Preview Of The $100 Laptop

cynical writes "Harvard's Ethan Zuckerman, founder of GeekCorps and Global Voices, got a chance last week to drop in on Nicholas Negroponte and get a preview of the $100 laptop Negroponte has designed for students in the developing world. Zuckerman talks about both its hardware and the One Laptop Per Child project, and asks the readers for suggestions for innovative ways the $100 laptop can be used." From the article: "The mockup I saw was about the size of a large paperback book. There's a stiff rubber gasket around the edge of the machine, which can double as a stand. The keyboard on the mockup was detachable, but will probably fold out on a hinge ... Two trackballs, surrounded by four way buttons, on each side of the screen act as controls, and function keys on the back act as additional buttons.)" We've previously reported on this device here on Slashdot.

Comments

The non-existant $100 laptop!

[garcia]

The demo was yesterday afternoon, and while , I learned a great deal more about machine than I have from previous articles, or Negroponte's 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.

I'll wait for this to be actual news. I'm filing this under the "proposed" WiMax killer.

Re:The non-existant $100 laptop!

[garcia]

Let's try that again: The demo was yesterday afternoon, and while it didn't include a functioning prototype, I learned a great deal more about machine than I have from previous articles, or Negroponte's 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.

I'll wait for this to be actual news. I'm filing this under the "proposed" WiMax killer. I accidentally clicked "Submit" instead of "Preview". My bad.

Re:The non-existant $100 laptop!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it already exists. It looks like it's being used to host the article.

Re:The non-existant $100 laptop!

[sco08y]

The demo was yesterday afternoon, and while , I learned a great deal more about machine than I have from previous articles, or Negroponte's 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.

That's a misquote. It wasn't Negroponte giving the talk, it was Negrodamus.

Re:The non-existant $100 laptop!

[Scyld_Scefing]

A tethered prototype is to be presented at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis on November 17. Production is to begin by the end of 2006. For more info, see a class presentation on the $100 Laptop at

http://www.emory.edu/BUSINESS/et/552fall2005/hundr ed_dollar_laptop/ .

There's current info from a lot of Internet sources, on the device, the project history, the technologies, and the implications.

THE END OF THE AMERICAN TECH WORKER

[ferrellcat]

So pretty soon, every child in India will have a laptop, while here in America, we're lucky if half the graduating High School seniors know how to read.

This is an outsourcer's wet dream come true.

Expect HUGE sporsorships from the usual suspects.

Re:THE END OF THE AMERICAN TECH WORKER

[LnxAddct]

The literacy rate in America is over 97%, most homeless people here can even read and do basic arithmetic, what the hell are you on?
Regards,
Steve

Re:THE END OF THE AMERICAN TECH WORKER

[Anonymous Coward]

Define: Literacy.

Able to read at a 1st grade level could be considered literate, but that might not be useful enough to have it be generalized to a 97% literacy rate.

Re:THE END OF THE AMERICAN TECH WORKER

[Anonymous Coward]

True but 45 million American adults can only function at the lowest measurable level of litteracy. When 25% of the ADULT population can't read beyond grade 2 grammer, there's something very wrong.

Re:THE END OF THE AMERICAN TECH WORKER

[Anonymous Coward]

So pretty soon, every child in India will have a laptop, while here in America, we're lucky if half the graduating High School seniors know how to read.

And how does this wonder laptop have anything to do with this? If 1/2 of graduating high school seniors can't read, they won't be able to compete with the foreign competition EVEN IF they never had these laptops and could only learn in school. PLUS, the major reason jobs are going overseas, $$$$, will not be affected by these laptops either. So your statement is pretty much meaningless and hollow.

If we have a literacy problem here in the states, then we need to address the issue of how to teach kids to read, and the answer is not giving every single one of them a laptop.

Re:THE END OF THE AMERICAN TECH WORKER

[msdschris]

Well why wont that homeless guy with the sign reading "Will work for food" read that other sign that says "HELP WANTED"?

Re:THE END OF THE AMERICAN TECH WORKER

[PingPongBoy]

Who wants to be illiterate? Life is so hard - but are children too distracted by entertainment to gain the skills demanded by business?

At any rate, statements like half of x has property p should be substantiated by sources. If half of students can't read wouldn't we hear about it on CNN?

The level of reading required for self-education could be deficient though. It is a lot better now than a few years ago, especially with the power of Google. No one can go to class for every aspect of life or work, and there's no telling whether a book is available to help. Computers to our rescue.

Whenever I go to the library I see thousands of books, but it never gets easy to tell which books are applicable to the current situation at hand. One time I read a few pages about the theory of flaws in metal casting processes. Intriguing but not totally relevant mainly because even if I felt I could make my fortune in the business, I just had no confidence I could assemble enough books in that library to self-educate to the point that I could cast things with less cost, more strength, or whatever. For one thing, casting is bound to be a smelly process and not to be attempted without access to equipment and facilities. So to say that many people cannot read-well, that may be better stated as many people cannot acquire sufficient knowledge for the achievement of even the most fundamental activities occurring in the background of civilization. :)

So if more and more people get hold of computers, there will be more and more voices clamouring for information, and that should be a good thing. It would be a lot easier for me to acquire comprehensive black and white knowledge for any particular objective.

Re:THE END OF THE AMERICAN TECH WORKER

[Anonymous Coward]

The literacy rate in America is over 97%

Making America, as of 2000, the 62nd in a measure of world-wide literacy.

You're beating Romania even!!

Re:THE END OF THE AMERICAN TECH WORKER

[MooUK]

He's probably tried. And been turned down, likely for not having a permanent address to put on a form or something similar.

Re:THE END OF THE AMERICAN TECH WORKER

[fiannaFailMan]

You're responding to a post about a:

( ) Technical innovation in a developing country
(*) Product shipped to a developing market
( ) General discussion about IT in the devbeloping world

The location is:

( ) Africa
( ) India
( ) Bangladesh
( ) China
( ) Somewhere else in Asia
( ) South America
( ) Central America
(*) Other _unspecified_

You're objecting to it on the basis that:

( ) Poverty hasn't been eliminated in that country yet
(*) American jobs will be lost

Your argument is bogus because:

( ) Poverty hasn't been eliminated in the developed world either, that doesn't mean we should halt all technological research
( ) This will not adversely affect any efforts to alleviate poverty
( ) This will help to alleviate poverty
( ) Poverty in that country isn't as widespread as you say it is
(*) The US does not have a divine right to keep all the cool jobs

Re:THE END OF THE AMERICAN TECH WORKER

[FireFlie]

"So pretty soon, every child in India will have a laptop, while here in America, we're lucky if half the graduating High School seniors know how to read.

This is an outsourcer's wet dream come true.

Expect HUGE sporsorships from the usual suspects."

While I don't exactly agree with the point that you are making, your point gets close to something that I am feeling. I understand that it is wonderful to help the rest of the world, but what about America? I believe one of the articles said that they did not want to make these things available to the general public. What would it hurt to sell these things retail for cheap? We may be a fairly rich country, but poverty still exists in America, and these things could help students of all ages who are middle to low income.

Re:THE END OF THE AMERICAN TECH WORKER

[MyNymWasTaken]

That, or one of the other 50-300 people who applied for the job got it.

Re:THE END OF THE AMERICAN TECH WORKER

[Anonymous Coward]

your point gets close to something that I am feeling. I understand that it is wonderful to help the rest of the world, but what about America?

boo hoo - you won't have a dumb cheap laptop - get over it...

logo's back!

[Mr.Coffee]

the article states that they plan to include the logo programming set to teach kids programming.i for one think that's great, but i wonder, can they make games and then play them with the laptop in game mode?
that may not be the best idea, however. i wouldn't want a child who was walking down the street fall down a manhole while trying to make their turtle do the same thing.

Has this already been obsoleted by cellphones?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Has this laptop already been rendered obsolete by cellphones?

Just look at the kind of information people are sending and retrieving from these low-power, sub-$100 devices already...

Re:Has this already been obsoleted by cellphones?

[EnronHaliburton2004]

sub-$100 devices already

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.

Plus, the interface on a Computer is superior then the interface on a mobile phone for many tasks.

Re:Has this already been obsoleted by cellphones?

[jmason]

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

Re:Has this already been obsoleted by cellphones?

[gatzke]

Good call. A slightly bigger Treo that could use a real kbd? Sounds cool.

Re:Has this already been obsoleted by cellphones?

[ImaLamer]

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.

And there lies the problem of trying to improve the less fortunate from a 'techie' standpoint. The idea of a "cheap" phone or other device they can "own" is pretty straightforward. The problem is as you stated, you don't own anything and are doing nothing more than begging for their service.

When they give you that fancy $300-500 phone for less than one hundred dollars they have to lock you into the contract to pay for the equipment. None of these companies are worried that you'll leave for another service a year down the line because of any natural competition. They are afraid of you leaving with what is essentially their phone. They haven't finished paying for it yet.

As an aside I see a major problem with mobile phone services in America. They are still tied to the phones. Consumers have come to expect that their carrier will supply them with a phone or that the carrier will sell them one (cheap). This was the strategy of Cellular phone companies like Ameritech. Then there was a large revolution in digital phone services with Qualcomm offering phones that really were $100 and way better. Upstarts like GTE were offering better, digital (PCS) services for nothing and no strings.

Overnight the old cellular companies were bought out, swallowed up, renamed or reformed. Everything was digital and things got way better. Now you could get the web, e-mail and text messages. Soon you could be sending photos! Suddenly major phone manufacturers started making phones with way too much jazz and now they are finally using that power. It's great, but there is a side effect. We are back to the old system. Sprint, Cingular, whomever is giving away phones for complex, costly contracts to pay for those phones. The digital phone revolution failed.

Something tangible (which may not be this $100 laptop) that we can give, instead of a service we can offer, makes a lot more sense. It only makes sense to develop a product that can be donated and left alone to flourish and then maybe bought later down the road. Hopefully a $100 laptop can get other governments to promise a PC for each child. Once they have that we can offer things like mobile phone services - but people have to start somewhere.

Re:Has this already been obsoleted by cellphones?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Anyone actually know how much the phone companies pay for the phones? I'm guessing that they are probably paying around a $100 or under for most phones after volume and wholesale discounts. So, really you are paying for the phone with your $30 and a month or two of service. Especially the cheaply contructed phones that are available today.

Re:Has this already been obsoleted by cellphones?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Plus, the interface on a Computer is superior then the interface on a mobile phone for many tasks."

Then the interface on a mobile phone for many tasks what? What happened to the interface? I want to know!
You left me hanging at the end there! Oh.. did you mean _than_?

Than: Used after a comparative adjective or adverb to introduce the second element or clause of an unequal comparison

Then: At that time. Next in time, space, or order.

Sorry to give you a ticket but my pedanterone levels are a bit high.

(off duty grammar nazi)

Re:Has this already been obsoleted by cellphones?

[Senes]

Cellular phones require a lot of expensive infrastructure and service. A fully self-contained computer would be a lot more suitable for bringing technology into the developing world; think of it like the difference between giving someone one free month of subscription-based software and giving them a working copy on CD that they can use as long as they want.

