank, I wouldn't mind on of those for my phone...
The reason that "disadvantaged children" are "disadvantaged" is not because they don't have computers, but because it's hard to get food, hard to get clean water (for drinking and for cleaning - a huge factor for being healthy is hygeine), and hard to be protected from the environment.
Computers are great, but they aren't very useful for growing food or anything. You need different technologies for that, and different skill sets that aren't "intellectual".
Until I see how something like this can actually reduce the cost of living for these folks, I don't see that it's worth putting my support behind. I'm also not sure it's the best use of resources to help educational efforts either, but that's about the only area in which I'm not quite sure of the cost/benefit analysis. After all, the costly part of textbooks and the like isn't the printing, but paying for the content, so unless there are lots of "free" e-textbooks out there, this won't save much in that front. There's also the hidden aspect of supporting technology out there.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Can someone please tell these people that computers are, barring a massive paradigm shift in how they are used for education, merely 90% distraction from the real learning that must go on in schools at these ages? (That is, unless you want to make a society of mindless forum posters.)
At $200-$300 or maybe more. If they only cost about $100, the $200 fee would help to subsidize giving them away to the poor.
Though I do suspect that if you need food that badly, then hanging onto a laptop in the face of starvation isn't the best demonstration of priority management.
I guess it's a question of whether they would really starve, or whether the sale simply achieves convenience for the parents at the expense of a brighter future for the kid.
Moreover, my compassion for my fellow human beings extends across all dimensions, not just space. Carving out a chance for a really poor kid to grow up to become successful could mean feeding so many more people for that $100 twenty years from now than feeding a single family today.
We can't just be feeding people so they go on to reproduce and we end up with more hungry people. At some point you have to look at how to break the cycle.
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Give a man a hand-cranked laptop, and your employer will outsource your work to him on the grounds that he'll work for fish, whereas you want tens of thousands of dollars per year.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Well yes if they are starving and do not need clean water then they should get that first. However there is a large amount of poor people that do have food, water, and cloths but no real chance to get out of poverty.
Frankly a cheap, rugged, Linux notebook is something I would love to have for myself. Add a USB port so I can install wifi or Ethernet and I would pay $200 for it today. It could be the ideal kitchen computer.
You comment on computers are great for many things but not for growing food or anything. Well it is true that you can not plow a field with one you can.
1. Learn about new ways to plant and compost.
2. Get weather reports.
3. Get commodity prices.
Once someone has enough food the next step is to get enough money so that you can have health care, cloths, books, and maybe send some of your children to get more than a basic education. Computers can help make the jump from alive but poor to having a future.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Very cool concept. I'd love to see some of this technology trickle down to the consumer level (hand crank, cheap ruggedized case etc). In fact, I'd love to see these available to the consumer at $200. For every unit you buy at $200, you are buying one for a developing country. It'd be like buying a cheap laptop and donating to charity all at once.
My biggest concern with this, and all other laptops-for-schoolkids programs is that they actually do proper class programming with them (programming as in lecture design etc, not Objective-C/Java/etc). It's not simply enough to hand kids a laptopo and expect them to suddenly learn more. You have to shape the classes and the materials in such a way as to be well-suited to a classroom full on network-connected, laptop-toting schoolkids. This can be done, but it does take thought; hopefully the school boards engaging in such programs have done this planning.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
If a family is so poor that they can't even afford food or clothing, shouldn't we be spending money to provide them with this, rather than spending money on biometrics to prevent them from acquiring these basic needs?
There are different levels of poverty. At the very lowest levels there are the people that can't even get food. Obviously this type of program isn't targeted for them, that what UN food aid, and unicef are for.
But if you go to some '2nd world' countries (Brazil comes to mind), it's very common to see TV antennas sticking out of wood shacks. At this level people have enough money to survive, but not move themselves up in society. So if you are born poor, you stay poor. And you end up with a country with no middle class, and 95% of the country being owned by 5% of the population.
A low cost way to access the internet would do wonders for educating the populace. This could be a real catalyst for social change in those sorts of countries.
It's easy to shift the blame entirely on to poor Africans themselves, and to a certain extent, I agree that they are not totally without responsibility in the effort to make their own societies more livable.
However, looking at the historical treatment of the African continent, it seems that perhaps the folks there are entitled to some help. I mean, we're talking about an entire continent, filled with mostly technologically unadvanced, tribal societies, that was chopped up into arbitrary territories and colonized by European nations. Now, I know that every society has been subjugated at some point in the past, and probably done their share of subjugating as well, and it's a slipery slope, blah, blah, but the scale of that subjugation is rivaled in recent history only by the near total destruction of the native in north and south america, and you can see how the victims of that colonization turned out - dead.
Heap on top of that the not-so-trivial slave trade, in which American and European traders deliberately turned African societies against each other in order to capture the most slaves...I don't think you have to be a bleeding heart to see that a society subjected to this sort of treatment might not be so healthy afterwards.
So, if you agree that Africa has seriously gotten the shaft in the past, which seems pretty unarguable, it's hard to justify expecting them to just fix everything themselves. It's like breaking your dog's legs and then refusing to feed him until he runs as fast as the other dogs. Good luck.
I'm doing my part, so I think I've earned the right to spout. I donate more than a couple craptops worth of cash to Heifer each year. I like Heifer's approach, which emphasizes agricultural sustainability.
I'm not the only one that thinks laptops are a poor way to address poverty. In 2000, Bill Gates put a damper on the Digital Divide conference in Seattle with a similar message. When, as the article states, 80% of the world's population lives on less than a dollar a day, desiging them a $100 laptop is frivolous. If someone gave me a laptop worth three months of my salary, I'd put it on eBay in an instant and buy something I really needed.
Look at it this way. With $20, you could give a family a flock of chicks that could lay hundreds of eggs a year, providing them with additional protein and a source of trade income. For another $30, you can get two packs of Micropur tablets, which will treat 30 liters of water each. The tablets last for 3 years, so they can be saved for when it isn't possible to boil water. Another $30 could go to seed, rice, or lentils to give the family a little reserve. Then, spend the final $20 on whatever texts the kids need for their elementary school. $100 goes a lot farther when you're not spending it on computers.
The technological community has come up with much more creative ways to address poverty. I liked the clay pot refridgeration system for storing food that was mentioned on /. a while back. I read in Spectrum about a guy wiring villages in South America with solar-powered LED lighting so families wouldn't have to use kerosene lamps. The lamps are dangerous, the fuel is expensive, and the smoke causes searious health problems. I'd like to see more attention given to people with geniunely helpful ideas and less to Negroponte's schemes.