Re:Has this already been obsoleted by cellphones?

[EnronHaliburton2004]

pedanterone

Take a chill pill.

I want a firefox that highlights the obious misuse of words like then/than it's/its.

And I'm pretty sure it's pedanti-sterone. "rone" is not a word. "sterone" is ;)

Re:Has this already been obsoleted by cellphones?

[Halfbaked Plan]

When they give you that fancy $300-500 phone for less than one hundred dollars they have to lock you into the contract to pay for the equipment.

The lock-in is worse than that.

I have exactly one cell phone and it's one that I bought at an auction for $1. It's not a really old model, but it's older. It's only power source is a cigarette plug since it's designed to use in a car. I plugged it in and, yes, it works. When I tried to use it to call out I got a recorded message about not being a subscriber.

The lock-in is that a cell phone is worthless without a subscription to a cellphone service. Even mine, at $1 is overpriced to the regular consumer.

Re:Has this already been obsoleted by cellphones?

[dr.badass]

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.

Likewise, this device, which hasn't actually been built yet, will cost more than $100. Even the linked article says the cost to build will be $130-$150 for the first 5-10 million. Add in all the other costs involved in getting them to the people and it's unlikely to cost under $200.

Re:Has this already been obsoleted by cellphones?

[slashdot.org]

Most cell phones are not really sub-$100 devices.

Are you just saying that, or do you actually _know_ that? Because I would say that the majority of cell phones sold are well below $100 to manufacture. You got to keep in mind that the majority of cell-phones sold are low end phones.

So I'll go out on a limb and say that I think the low end phones cost $25 or less to manufacture. It's very hard to find any information on this but here's a quick thesis:

You can roughly divide the cost of a cell-phone into four parts: display, battery, chipset/electronics, plastic.

The cost of the plastic is going to be negligable, as in a couple dollars at _most_, I think everyone will see that. You can get batteries on eBay (in quantities) for any phone for a few of dollars. You can buy replacement LCDs on eBay (in quantities) for a few dollars (color < $20). Can't find a source for electronics, but based on the price of electronics with similar capabilities/densities, I don't see why it would be more than $10 (minipci 802.11 card for example).

here's an article that talks about cell phone MFG cost, although no current numbers...

and here's a more tangible quote where the person says the BOM can be reduced by 30% to make a $20 phone possible. (which is cost the end-user, not mfg cost)

Draw the line

[jacem]

Where do we draw the line between a very small laptop and a large PDA. The price point is good for a PDA especially if you add the price of a detachable keyboard but really what is the point.

$100 per child?

[Ossifer]

What educationally useful things will the child do with the laptop?

As an ex-CS college professor, let me suggest that it would be better to spend that $100 on the developing world on more teachers, education for teachers, roof for schools, etc.

Technology is not the answer to every problem. Remember all those silly computer labs back in high schools in the '80s? Did anyone get any real educational value out of them?

Re:$100 per child?

[nb caffeine]

Hell yeah there was, I now know the best way to take a waggon all the way across the country without gettin dystentary!

Re:$100 per child?

[Iriel]

"Remember all those silly computer labs back in high schools in the '80s? Did anyone get any real educational value out of them?

Of course they did! Some of them learning to crack the school network, going to on to becoming the legendary uber-hackers, eventually being hired by computer security firms!</completeanduttersatire>

Re:$100 per child?

[SensitiveMale]

Technology is not the answer to every problem. Remember all those silly computer labs back in high schools in the '80s? Did anyone get any real educational value out of them

Are you forgetting the huge information boom of the 90's and now the 00's?

Re:$100 per child?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Remember all those silly computer labs back in high schools in the '80s? Did anyone get any real educational value out of them?

I did- classes in just such a lab were my first introduction to Assembly Language and the PROPER use of spaghetti code (in miniassemblers, spaghetti code is useful because it allows you to edit your program directly in memory. So useful that indeed it's valueable to put in three NOPS after every 5th instruction so that if you need to you can insert a JSR later).

I'm sure it didn't help for the majority of students- but for the few who would otherwise be spending their time being beat up by jocks, it was a godsend.

Re:$100 per child?

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Did anyone get any real educational value out of them?

I did-- I had an Apple IIe in my 5th & 6th grade classrooms, and I did some programming in Basic & Logo on the system, learned some basic hardware skills.

I tucked those skills away for 10-15 years, but I still think that they helped me to solve logic problems, basic computer hardware skills. I majored in science/humanities major in College, but somehow I still ended up being a Senior System Administrator for a number of companies.

Another way to ask this question: Will the students be at a disadvantage if they do not have tools like a Computer in the classroom?

Obviously they need a roof, teacher, books, etc. But other tools can be valuable as well.

Re:$100 per child?

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

Well, the article is talking about how $100 can buy you a computer.
You're talking about how money is being misallocated in the USA and in other places.
Sure, most Americans had better find their child a better school, with a roof and good teachers, but if someones wants a cheap computer, that $100 thing is surely cool to have!

I agree though that computer education in school doesn't really teach you things. Hell, I got my first home PC when I was 19, and now I'm a good CS student.

Re:$100 per child?

[Skye16]

If it wasn't for those silly computer labs back in highschool - even if they only taught me Basic and Visual Basic, I never would have gotten involved in computers, much less received a bachelor's degree in computer science.

I know BASIC isn't the greatest language to begin on, but it did teach basic concepts of programming logic (at least, with regards to iteration and control), and, apparently, was enough to hook me into something deeper.

I was just one student, though. In the giant scheme of things, was it worth it? Who knows. But I'm sure as hell glad my school did have those silly computer labs (though, at this point, it was the late 90's ;D)

Re:$100 per child?

[sedyn]

My local school board is forbidding all forms of programming (this even includes stuff like flash) to be taught to high school students.

So I don't think anyone will get any real educational value out of them now (they will be teaching word processing, spreadsheets, typing, etc. You know stuff that any 13 year old can figure out).

Re:$100 per child?

[rctay]

As an ex-public school teacher that ran a lab full of Apple lle's, I can honestly say very little. There was almost zero funding after the initial equipment purchase for maintenance and upgrades. Almost every teacher at the school were technophobes, and only planned class sessions in the lab to have a free period off. After four years the lab was scrapped and the computers was placed in the classrooms to gather dust. A few kids learned a few lines of basic for display tricks. The technology was just pushed too soon to inexperienced administrators.

Re:$100 per child?

[Ossifer]

Sure, you and others have written how access to computers at your school enabled you to obtain computer skills. But did any of you learn history, math or social studies from them?

Back in the '50s televisions in the classroom was going to be the panacea for all educational ills... Now if you tell me you learned TV broadcasting, CRT repair, etc. from their presence, fine, that's nice, but that wasn't not the purpose.

Are we suggesting that the purpose here is to make computer nerds out of all these kids in underdeveloped countries?

Re:$100 per child?

[Ossifer]

While your school board's decree seems extreme, I have to agree with what I assume to be their thinking behind it: The world needs more people using computers than programming them.

Re:$100 per child?

[Neoprofin]

Yeah, now students can find even more unproductive things to do in the computer labs like play yahoo pool or texas hold 'em for six hours a day. Every person I knew growing up who had a serious interest in computers did most of their learning and working at home anyway because haveing the guy who teaches you "how to turn the computer on" level classes to 9th graders sometimes isn't the best for teaching you C++.

Re:$100 per child?

[XMunkki]

Personally, the labs at school were only a way for me to best the others. I knew from the start that this "logical thinking" thing that was apparent in computers was the one I'm good at. So I tried that. Soon all computer related tasks were easy as whatever for me.. Currently working as a games programmer. If it weren't for the computer labs, I would probably still be just a gamer and not trying to best myself over existing implementation.

So the horrible presentation actually pushed me "over the edge" in my youth. Been thanking it ever since.

Re:$100 per child?

[nine-times]

While I agree that thoughtlessly throwing computers at kids doesn't provide much value, I wouldn't say they're necessarily useless. First of all, it seems to me that there may be value in electronic text books. Kids would have less to carry (laptops are heavy, but not as bad as a couple text books), text books could provide multimedia, interactive activities, and tests, and they might be cheaper, all things considered (especially so if we get some decent open-source text books. Does anyone know if there are gratis electronic text-books?)

Beyond that, the fact is computers are becoming a part of our daily lives, and a certain level of computer knowledge is, more and more, becoming a job requirement. They also allow for free expression (more easily), and allow people to connect from around the world. Kids who can't get access to computers and the internet will find themselves at a disadvantage when trying to survive in relation to 1st and 2nd world countries.

No, not every activity needs to be pushed onto computers. Computers aren't replacements for teachers. Computers shouldn't even be top-priority. However, if used properly, they are a great tool. As with most of the cases of technology misuse in the '80s and '90s, the whole problem comes when people who don't understand how these computer-things work start deciding that they'll be a cure-all for every situation. Of course, this problem persists today, but we can hope that as computers become more common, more people will understand that computers are tools to create solutions, and not solutions in themselves.

Re:$100 per child?

[LnxAddct]

You are the dumbest CS professor I've ever heard. Yes, kids get benefits from technology. They have access to more information and they can experience things with computers that they couldn't normally. In addition, if you are taught to program a computer, you kind of have your own little universe in which you control everything. Do you think the hordes of computer related fields today came out of thin air? People had to be comfortable with computers becfore they worked with computers, and introducing computers in school achieved that.Even for people who didn't go into a technology field, when they entered the business world they weren't fearful of these machines and what they could do, or if they'd take over their jobs. Getting people familiar with the technology is the biggest key to the success of the technology... otherwise people fear what they aren't familiar with and reject it. Computers play an intelgral part in today's society. We would *not* be where we are without them. Sure money for teachers, etc.. sounds good, but there already is that and if there isn't enough it doesn't matter... this laptop is still important. The nice folks from MIT probably can't afford to send a few million over to other countries for education, but they can afford to design a computer that is extremely cheap so that when the money for teachers comes from some where else, and those teachers wish to teach some form of modern technology, they can do so at a more affordable price. How the hell do you expect any civilization to be brought up to 21st century standards when they don't have computers or fear them because they've never used them before? You just outright disregard the benefits of the computers, what an outrageous and ignorant position you took. These guys are helping how they can, its just not by directly donating cash.
Regards,
Steve

Re:$100 per child?

[sedyn]

Not really, I live in one of the poorest areas of the country and it's been a long time since I met someone my age who didn't use a computer. Does everyone own one? No, but everyone has used one.

Re:$100 per child?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember all those silly computer labs back in high schools in the '80s? Did anyone get any real educational value out of them?

I did.

Re:$100 per child?

[ari_j]

Sometimes I wish that moderators could attach meta-comments to their moderation. Like "+1 Funny: Spelling" or "+1 Funny: Oregon Trail rocked." That way, we could tell which part they were laughing at when they modded you up. :)

Re:$100 per child?

[Nijika]

Those labs were the only thing that kept me interested as a child.

That being said, your point is not only well taken, but valid. These laptops could be a leap forward, but they aren't much use if the children they are designed for don't also have food, clothing, and shelter to start.

Nice gesture, but it's a long way off.

Re:$100 per child?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Sure, you and others have written how access to computers at your school enabled you to obtain computer skills. But did any of you learn history, math or social studies from them?

Math was at home on the TI99/4A during Grade School- although the computer lab at the high school did help with Trig because the computers could be used to plot standard trig functions. Not history or social studies- this was *before* the World Wide Web, unless you count writing papers for AP history on a word processor. But government and economics class used some pretty simple world generators (that one about Babylon in Government class, in economics class we got a stock market simulator).

They helped- but the 1980s really were the extreme begining of computer labs and computers in the classroom, and for that reason, most of the instructors simply didn't know what the hell to do with them. These days- I'd say a webpliance would be better in the first world. But you've got to remember that the third world is 20 years behind us, so 1980s era software would be a vast improvement over nothing.

Re:$100 per child?

[Locutus]

Except this is probably the same situation which taught Microsoft to market to management and not the technologists. Too bad Apple didn't catch on to this. If they had, they might have had some training materials and courses for the adults so they could learn what that new fangled computer thingy was supposed to do. I don't think Apple would have recognized the marketing potential of such data. IMO.

LoB

Re:$100 per child?

[Prophet of Nixon]

If you have little or nothing, $100 can go to far better uses than some cheapass electronics.

Negroponte isn't interested in its educational usefulness, though. He's only interested in any media attention this can draw for him and any corporate sponsors he's currently feeding from. Negroponte is a joke, and to brand his shenanigans as "research", "design", or "development" is almost offensive. Regardless, people go on and on about him, including Slashdot from time to time.

Re:$100 per child?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you think these kids are going to learn C++ on at home? The $100 laptop, or the home computer THEY DON'T HAVE?

Re:$100 per child?

[Pro777]

As a former computer studies teacher at a secondary school in the developing world, I applaud Negroponte's efforts to get cheap computer hardware into the hands of those who need it. After two years of wrestling with broken, "donated" crap machines from the Western world, I think this is a serious step in the right direction.

At a school like mine, a computer lab could conceivably provide access to Wikipedia, and any other number of educational games. My students were fascinated with education games, spent hours looking at entries in Encarta, and made some pretty incredible art with MS Paint. But of course, more needs to be done.

I think in addition to hardware, we also need to create materials to education children on "how" to use the computer. After scouring the net looking for a primer, my colleagues and I decide to write our own. We should not be reinventing the wheel on this problem.

Cheap hardware coupled with the proper teaching materials could do a world of good for developing countries. I just hope it happens sooner rather than later.

Re:$100 per child?

[broggyr]

Remember all those silly computer labs back in high schools in the '80s? Did anyone get any real educational value out of them?

I learned how to do construction because of my Apple IIe and Hard Hat Harry!

Re:$100 per child?

[iceanfire]

think about it this way: with every child having a laptop, all you'll need is 1cd with all the text/diagrams/flash stuff to teach the kid. All he has to do is copy and paste the files onto the harddrive and pass on the cd to the kid next to him. we won't need to print out books anymore for them, we'll just have a bunch of teachers in the u.s donate the time to write this stuff up, have a bunch of programmers/designers make it interactive and viola: the kid can learn by himself. obviously the above would be targeted towards children around the age of 10. but it would probably work as long as the parents supported them. also, getting used to a laptop would help them in the future (pretty much every job nowadays in the U.S reqs some tech experience).

Re:$100 per child?

[griffjon]

Technology is not the answer to every problem.

Sure it is, you just have to frame the question differently. e.g.:

Problem: "Our school doesn't have a roof over it!"
Answer: "You should have a fundraiser to buy roofing construction supplies and some alumni to volunteer labor"
Results: New roof for the school, community strengthening, cost of roof spread out among the entire community via the fundraiser.

Whatever. That might be cost effective, sustainable and useful. Really, you should say:

Problem: "Our school doesn't have a roof, we need CAD software, new computers and a trained IT specialist to help us design one!"
Answer: "Let us give your education ministry a loan from the IMF or DevBank to pursue a CAD-in-Schools project, delivering top-of-the-line CAD-capable desktop computers with the latest non-F/LOSS software on it, spending millions of loan-dollars that we'll have to repay later."
Results: New computers in every school which get ruined as they got delivered during the rainy season to schools with no roof.

But seriously. The problem of course is Negroponte can create buzz with a $100 laptop-for-every-child program, whereas "put a roof on every rural school" just doesn't quite get the same level of interest from most folk, despite the fact that the cost would be lower and benefits per cost much higher. Try arguing that for the value of ventilated pit latrines (or, gasp, running water) -- people blink at you, because they don't get the fact that that is a need for many schools in the developing world. Cheap computers, they grok.

This is not in defense, just explanation and frustration from my own experience.

Basically, I agree -- If you're gonna pony up $100US/child, lemme suggest, oh, maybe, a billion better projects you can direct that towards.

On the other hand, if you've got some of the basics, not having basic computing skills can be a real barrier in getting a good job. Current solutions (that I've seen enacted in programs!) are keyboards with a tiny lcd screen and palmOS for $200+, so a fully functional laptop with some made-for-3rd-world ruggedizing, solar/handcrank power, etc. concepts built in is a potentially valuable idea.

I find it interesting, however, that (according to http://laptop.media.mit.edu/):
"Please note that the $100 laptops--not yet in production--will not be available for sale. The laptops will only be distributed to schools directly through large government initiatives. "

I for one would pay twice the price to get a ruggedized, hand-crankable, low-end, paperback-book-sized laptop. I smell something funny, economically speaking, going on here. Either the hardware cost will be at a loss and there's service/support/gov't contracting fees to balance it, or something else funny. I'd imagine the demand for these in the developed world would be reasonably high, so by doing this he's killing his profits that he could use to improve the design for the developing world...

Re:$100 per child?

[Em Adespoton]

Sure, you and others have written how access to computers at your school enabled you to obtain computer skills. But did any of you learn history, math or social studies from them?

Well, apart from learning some American history from Oregon Trail, I didn't learn much outside the computing field from our labs.

However, in the early 90's, I was developing a computer assisted math enrichment program (lesson, not computer) for grade 6 students. This program included using BASIC and some simple math games to teach algebra and general problem solving. One of the things I had the students do was design algorithms on paper to solve problems, and then enter them into the computer to see how their algorithms did; this taught specificity and a wide range of maths-related skills that I'm sure those students are still using today.

Back to the original issue with these "third world laptops," I think these computers will be useful in a number of areas -- as digital textbooks most importantly, but also as a means for learning advanced writing. Remember that "child" can mean anyone between the age of 0 and 16/17/18/19/21 -- It is useful to have a tool that can be used in different ways depending on the needs of the child at a specific point in time. The interesting thing will be to see if these computers last more than a year in the field.

Re:$100 per child?

[Bastian]

Ahem. That huge information boom mostly only happened for the rich. (If you're here reading Slashdot, that almost definitely includes you. I'm not talking rich-as-in-drives-a-Bentley. Even if your car is ten years old and rusted out, at least you have one.)

This laptop is being designed for folks for whom an information boom would be textbooks and teachers. It's being designed for folks who have a hard enough time putting food on the table and clothing on their backs without dropping two months' paycheck on a piece of electronics. In fact, design flaw #1 on this thing is that it is a piece of electronics.

A computer is a not a magic make-everything-better device.

Re:$100 per child?

[sgt scrub]

What did Sam Kinison http://www.samkinison.org/ say. "Don't send them food. You can't f**king grow food in the desert! Send them f**king U-hauls!
So, I would say they could use the laptop to find places that rent U-hauls.

Re:$100 per child?

[mstefanus]

Are you forgetting the huge information boom of the 90's and now the 00's?

Yes yes... without those labs maybe internet isn't like what it is today, Slashdot doesn't exist and CmdrTaco is still an unmarried man.

Re:$100 per child?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was Hard Hat Mack.

Re:$100 per child?

[imthesponge]

What's their reason for doing that?

Re:$100 per child?

[serutan]

The question is about educational value, not introductory training for tech careers. The goal of the project is to replace textbooks with laptops, which means ALL students (not just budding geeks) will have these INSTEAD OF books.

I question the wisdom of replacing $20/year textbooks with $100 laptops on a 5-year finance plan, as the article suggests. In the next sentence it mentions that if the publishers have to be paid for the content the cost will be higher. Well yeah, essentially you're replacing $100 worth of books with a $100 empty container for what's in the books. The content isn't going to come free. And although I have no idea what the rate of breakage and loss rate will be, it won't be anywhere near Zero.
With content and replacement costs the breakeven point for this program is probably 6 to 8 years. How many careful, tech-savvy people with ample resources own functioning laptops right now that are that old?

Another aspect of this that I question is that it seems to view kids in developing nations as little knowledge-hungry angels. This isn't true any more than it is in America. Some kids love school, but many only tolerate it or outright hate it. If merely getting a kid to show up for school and do homework is a major victory, expecting that kid to learn to use and take care of some gadget on top of it is naively optimistic. I know there are many kids who are hungry for just such an opportunity, but I think a better use of the money would be to identify those kids and give them really useful tools, rather than carpet-bomb a country with cheap laptops.

Re:$100 per child?

[sedyn]

Dijkstra didn't use a computer for anything more than email in his later career, he thought giving them to CS students would only impede them. But I guess he was another dumb CS prof. As for what you said: Assume that people do fear what they do not know. Assume that high school students can choose what courses they can take. Assume that computer classes are not neccessary to graduate. Given these assumptions, there will be people who don't encounter computers until they need to. But I contend that the majority of people (under the age of 30) do not fear computers, and realize the benefits that you speak of. Therefore, people encounter computers when they want to, at least in the western world. I don't feel that I'm capable of commenting on international development in the third world, because I know nothing about it. So I don't know what the money could be spent on, and why something else is more important.

Re:$100 per child?

[Neoprofin]

Or maybe in the American school computer labs of the 90s that I was talking about, the ones that they're going to get to in their time machines.

Re:$100 per child?

[Jon Abbott]

Pace: Grueling
Rations: Meager
Temperature: Hot

Sally has fever. Lost 3 days.

You are at the Snake river. Do you want to hire a ferryman or attempt to ford the river on your own?

Re:$100 per child?

[KylePflug]

I learned an awful lot about Escape Velocity on my computer lab's Macs.

But yeah, those labs were pretty worthless. I spent the entire time making Star Wars games in Hypercard and telling the bumbling idiot of a teacher how to use the thing.

Re:$100 per child?

[hoggoth]

Well, as a eigth grader I needed to draw circles on the screen, in 6502 assembly language. Of course there were no drawing primitives, just setting a bit to turn on a dot. So I had to research how to plot circles. I found lots of trig answers with sines and cosines, but I didn't have sines and cosines in assembly language and as an eigth grader I didn't really understand them. Then I found an old paper describing Bresenham's algorithm that only used addition to draw circles and arcs. Very fast, very easy to impliment, even for an eigth grader.

That was one example out of hundreds. I learned a lot about math, about research, and about logic from computers. Of course now a days kids don't program, they run prepackaged applications. Using Word and playing Reader Rabbit aren't the same as trying to figure out how a computer works.

Re:$100 per child?

[hkb]

Uh yeah, I learned how to use computers (TRS-80 Model 1s) when I was too poor to afford a decent one (eg. non-Timex Sinclair). I also learned how to use word processor programs, and how to program in BASIC. It was also a natural meeting place for all of us kids interested in computers, and we'd meet during free periods of time to socially network and play on the computers, show each other our latest programs, and other related trivia.

Re:$100 per child?

[yppiz]

In fact, design flaw #1 on this thing is that it is a piece of electronics.

While I want to agree with you, I also think that there are counter-examples that electronics are not only beneficial but the correct solution to information needs for the poor. For example, radio and telephone are electroics-based technologies, but are crucial and successful even in poor and low-tech areas.

A critical element of success is that the electronics be reliable and easy to operate. These I think are the big challenges for something like a laptop, not the fact that it's built out of electronic parts.

--Pat

Re:$100 per child?

[sedyn]

I'm not sure, the teacher that told me just said that they consider basic knowledge a higher priority but it might also be due to a lack of resources in certain districts. He said all this with a little disgust and a lot of disappointment in his voice, no less. (he has a CS degree btw)

I know that the province hasn't standardized any computer curriculum as is. This might be an effort to do so (think of a floor function)

It bothers me because we prepare math, physics, chemistry, english, music, sociology, economics/accounting, history, biology, geology, students for university. Hell, we even prepare law students (don't they need a degree before they can enter law school). But we don't prepare CS students for entering a degree as is. I remember in my first year, I had met students that knew how to do many simple tasks with computers (many claimed to learn it by themselves), but the closest the majority came to being prepared was knowing html, which of course, is nothing.

It's a sad state to be in.

Re:$100 per child?

[Anonymous Coward]

We're mostly grown-ups here. You can go ahead and spell out fucking next time the mood strikes you.

Re:$100 per child?

[ender-]

What educationally useful things will the child do with the laptop?

As an ex-CS college professor, let me suggest that it would be better to spend that $100 on the developing world on more teachers, education for teachers, roof for schools, etc.

Technology is not the answer to every problem. Remember all those silly computer labs back in high schools in the '80s? Did anyone get any real educational value out of them?

Certainly a good teacher is one of the best uses of money, but sometimes there just aren't enough *good* teachers to go around.
In the 80's [and even into the 90's] we really hadn't figured out how to make the best use out of computers so of course they weren't all that useful.

At this point in time however, I *REALLY* believe that we've gotten to the point where every child having a computer could be very useful. Take for instance a company I used to work for. [Electronic Education, a division of Addison Wesley Longman]. Our main product was called "The Waterford Early Reading Program". It was developed at the Waterford Institute. I have to say that this was a spectacular program. Two or three computers would be put in a Kindergarten classroom [eventually they expanded to 1st and 2nd grades as well]. The kids would each get 15 minutes a day on the computer, and it would help to teach them to read. Each kid also got a set of books, music CD's and Videos that went along with the lessons. It was totally self paced. It would regularly test them on concepts, and if they didn't understand it, they would get reinforcing lessons until they got it. It wasn't a dull collection of lessons either. Everything was fun and engaging for the kids. The kids loved it and it worked great, especially in low income areas. I believe Waterford has since also expanded to a Math and Science program as well. This was after I left so I haven't used it myself, but I'm sure it holds up to the high level of quality that the Early Reading program displayed.

Sadly they charged a lot for it, but it stands as proof that computers can be made VERY useful as an educational tool. And that is one thing I think perhaps open source software can help with. These countries that the $100 laptop is geared towards don't have the funds to afford commercial software. That is the key to this whole thing fulfilling its potential. If we can get some quality, free [as in beer & speech] educational software to go with these laptops, then this program will work. Otherwise I fear that it is doomed to failure. Unfortunately, this includes not only the software itself, but the artwork [there was a LOT of GREAT artwork in the ERP which helped significantly to hold the childrens attention]., music, audio, AND the boring QA and testing required to develop a decent educational program.

So which of you Open Source programmers are going to volunteer to help educate the world?

Re:$100 per child?

[RY]

I still rember the first batch program I wrote, which got me suspended for "hacking" the school computers.

10 PRINT "This class sucks. The teacher is so stupid"
20 GOTO 10

Re:$100 per child?

[kmsz]

Did anyone get any real educational value out of them?

The school labs did nothing for me but the local computer club (the John von Neumann Society ) got me hooked. This in spite the fact that I knew the school teacher's name from computer magazins well before I enrolled at the school.

I still have a fond memory of all those C64, Sinclair Spectrum and other Zilog Z80-based home computers...

it would be better to spend that $100 on the developing world on more teachers, education for teachers, roof for schools, etc.

As to your point, the availability of technology plants seeds for the future. If you spend all the development aid money on school roofs, those nations will never have a chance to stop the digital divide widening.

This is a topic I discussed many times. The technology will make the use of resources more efficient by e.g. ameliorating information flow and lowering its costs. Economy is basically just another term for self-organisation, or better: networking of people. Think about the Roman Empire and how much the invested in the reliable flow of information.

Mark

Re:$100 per child?

[JaseOne]

and as a student that actually used those labs and then later the Amiga based ones I can say the opposite in that they did help a lot to put me on the right career track and give me a good grounding in technology. You see the thing about technology, programming in particular that people don't get is that it is something that needs to be learned it isn't something that can be taught and having those labs available was a huge enabler for that.

Re:$100 per child?

[Marthirial]

Great, now my sponsored kid is going to be downloading music at iTunes with the money I send to World Vision.

Re:$100 per child?

[Ossifer]

I recommend throwing a ';' on the end of line 10--that way you get this diagonally scrolling "animation". This was a favourite thing of mine to do when I was 12--go around to the Radio Shack and do this to their display TRS-80...

Re:$100 per child?

[bmalia]

And that you can't take 5 buffalo back to your waggon to feed everyone, but you can shoot them anyway for sport.

Re:$100 per child?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone get any real educational value out of them?
A lot of hardcore programmers I know got their first exposure to computers in those classes. I remember the bunch of BBC micros we had in a dust-free room where we had to take off our shoes before entering. Most students who used those computers would have never had a chance to see a computer otherwise. Of course, those computers were just a start but a start is necessary. And that was without an Internet. So much of what we learnt was programing and it was not even as if we had a rigorous curiculum since it was all new and no one was sure what to expect. I remember our curriculum required a 100-line program in BASIC as part of the final project and most of us were writing 1000s of lines of code before we got out of school. And all that was before the Internet. If you think one can't educate oneself with a computer and Internet, I think you seriously underestimate the creativity of kids.

Re:$100 per child?

[sco08y]

What educationally useful things will the child do with the laptop?

Read? For each child it's $100 for the laptop. We can get them electronic textbooks for their entire educational career, whereas that same $100 might buy 3 or 4 textbooks.

As an ex-CS college professor, let me suggest that it would be better to spend that $100 on the developing world on more teachers, education for teachers, roof for schools, etc.

I'm not sure what your CV has to do with it, but there's more than $100 to spend here. I suggest letting the philanthropists decide how their money is spent, since billionaire investors seem to have a knack for investing.

Remember all those silly computer labs back in high schools in the '80s? Did anyone get any real educational value out of them?

I see where you're coming from. Our high school system has been screwed up for 20 years now and has a establishment that conspires to maintain a status quo while deflecting any reforms. That's why there are lots of trendy ideas that wind up burning millions of tax dollars.

If we were donating billions of tax dollars of aid to Africa, I'd agree that exactly the same thing will happen because the established dictators would make sure they all went to prop up their regimes while suppressing real reform. However, this private effort might avoid helping the dictators.

I'd even argue that it's better to donate things that are not of immediate practical benefit. If you donate food and housing, you make it impossible for the locals to make a living selling such things, and they need to do so to establish their economy. This has actually happened in India and such places were foreigners were so generous after famines that the farmers were going broke and it was only when the Indian government got them to stop donating the food that they could reestablish their agriculture sector.

Re:$100 per child?

[frankie]

Tell us where you live so we can all avoid moving there.

If a school board member in my area even suggested banning any topic that might appear on a college board exam, they would be recalled and thrown out of town so quickly, every window in the building would shatter from the sonic boom.

Re:$100 per child?

[gbulmash]

Technology is not the answer to every problem. Remember all those silly computer labs back in high schools in the '80s? Did anyone get any real educational value out of them? Heck yeah. In 1984, our school computer lab was upgraded from Commodore PETs to Sperry PC clones. This allowed us to run Pascal and allowed the school to offer AP computer science.

Now, given, I did my actual homework on a Commodore 64 with Pascal. But being able to take AP Comp Sci had a huge educational value to me.

Re:$100 per child?

[boy_afraid]

As a poor underprivileged kid in the 80s and early 90s, we couldn't afford anything electronic, it was in elementary and middle school where I first touched computers in a computer lab. We you had to share two or more to a computer station. It was a magic to me. I was lucky enough to have a brother-in-law that taught me some rudementary computer knowledge and some DOS commands. As the years went on and I self-taught myself was I got the change to be in front of a computer I got better. I was able to get one of those summer jobs where they pay you to go to school, where then I became the teachers pet in one of the computer classes where you take match and english lessons on the computer. I would basically be her help desk support and help the kids out on the computer. Later in high school I took QBasic classes where I was one of the stars, and helped to get nice pretty girls to work with me since I did all the work; same deal in phyics and computer science classes.

When it came time to go to college (again, poor so I depended on my grades to get me scholarships and grants, didn't expect nor got money from anyone else) I had some money left over to get either a car, to go back and forth to school, or a computer. I decided to get a bus pass and a computer. I haven't looked back. I eventually took that self-teaching skill that has benefited me so much that I eventually dropped out of college pursing a physics degree to spending full time on computers.

Now, I love computers to death and make great $$$ (around $ 145K / year) doing IT Project Managent after years of application development. One of these days I'll get my degree in physics. Those computer labs in school didn't teach anything hardcore to me, but they've sparked a love affair that will last for the rest of my life.

Re:$100 per child?

[carlislematthew]

I did.

I started some serious learning in Turbo Pascal, and moved on to Borland C. It was at this point in my life that I decided computer software was going to be my profession, so I targeted my education in that direction. Now, it is my job and I earn great money for doing so - far more than I probably should.

Re:$100 per child?

[Grayputer]

Think easily distributable E-text books and CBT programs. In some areas a teacher comes way after a doctor or field irrigation (not saying it should, but it does). A cheap laptop with hand crank power that is full of e-books on first aid, farming, and basic 3-Rs education is useful as a community resource. (Think library and basic training) It is a one time cost not a recurring cost (OK, recurring every N years if you take care of it). A teacher with a roof, school, and materials is a recurring cost to the community.

Is the approach practical? I do not know. Probably depends a lot on the PC survival rate and quality of material available. I'm sure there are parts of this planet where a PC with a 5 year life at $100 ($20/yr) is a viable alternative to a paper based reference library and the one day a month a teacher might wander through.

If not, it is viable in the US where the average high school student in my area totes 20+ pounds of books between classes. Move to e-books and this low price reader and save the storage, transportation, distribution, and student agony of all that paper hauling.

Re:$100 per child?

[sedyn]

It's a dying city, Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada. Just to note, I didn't have to take an exam to get into university. In fact, I didn't have to do very much at all.

Re:$100 per child?

[FireFlie]

Why does the world need more users, and not more people that can program? Do you believe that there is no educational benefit to learning how to program? I would have to disagree. The American attitude is going in a direction that if it aint readin', writin', or 'rithmatic that it isn't important. Education is useful no matter who you are or what you do. Just like studying language, music, literature, art, and shop can help students in other areas of achievement, programming helps teach one to think--to use valuable problem solving skills that can be applied (not always consciously of course) to their surroundings.
Of course I'm not saying that the market should be flooded with people that want to be programmers. Quite the contrary. I have learned quite a lot of math in my schooling. Does that mean that I am qualified to be a mathmatician? Of course not. Children should be exposed to a wider variety of things at a younger age.

So, I would think that it's quite the opposite. The world needs less people simply using computers, and more people programming them.

Re:$100 per child?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, in the country that had a villager use am IBM Laptop to open a nut, Common household NAILS, and bottle caps are the item, that would stablize their housing. ( Its how you put together a house from Pallet wood.)

Re:$100 per child?

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Fully agreed-- A text book is always a text book, but a laptop can be every text book they need, and an environment to test what they learned on. As long as they build these to really last, it could be a godsend to a developing country. Would you rather pay $20 per book (an insanely cheap price for school books, but lets pretend they got cut a deal) per year * every year the kid has left in school, or the price of a laptop that can just be upgraded with the new programs every year?

Re:$100 per child?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Dijkstra was a mathematician- what the hell did he know about the mechanics of getting kids interested in technology?

Re:$100 per child?

[Marillion]

Dijkstra (Noted computer science professor) once said:
"Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."

Re:$100 per child?

[drinkypoo]

Personally, I lived in a place that could afford teachers, so no, all I learned from computers was computer skills. I didn't really learn shit about history or social studies, though, because I was a precocious little bastard and they couldn't (wouldn't take the time to) keep me busy, so I mouthed off and made a nuisance of myself. There are few disservices we do our children as serious as forcing them to learn at a pace too slow for them. No child left behind == no child excels.

Re:$100 per child?

[Anonymous Coward]

To give him something to complain about. Life would be too good otherwise.

Re:$100 per child?

[drinkypoo]

These laptops could be a leap forward, but they aren't much use if the children they are designed for don't also have food, clothing, and shelter to start.

I can't help but think that education is the key to actually having food, clothing, and shelter.

Re:$100 per child?

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

I think they should focus more on the dumb terminal side of things. Let each machine be capable of running vim or gcc(slowly) if they want to, but have the main use be connecting to the schools main computer (which could easily be a 2ghz dell sitting in a corner).
Or another idea would be to use something like klusternix or whatever that beowolf cluster knoppix fork was so that every computer shares resources with the machines around it.

Re:$100 per child?

[Altus]

Very true. not only that... learning to program really helps to teach you about how a computer works. you come to understand its abilities and its limitations and this can help you not only when writing a new program but also when using someone elses program (or OS). Suddenly you don't expect the computer to do the impossible... you arent intimidated by applications because you know how to write them (even if your skills are limited).

People using computers without understanding them is why IT budgets are so big... if we had a workforce that learned how computers actually work just the way the learned how algebra actually works we would probably see much greater productivity in our work force as people wouldn't always be waiting for someone else to figure things out and spoon feed the ideas to them.

Re:$100 per child?

[cpeterso]

As an ex-CS college professor, let me suggest that it would be better to spend that $100 on the developing world on more teachers, education for teachers, roof for schools, etc.

Those things are important, but an internet-enabled laptop will allow kids (and adults) to access online teachers, references, and markets. Look at the huge boon mobile phones have had in developing countries. Farmers can call around to get market prices and sell their goods to higher bidders, instead of just taking whatever meager price is offered locally.

Re:$100 per child?

[liquilife]

Oregeon Trail. Man, I loved that game. I was just meditating not long ago the long lost feeling of sitting in the school library trying to get me and my family safely across the river. This prompted me to download the game: http://www.classicgaming.com/rotw/otrail.shtml Of course you'll need an old apple emulator. One I found that works great for this particular game: http://www.tomcharlesworth.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

Re:$100 per child?

[superdude72]

What educationally useful things will the child do with the laptop?

Making a larger variety of educational materials available would be useful in *any* public school system. I remember going to elementary school in the '80s: History books that stop at the Nixon administration; filmstrips that promise Man will one day walk on the moon. Public elementary schools can't afford to replace all their textbooks every year. Damn, I wish we'd had Wikipedia when I was a kid.

Ideally, I'd like a wider variety of books to be available, so that K-12 English and history courses would be more like what I had in college (ie, learning from primary sources instead of boring textbooks.) But this is more expensive than a $100 laptop. The laptop could be a cost-effective first step, if done right.

Re:$100 per child?

[Hugonz]

... and no girlfriend...

Re:$100 per child?

[Altus]

first off... text books are VERY expensive... and that not just the content but also the printing and shipping. Second, they get replaced regularly and are often out of date due to lack of funds.

Now I dont know anything about this computer... but if you could invent a cheep durable piece of hardware that would replace all the text books and could be updated electronically and regularly I think that could be of significant value... especially since that decvice also doubles as a general purpose computer and can run educational software.

people on this board like to put down educational software because all they can think of is oregon trail... I work for a company that develops educational software... specifically reading comprehension software. This product in particular has proven to be very successful at improving literacy rates among its users. Its not a game... its a piece of software that, along with class room instruction, can really make a difference to kids (and adults).

Im sure this isnt the only piece of software out there that has this kind of effect....

just because the technophobe teachers using first generation computers with 0-th generation educational software came out looking like a joke to you when you were in middle school doesnt mean that the same thing has to be true now.

Re:$100 per child?

[sedyn]

He was a mathematician (by interest, and personal beliefs), a physicist (by degree), and a computer scientist (by accomplishments). The context I used it in isn't even towards kids, it's towards CS students (so I could relate it to another CS prof who didn't think technology was the answer for everything). I don't think the issue of getting kids interested in technology is relevant anymore, because most realize the benefits for themselves and adapt towards it anyway. I think the real challenge of the 21st century will be to make sure kids can cope WITHOUT technology. (If I took the average high school student's calculator from them and made them calculate the root of any number that cannot be stated as n^2 where n is not an integer, do you think they could do it?)

Re:$100 per child?

[nEoN nOoDlE]

become a banker so you start out with more provisions? That worked for me!

Re:$100 per child?

[poot_rootbeer]

Are you forgetting the huge information boom of the 90's and now the 00's?

I remember it, I'm just not sure how a roomful of Apple IIc's running a LOGO interpreter in my high school's computer lab circa 1995 prepared anyone for it.

Re:$100 per child?

[g2devi]

> As an ex-CS college professor, let me suggest that it would be better to spend that $100 on the
> developing world on more teachers, education for teachers, roof for schools, etc

You have a fairly limited idea of what the developing world is. Argentina is one of the countries that has committed to buying .5 million to 1 million of these $100 laptops:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27242

In many countries of the developing world, there are plenty of teachers, the teachers are well educated, schools have rooves, but computers are a luxury that few afford or even think they need (think back to 1980's in the US). Unless the population is made computer literate and understand the importance of computers, the digital divide will grow wider.

Re:$100 per child?

[Mike Peel]

There is WikiBooks, but that doesn't seem to have gotten that far yet. I guess they could be made into PDF's or the like, and distributed along with the laptops. Of course, there's also Project Gutenberg, but that would really only be useful for courses like English, or mebbe History (in English still, though; language will likely be a problem).

Re:$100 per child?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a TANDY (TRS-80) version also, called 'Westward Ho'.

Nowadays 'Westward Ho' is a hidden GTA level and you can't sell an electronic device with a number lower than 5000 or the word 'Extreme'.

Good lord I am old.

Re:$100 per child?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember all those silly computer labs back in high schools in the '80s? Did anyone get any real educational value out of them?

Yes. By letting students type in papers, edit them quickly, and print them out, they saved *hours* of rewriting every new draft by hand. Hours which I could use to study other things.

Ask any student: wouldn't you like to have less "busywork" to have to do, and more time for learning new things? I knew I did. The times I had to 10-page essays and didn't have access to a computer really sucked up my time.

I, for one, think that "magically giving students and teachers more hours in the day" qualifies as "educational value".

Re:$100 per child?

[RomulusNR]

This laptop is being designed for folks for whom an information boom would be textbooks and teachers.

Why are electronic documents not suitable to alleviate the need for textbooks, and educational software not suitable to alleviate the need for teachers?

And who can import a teacher for $100?

Re:$100 per child?

[toy4two]

I never would have made anything out of my life if I never found Carmen San Diego

Re:$100 per child?

[GimliGloin]

Remember all those silly computer labs back in high schools in the '80s? Did anyone get any real educational value out of them?

As a matter of fact.... Yes! I was a student in one of those labs... and now I teach a CS class in college. Try not to make such BROAD statements...

GSG

Re:$100 per child?

[Bastian]

Juding from my high-school's experiment with moving over to computer-based education (admittedly a few years ago), here are the problems with electronic documents and educational software:

1. There isn't nearly as much out there.
2. They are more expensive than you think. There's very little free stuff out there.
3. They tend to choose flash over substance.
4. Because they are used with the aid of a computer, using them takes more effort than just opening and reading, especially if you are not particularly computer-savvy.
5. Computers are flaky and break a lot. Books don't inexplicably refuse to open or spontaneously erase themselves.

Overall, pretty much all the students and teachers would agree that we paid more to learn less. The ones who would disagree are mostly students who just liked being able to fuck with computers instead of listening to lectures, and don't want to have their toys taken away.

And I would seriously question why you think a computer is anywhere near being a replacement for a teacher. Have you used educational software and texts? Have you been to school?

Re:$100 per child?

[Ossifer]

Many people have written how the existence of computers inspired them to model their lives on computers... So what? Are we expecting all in the third world to be computer geeks and teach CS in college?

These students need a *broad* education, and the assumption of the program is that it will give it to them--just as TV's were believed to do back in the 1950's.

Re:$100 per child?

[Fatty Magee]

My fricken oxen died when I was forging the river...... DAMN

Re:$100 per child?

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus portable copies of Project Gutenberg files?

Granted... that's 150GB of data for everything, but you can always slice off a bit for what you want.

Re:$100 per child?

[geordieboy]

the root of any number that cannot be stated as n^2 where n is not an integer, do you think they could do it?

Maybe if you cleaned up your grammar so the challenge even makes fucking sense (I guess by cannot you meant can, maybe? I dunno)

Re:$100 per child?

[geordieboy]

Nowadays they can use OpenGL, and instead of drawing circles with Bresenham for about the same amount of research effort they can make 3d volumetric models with per pixel shading. I wish OpenGL (and lots of other great open source libraries) had existed when I was a kid.

Re:$100 per child?

[geordieboy]

wait, John von Neumann was your high school CS teacher. Shiittttt

Re:$100 per child?

[jerryasher]

With the right ractors, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, commissioned by Lord Finkle-McGraw and designed by John Percival Hackwort could be used to teach a young girl how to think for herself. Take Nell for example, Nell learns many valuable lessons from the Primer over the years, everything from martial arts, to cooking, and computer theory..

Re:$100 per child?

[Anonymous Coward]

"A critical element of success is that the electronics be reliable and easy to operate. These I think are the big challenges for something like a laptop, not the fact that it's built out of electronic parts."

There was a project to put wells in Burkina Faso (extraordinarily poor African country, mostly desert). They provided the nice fancy well pumps, but the locals did not have the tech to fix them when they failed. Eventually, the Mennonites (!) came by and showed the locals how to blacksmith spare parts for the pumps.

Electronics does not have a blacksmith who can make reasonable facsimiles. In order to work, this project will have to continually supply laptops to areas that might well find it more valuable to *sell* the cheapie laptops.

Also, where are they going to plug in the laptops? If these areas are that dirt poor, then they aren't going to have electric to power the laptops.

Re:$100 per child?

[Halfbaked Plan]

I got a lot of 'educational value' out of the computer lab in my High School in the 70's. We used the ASR-33 teletypes and acoustic coupler modems to dial into a timesharing service running on HP minicomputers. I learned to program and had my first real interaction with computers in that lab.

Re:$100 per child?

[Scoth]

Don't underestimate the simple value of basic familiarity. Even the very basic "Oh, that's a computer, I can type on it" can be more useful than you might think. I remember when my elementary school classes all got Apple IIs in the early-mid 80's, the teachers usually ignored them or let the kids mess with them because they were afraid of them. The people closer to my age, even if they've never used a computer, are a lot more comfortable with at least making some use of them because they were at least around them growing up. It's more like someone getting into a new car for the first time and trying out all the buttons and knobs because they have a basic idea of what they do and know they won't make the car blow up if they push the wrong one (security flamethrowers in Africa aside). Compared to someone who might have never ever seen a car before having no idea what things do and being afraid the little red triangle might be something dangerous rather than simply turn on the hazard lights.

At any rate, I do think the handling of the Great Computer Rollout back in the day was handled poorly, but it definitely wasn't a complete waste. Just the other day I was talking to my professor of my digital class about random stuff, and he mentioned how much easier it is for people to use the programmable logic programmer now than 10-15 years ago when he started. By and large everyone now has at least typed a letter on a computer and can handle the basic list of steps necessary to kick off the programmer, compared to 15 years ago when use of the programmer might be some peoples' first experience ever with a computer.

Re:$100 per child?

[FlameSnyper]

5. Computers are flaky and break a lot. Books don't inexplicably refuse to open or spontaneously erase themselves.

Umm, no.

5. Cheap computers are flaky and break a lot.

-or-

5. Windows computers are flaky and break^H^H^H^H^Hcrash a lot.

You have to specify, man!

These laptops aren't going to be cheap, they are going to be inexpensively mass-produced ruggedized computers...

...that run linux, an OS that doesn't crash a lot.

Re:$100 per child?

[Bert64]

But the computers kids are typically exposed to in school will not have any kind of development tools installed. No compiler, no BASIC interpreter, no assembler, nothing.. They will have a word processor, a web browser and maybe one or two other useless pre-packaged applications that noone ever uses.
And the students won`t learn how to research for themselves, they will learn by repetition "word is access by clicking on the W in the top right corner of the screen" and will freak out if anyone moves the icon (!). I have encountered many people who are unable to use the computer anymore because the icon has moved, they don`t think to even look around the screen for it.
I`m sure you could train a babboon to use a computer in the same way most people are taught in school nowadays.

Re:$100 per child?

[Alric]

There are many disservices much worse than failing to fully stimulate a child's brain, but most of those acts are not as socially acceptable or institutionalized. I characterize the problem from a different angle. Nobody forces precocious children NOT to go to the library and learn more outside of school; I certainly spent much of my early years reading non-school books. To me, the great educational disservice is that we do not expect enough from children; we do not challenge them to excel. This is a problem that goes way beyond school or even parents. This is a cultural issue that has evolved over the last 60 years. People conflate absolute and relatives expectations, and they end up having no expectations for their children. Yes, it is very bad to have a prenatal expectation that your child will be smart, heterosexual, a doctor, or on the varsity football team. However, it is not bad to expect your child to strive for excellence. It is not bad to expect your child to do the very best that he can do.

At least, that's how I see it.

Re:$100 per child?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot:

15 BEEP

Re:$100 per child?

[RomulusNR]

Have you been to school?

Yes, and I recall it being woefully inadequate, highly subjective, socially distracting, and prone to favoritism. Computer-based learning has none of these limitations.

A teacher has to come up with a corpus aimed at the middle of the class's collective aptitude. Students sufficiently below that aptitude (and cant follow it) or above that aptitude (and are terminally bored with it) tend to lose out. Since the teacher has to provide the lesson en masse to the class, they have limited ability (largely due to time and the need to give nearly equal attention to each student) to provide a different lesson for the advanced or the lagging students. But computer-directed learning under aid of a teacher can be provided at a different level for each student, with the teacher able to assess and provide that direction instead of having to provide a Lowest Common Denominator direction to the class as a whole.

Quite probably the problem with your high school is that they were unable to break from the traditional model of teaching, seeing the computer as just a way to save paper on textbooks and quiz sheets, instead of an opportunity to change the way education is delivered to the student.

Books don't inexplicably refuse to open or spontaneously erase themselves.

Maybe not, but they get torn, thrown in the garbage or knocked in the sewer by bullies, and scribbled on. And they're harder to replace than an electronic document that everyone else in class has a copy of already. And when you get a used electronic document, it's as good as new, which is more that can be said for what's generally available at a used textbook sale.

Pretty much everything else you say is a problem of poor selection or of lack of demand. There is *some* good stuff out there, and nowadays people like Wikibooks are making an attempt at decent free material.

As far as concerns about being computer savvy, much of the lack of computer savviness, especially in the past, is the result of poor accessibility. Kids of today who grow up using computers (and VCRs, DVD players, digital cable, etc. etc.) are more computer and gadget savvy because those things are more available to them and are a universal part of their lives.

Giving computers to kids in developing nations will introduce them to an essential part of the modern world. Arguing that these kids *shouldn't* have computers is to argue that they should not be introduced to that world.

And besides, as anyone who has been to high school should be able to remember, those damned textbooks are freakin' heavy.

Re:$100 per child?

[yppiz]

I agree with your comment about electricity. I believe they are focusing on notebooks assuming the kids will charge them at school, which is more likely to have infrastructure like water and electric. Regarding the pump story, it doesn't quite apply. No one would say "let's give them iron-age telephones so the local blacksmith can fix them." Pumps are very, very high wear items that require constant maintenance and a steady supply of spare parts. An electronic device, if designed solidly and constructed out of appropriate components, is very low maintenance. So I think we agree that for the notebooks to be successful, one key requirement is that they be very low maintenance. If the designers cannot meet this goal, they will have a hard time keeping the notebooks in circulation in remote areas. --Pat

Re:$100 per child?

[drinkypoo]

Nobody forces precocious children NOT to go to the library and learn more outside of school; I certainly spent much of my early years reading non-school books.

While this statement is technically correct, the numerous ass-kickings available to bookworms in our public schools must certainly serve to dissuade many of them... And personally, around the point of middle school or so I lost all interest in anything that resembled study because of my many extremely poor school experiences. School is not about learning, it's about hammering down the nails that stick out. Well, public school anyway.

Re:$100 per child?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I didn't really learn shit about history or social studies, though, because I was a precocious little bastard and they couldn't (wouldn't take the time to) keep me busy, so I mouthed off and made a nuisance of myself.

That's where computers, and especially internet-enabled computers, can come in handy if the teacher isn't a complete technophobe. For the fast kids, assign them research topics that mirror school topics, and watch the minds blossom.

Re:$100 per child?

[drinkypoo]

Yeah, unfortunately the whole internet thing was (of course) after I got out of grade school entirely. We had Apple ][s at my elementary school, IBM PCjrs at my middle school, more Apple ][s and one Mac Plus at the Jr. High I went to after they kicked me out of that middle school, some 286s and 386s at the first high school I went to, and one Mac Classic at the high school after I got kicked out of my first high school :)

Re:$100 per child?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Yeah, unfortunately the whole internet thing was (of course) after I got out of grade school entirely. We had Apple ][s at my elementary school, IBM PCjrs at my middle school, more Apple ][s and one Mac Plus at the Jr. High I went to after they kicked me out of that middle school, some 286s and 386s at the first high school I went to, and one Mac Classic at the high school after I got kicked out of my first high school :)

PCjrs? What a crappy system. At least Apple ][s would teach you logic. Old DOS machines weren't capable of very much. But I'm shocked that your "good teachers" didn't know about Carmen Sandiego- wonderfull game for teaching history and social studies, and it ran on the Apple ][s just fine.

Re:$100 per child?

[drinkypoo]

Oh, I played Carmen once or twice, but the interface was an annoyance and it was slow and I had little patience. I played a lot of oregon trail, though.

Re:$100 per child?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

In that case, you did learn *some* history from computers. Not much but some.

slashdotting

[sammy baby]

Obviously, the linked web site is being run off a prototype of the $100 laptop.

Yay!

[Legendof_Pedro]

I hope I get one, then I can sell it and buy something more suitable for me ;).

I mean, for $100, that thing's gonna have to be a Pentium!

I want one of these for my kids

[PIPBoy3000]

I would easily shell out something like this for my kids to play with. This seems like something that could survive the normal bonkings that paperbacks suffer under my children's hands. It also looks like the perfect "eBook reader" device, which could help on long car trips. Of course, my kids would probably complain and ask for a DVD.

Re:I want one of these for my kids

[kuman2]

Of course, my kids would probably complain and ask for a DVD.

that's what beatings are for

Re:I want one of these for my kids

[rinkjustice]

that's what beatings are for

Beatings administered with love, of course ;)

Sneak preview pictures

[MyLongNickName]

The articles had very little on the look and feel. Better pictures can be found here.

Re:Sneak preview pictures

[MyLongNickName]

If anyone could photoshop it showing Tux on the "computer", it'd garner at least a +5 interesting...

Re:Sneak preview pictures

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL!!!!

yes but....

[Anonymous Coward]

will it run netbsd?

Re:yes but....

[wcb4]

of course it will, silly, NetBSD will run on anything, including my Red LED wrist watch from 1979.

Re:yes but....

[mustafap]

>will it run netbsd?

What, the etch-a-sketch? Oh yes, most definately.

Swatch them!

[StefanJ]

You could fund this program by selling "designer" vesions in wealthy nations.

Have Swatch or some other design-centric company make a dozen glitzy versions a year. Sell them for $250, with a big trade-in allowance on used units. The store and designers would get a cut; the rest would go to buy units for distribution to poor kids.

Re:Swatch them!

[hackstraw]

Have Swatch or some other design-centric company make a dozen glitzy versions a year. Sell them for $250

I think those are called iPods.

Re:Swatch them!

[kitzilla]

> You could fund this program by selling "designer" vesions in wealthy nations.

Here's an even better idea: let's have it play commercials. Boot it up, and here comes a Nike ad. Just "do it," little developing nation tyke. Communism and Democracy are passe. Welcome to the New World Order of international consumerism.

Here are the products you should aspire to purchase as you sit among your family's sheep, laptop at the ready. Even if you can't afford $200 basketball shoes or a watch that's twice your parents' accumulated net worth, you can always count on these multinational corporations for a substandard manufacturing wage and 10-hour workdays. Study hard.

Swatch them, indeed.

If they made a $200 version

[Marxist Hacker 42]

They could use the profit from selling it at Fry's and CompUSA to pay for free laptops for the kiddies- and the increase in manufacturing demand might even lower the price more.

This would be GREAT....

[UnixRevolution]

If they ever became available here. I work in an American school system (Charles County, MD) and I would love to know if these will ever be commercially available. We've been looking for a solution something like this for online text books, etc for our students for a while. This would be a dream. If they ever decide to sell them commercially to American and other countries that don't need the boost from the charity bit of this effort.

Re:This would be GREAT....

[hjf]

better yet, sell them to the US for $500, so for every computer an american kid has, 4 poor children get one each.

Re:This would be GREAT....

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

Those people are shooting themselves in the foot by not offering it for sale.

Greater numbers (due to high demand worldwide, not the least from a crowd of blood-lusty Slashdot readers) would work to reduce prices even more (I assume the biggest chunk of manufacturing are fixed costs which can thus be spread over bigger numbers).

If the machine could run some general-purpose Unix (Linux or BSD) I'd buy it for up to $150...

Re:This would be GREAT....

[imboboage0]

Charles county, eh? you think you need a solution for an eBook reader? I think your schools look rather nice compared to ours. Here at Chopticon (in St. Mary's, I'm a 10th grader there) our computers have clicky keyboards and turbo buttons. Can we have some of your money?

(DISCLAIMER: we don't actually need your money. everything here was said in a comical sense.)

Two Words

[yootje]

Beowulf. Cluster.

How will this help

[Ironsides]

My questions largely had to do with how the laptop would be used in the classroom. I made the mistake of asking a question of how the laptop would be used as "a teaching tool"... like Papert, Negroponte's a big believer that students simply need access to technology and can use it to teach each other and to make discoveries themselves.

I'm inclined to agree with the writer that Negroponte's response is lacking. How will every student having a laptop help them in any way?

Re:How will this help

[Doctor Memory]

How will every student having a laptop help them in any way

Yeah, no sh!t, especially as I sit here in an office surrounded by consultants with laptops who don't have the faintest idea how to make use of them...

Re:How will this help

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the CPU. Granted, students in poor families don't need 500 MHz of computing power, per se. It's the use as a storage, communications, and reference device.

Would you question the value of giving poor schools telephones? If every student and every teacher has one, suddenly, it's not just for computing: it's for communicating. Being able to communicate with people has *tremendous* value, especially for the target audience here.

Would you question the value of giving poor schools pencils and paper? This is like pencils and paper, but a massive amount of paper, and a neverending pencil.

Would you question the value of giving poor schools *books*? With a network connection (the article spoke of a mesh network), this can hook up to all sorts of reference material. I helped with a book drive for poor east African students a while back; we ended up with several hundred books. With a laptop and a network connection, you've got Project Gutenberg's 16,000 books, Wikipedia (in umpteen languages), pretty much every major newspaper in the world, etc. -- for *each* *student*. (I went to a public school in a rich country less than 20 years ago, and we would have killed for these sorts of resources.)

Would you question the value of giving poor schools a bigger voice on the world stage? Poorer nations are often known for human-rights violations. Put a computer in the hand of every student and teacher, and suddenly they can not only read, but *write* and publish for everybody to read.

That's just what I can think of in 5 minutes. If all you can think of is "we're giving starving kids Unreal Tournament?", you're not trying very hard. There are gobs of great uses for these laptops (including, surely, hundreds I can't even imagine, but will be discovered when millions more people have them in their hands).

Re:How will this help

[Ironsides]

My question is how giving them a laptop will help them *learn*. Just because they have access to a computer does not mean it will help them learn anything, not even how to use a computer beyond basic user levels.

The creator is throwing this as a tool to help with learning. How will this do that? How will it help them learn history/math/geography or anything else?

You list giving them a phone. Ok, now they have instant communication. How does that help a student learn in the classroom? The laptop can be used for this, but it doesn't help them lear.

You say giving them pencil and paper. This is already used, the computer can be a replacement for this and we go back to the old slate tablets and chalk. But could that money be better spent buying paper and pencils? You can probably buy a whole hell of a lot more pens/pencils and paper in the countries this is targeted at than it will replace.

They will still need to purchase books. They can use these to read e-books, but they still need to purchase the books. This is just a new package for it. Also, the inventor thinks they can use the book budget to buy these. Then how will they purchase books or e-books? No matter what unless the books are given away it will be a budget increase.

What point is giving a 5 year old a laptop when you are talking "giving poor schools a bigger voice on the world stage"? How will they communicate to people outside of the country? They would still need unrestricted access to the internet and I can not see them getting net access much less unrestricted to report anything. Still, even with that, HOW WILL THIS HELP THEM LEARN?

I'm ignoring all games with this, I'm just trying to find out how having these computers will help them learn their subjects outside of what already exists, and is most likely cheaper.

Some things that the articles don't answer....

[8127972]

1. What LINUX flavor will it use?
2. What CPU will it use (Intel, AMD, other)?
3. How does the sourcing of compnents influence the $100 cost of the laptop? For example, could they get Intel to hand over a bunch of of CPU's cheaply? Can they get Samsung to do the same with RAM?

Re:Some things that the articles don't answer....

[electronmaster]

If you read the link under FAQ's in the MIT Media lab area, it says "Its founding members are AMD, Brightstar, Google, News Corporation, and Red Hat, all of whom have funded both OLPC and the MIT Media Lab." This leads me to believe, Red hat for the flavor, and AMD for the processor ;)

Re:Some things that the articles don't answer....

[alan.briolat]

Thats a relief. The first thing I worried about when seeing this "One laptop per child" was "Oh great, another avenue for MS to spoon-feed Windows into another generation. While computer usage is becoming more prolific, computer literacy is being kept in the stone age by a lack of education about the alternatives. The majority of people I meet can't understand the concept of Windows not being the ONLY thing they can run on thier computers.

My argument always is, people have to learn to use Windows at some point. Why is it so hard for people to learn Linux sometimes? Because its different to what they know. If all schools used Linux instead of Windows, and employed a competent IT technician, you would have an entire generation of ultra-computer-literate kids.

Part of me thinks that MS can already see this, which is why they literally THROW licenses at OEMs and educational establishments. People having a chance to be educated about the alternatives translates into lower sales for Microsoft.

Just my £0.02

Buy One Laptop, Get Literacy for Free!

[Dotnaught]

Act now and we'll throw in food, shelter, a stable power supply, and tech support for one year or the rest of your life, whichever comes first.

Re:Buy One Laptop, Get Literacy for Free!

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Not too far from the truth- I'm sure a smart kid in the third world will quickly learn to hardware hack this laptop to do thinks like provide crank generation electric lights, run small electric water pumps, etc. Thus making himself rich enough to buy the rest.

Re:Buy One Laptop, Get Literacy for Free!

[BigBuckHunter]

Act now and we'll throw in food, shelter, a stable power supply

Don't forget the anti-malaria pcmcia option. Doesn't malaria still kill 3 brazillian people a year? I don't know haw many a "brazilian" is, but it sounds like a big number.

BBH

Re:Buy One Laptop, Get Literacy for Free!

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm sure a smart kid in the third world will quickly learn to hardware hack this laptop to do thinks like provide crank generation electric lights, run small electric water pumps, etc."

Actually the smart ones will sell them for $400 to the people above, and use the money to feed their family for several years.

Re:Buy One Laptop, Get Literacy for Free!

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't malaria still kill 3 brazillian people a year? I don't know haw many a "brazilian" is, but it sounds like a big number.

It depends on how fat the three Brazillians are.

Re:Buy One Laptop, Get Literacy for Free!

[MarkCollette]

You are my hero for the day.

Too many moving parts?

[Barkley44]

The keyboard on the mockup was detachable, but will probably fold out on a hinge ... Two trackballs, surrounded by four way buttons, on each side of the screen act as controls, and function keys on the back act as additional buttons). Sounds like more moving parts than a typical laptop, won't that be an issue when things break, how easily can they get them fixed?

Re:Too many moving parts?

[Anonymous Coward]

That will help teach the kids their first lesson in disposability--how to become a "throw-away" society.

First post :D

[Anonymous Coward]

i want one too.

why won't they sell worldwide? it'll be a hit!

Why Not the US Too?

[Mean_Nishka]

If Negroponte is able to mass produce this thing at a true $100 cost it will be revolutionary.

I wonder, however, why he only plans to offer this device to the developing world when millions of children (and their school districts) in the United States could also benefit from such a device. $100 laptops could save school districts millions in textbook costs alone!

Re:Why Not the US Too?

[marknewlyn]

The massive cost of textbooks is quite inflated. Order of magnitude reductions in textbooks costs have been shown to be possible if authors', editors' and publishers' royalties are reduced. This project FHSST has made massive progress to that end and will produce books for less than $3 per book. The first book should be out in 2006. Books shouldn't be replaced, they should form an integral part of the teaching process.

Re:Why Not the US Too?

[Rick Evans]

"If Negroponte is able to mass produce this thing at a true $100 cost it will be revolutionary.

I wonder, however, why he only plans to offer this device to the developing world (...)?"

There are two reasons the manufacturing cost is so low:

1- They'll be shipped to the receiving country as parts. 10 million motherboards, 10 million displays, etc. and assembled in-place using local labor. So the assembly costs are not only low -- they're providing jobs in the country of use. Which instantly supplies a labor pool to upgrade / repair the units.

2- The component suppliers are subsidizing the cost of the parts with profits made from developed countries. One condition of this arrangement is that the $100 laptops cannot be sold here and undercut the profits.

      As much as I think it'd be cool to buy one for $300, the best way to help is to buy a shiny Opteron.

Rick

Re:Why Not the US Too?

[Locutus]

It was part stipulations clause of the building "donation" Bill Gates made to MIT. I might have went something like this" Any new technology from hence forth produced in ANY/ALL MIT buildings, can not be released in the United States if it contains a keyboard and display, unless it comes only with Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Windows based software.

Really now, it might have something to do with the massive reliance on Microsoft Windows in the US school system and the profits those generate which prevents this. I doubt Dell, Microsoft, and possibly AMD really want for-cost computers going to our school kids when they already make millions to billions on this market. The pressure from these folks and their business partners would crush the project quickly. But, if it's a big hit around the world, it might make it into the US via the back door. And by then, there wouldn't be much chance of stopping it.

IMO.

LoB

Re:Why Not the US Too?

[esme]

2- The component suppliers are subsidizing the cost of the parts with profits made from developed countries. One condition of this arrangement is that the $100 laptops cannot be sold here and undercut the profits.

This is the first reasonable answer I've seen to this question.

I wonder if another part of the answer is that if they are available in developed countries, it would make it harder to detect and combat the inevitable black market for them.

That said, I wish they would sell them in the developed world for cost + $100, and donate one for each purchase.

-Esme

Re:Why Not the US Too?

[RexRhino]

Yeah... Great idea... And word has it cars wouldn't be so expensive if we didn't pay the engineers and assembly line workers. Think how safe the streets would be if we hired 1,000,000 more cops! How will we afford that? We will pay them next to nothing!

Why, there is no end to the cheap goods we would have if we just used slave labor!

Re:Why Not the US Too?

[stienman]

Similar response in article:

I'd probably pay $400 for one (with no support) if I knew I was also paying for a kid in a developing country to have one. There must be quite a few geeks like me in the west who'd provide a bit of a revenue stream to support the project and maybe add to the development base? Why not allow the in country manufacturers to sell them internationally if they want to. If they are that small and light they would be cheap to ship.

There is going to be a market for these outside of the intended marketplace.

I suggest that whoever manages the manufacture and distribution of these also have a plan to sell them directly to other interested parties because otherwise the black market for them will be huge. The kids and their families would rather sell them, if possible, than use them in some (many?) cases.

It is unlikely that a single third world country is going to purchase enough of these that no black market will exist - they would have to be more common than food and water.

So sell them directly to those who want them. It's more complicated than this, of course, but it should alleviate some of the problems.

-Adam

Re:Why Not the US Too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Massachusetts is buying these. see http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articl es/2005/09/28/for_each_poor_child_in_world_a_lapto p/

"But Romney believes many Massachusetts students could also benefit from the laptops. He said he was already considering a plan to buy laptops for each of the state's middle and high school students at $500 apiece. But then Secretary of Administration and Finance Eric Kriss told him about MIT's $100 laptop plan. After meeting in July with Media Lab officials, Romney concluded that the lower price tag of their proposed computer could enable the state to roll out the program more quickly."

Re:Why Not the US Too?

[Al Dimond]

Um... have a citation for that one?

Seems pretty far-fetched to me.

(I would just assume it's a troll, but you have a karma bonus, which somehow gives your words extra legitimacy... as much as any random /. poster has that...)

Re:Why Not the US Too?

[Locutus]

Um... have a citation for that one?

The first part or the "Really now" part?

Seems pretty far-fetched to me.

If you're talking about the first part then I agree but it's also the kind of thing he/they do. If you're talking about the second part then I can only guess that Apple still has a foothold in your school system. One of the very few left.

LoB

Re:Why Not the US Too?

[Al Dimond]

The "anything with a keyboard and display must run Windows only" part. I tried to do a Google search and came up empty-handed, even in the many pages and articles I read where MIT students talked about how they didn't want undue MS influence because of the donation. Do you have some kind of source for that, because I'd really be interested to read it; as an engineering undergrad (University of Illinois) I see corporate influence in many areas around school but I've never heard of an agreement that broad or restrictive. Maybe I'm just naïve.

Re:Why Not the US Too?

[Locutus]

those type of "agreements", when they exist, would not be publicly available and just like Microsofts previous OEM agreements, they'd be under NDA. Granted, Microsoft only leverage in this case would be financial support or IT infrastructure based( software licensing/etc ) so I'm not sure how effective it would be against MIT or the people accepting the donation.

Most likely, anything like this would only come to light in court ordered/opened emails or depositions. Remember how HP executives received a timely phone call from a Microsoft executive the day before COMDEX L.V. 1994? HP employees were instructed to remove all the PCs on the showroom floor which were running IBMs OS/2 operating system. That only came to light in the last MSFT vs DOJ case... So, this is how Microsoft does business. As a matter of fact, I think a couple three years ago, there was a University which took MSFT donations and magically the C.S. course material had a number of classes on the new MS .NET software. Students flipped out and it was found out that it was a tit-for-tat kind of "donation".

So, anyplace you see Microsoft $$$, expect this kind of "competition" from Microsoft. There's over 20 years of supporting history of these kinds of actions.

IMO,

LoB

Hell yes.

[RandoX]

I grew up in one of those labs, on a Vax. Today I'm a professional software engineer, and I credit it all to the seeds planted in my youth trying to extend the capabilities of DCL batch files to do everything from games to utilites to public message boards. Never underestimate the power of a push in the right direction, especially at a young age.

New agey thought

[danpsmith]

This is the type of new-age thought that keeps 3rd world countries in the back of the class. Do they seriously think that the first thing a poor country with a starving populace and AIDs epidemic needs: a 100-dollar, 3rd rate, wind-up toy computer?

Vaporware until they have real mfg costs

[billstewart]

Don't get me wrong, it's a nice concept. They may be doing some innovative things with the screen, though as of September's non-slashdotted article, that was still just proposed. The crank on the side is a potentially useful touch. And they've taken some creative approaches to picking useful software, applications, and modularity.

But the fundamentally cool thing about this box is that it costs $100; at $200 it wouldn't be as cool, and at $500 it'd be really lame. So until they've got real manufacturing costs and really *can* make it for $100 in volume, it's still vaporware.

Re:Vaporware until they have real mfg costs

[cayenne8]

"So until they've got real manufacturing costs and really *can* make it for $100 in volume, it's still vaporware."

Even if they can do it sub-$100. In a 3rd world developing country...how are they gonna power the thing? What are you going to do...plug it into a cactus in the desert?

Re:Vaporware until they have real mfg costs

[WormholeFiend]

even with a battery in each laptop... when those laptop die, at one per child in the third world, that's gonna be one massive battery landfill, I tells ya.

Re:Vaporware until they have real mfg costs

[FireFlie]

I believe that it was supposed to have both a power cord and a crank for the battery so you can power it by hand.
From the Article:
Negroponte's goal is for the machine to work on a 100:1 crank ratio - one minute of hand cranking generates sufficient power for the laptop to operate for 100 minutes."

Re:Vaporware until they have real mfg costs

[Agarax]

If you actually read the article you would have found out that there is a hand crack (possibly with a capacitor instead of a battery).

Re:Vaporware until they have real mfg costs

[cayenne8]

"If you actually read the article you would have found out that there is a hand crank..."

Hmm...that is going to make pr0n difficult to say the least. How will you navigate or type...one hand on the crank...other hand....

:-O

Turn it into a projector

[Anonymous Coward]

Add one of those DIY projector http://www.audiovisualizers.com/madlab/lcd_proj.ht m and you can turn the laptop into a huge interactive educational tool in a classroom.

Etch-a-Sketch?

[DRO0]

Is that really a laptop or a collectors edition Etch-a-Sketch for Dilbert's Pointy Haired Boss?

Exactly!!

[lwagner]

Amen to that.

First of all, computers are often sold under the assumption that putting one in people's hands gives them an education. In reality, how many people have any sort of education software as a percentage of games, productivity apps, etc.?

Secondly, these individuals need actual teachers before computers.

Thirdly, $100 computers would be snatched up in the Euro-America world quicker than they could get to developing countries... and we'd pay more for them.

Fourthly, how many high school PC or Mac labs ever got that much educational use?

Lastly, technology is indeed NOT the answer to every single problem... neither is throwing money at something. If either were the solution, we wouldn't have a bankrupt welfare system.

First thing's first

[Smallest]

laptops are fun, but you have to be alive to use one.

i'm thinking that it'd be a better use of technology to find a way to eradicate malaria, which kills 200 people an hour, worldwide.

Re:First thing's first

[Ctrl Alt De1337]

Other members of the tech world are working on that problem, actually.

Re:First thing's first

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

So instead of buying a laptop, poor people in developing countries should chip in money to fund Malaria research?

No seriously, it's about choice. Helping fight Malaria is cool, and I hope many people donate money there, but offering a laptop that poor people can maybe afford (to get them better education) is, too.

Not everything is an either-or question!

Re:First thing's first

[LWATCDR]

It isn't one or the other. Think about it. Why are you spending money on video games, books, internet access, ipods, or "insert toy or luxury here" instead of giving that money to cure malaria? Should a builder feel bad about spending money building houses for the poor when people are starving? Should a farmer feel bad about helping people grow food when other people are dieing of thirst?
These are computer companies giving back something based on what they do best. I doubt AMD or RedHat have the skills to help eradicate malaria. The seem to have the skills too make a cheap notebook.

Add a wireless card, a DVDRW drive, USB ports

[digitaldc]

Add a wireless card, DVDRW drive and several USB ports and then it can be used as a phone, book reader, movie viewer, video game, language and typing tutor.

Maybe it can be networked to support a school tutoring program and free internet access?

Add Windows XP error reporting and Office assistants, and it can be used as an instant source of frustration and lamentation.

I couldnt get the worldchanging URL to load....maybe it could be used to support that site too.

link /.'d full text here

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm trying to get a Coral Cache of it but it keeps timing out. MirrorDot also comes up dry, as does Google. Hopefully they'll be up soon and this post can be downmodded to -1 or better yet removed out of respect for copyright.

=====cut here========

One Laptop Per Child - a Preview of the Hundred Dollar Laptop | Ethan Zuckerman
Unlocking the Code - Science, Systems and Technological Breakthroughs see all posts in this category

I took a day off from this year's 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, who'd given a talk the day before on his work to produce a laptop that costs less than a hundred dollars.

(See previous discussion of the hundred dollar laptop here, here, and here, and posts about related projects here, here and here. -- Jamais)

Negroponte was an advisor to my previous project 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.

Heck yeah!

The demo was yesterday afternoon, and while it didn't include a functioning prototype, I learned a great deal more about machine than I have from previous articles, or Negroponte's 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. I'd been calling the project the sub-hundred dollar laptop... the acronym of which is the unfortunate "SHiL". Negroponte's 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. It's 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 Continuum's site - they're 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. There's a stiff rubber gasket around the edge of the machine, which can double as a stand. The keyboard on the mockup was detachable, but will probably fold out on a hinge. The system is designed to work in three modes: laptop mode (screen up, keyboard down, handle behind as a stand); book mode (screen on the front, keyboard on the back, comfortable indentation for holding it in the left hand. Pressing on the keyboard "accordian-stype" - as Negroponte puts it - allows for page scrolling); and game mode (screen in the front, keyboard in the back, held sideways, like an oversized PSP. Two trackballs, surrounded by four way buttons, on each side of the screen act as controls, and function keys on the back act as additional buttons.)

Unlike in the prototype featured in the AP story, there's no large gap between the screen and battery section, designed as a handle. While it looked very cool, it was also a bit too fragile for the conditions being considered. The handle now is either the rubber gasket or the indentation in the back. I wonder if the hinges are going to be a problem - the current design requires a hinge for the gasket and a separate hinge that allows 340 degrees of freedom between the screen and

Re:link /.'d full text here

[Anonymous Coward]

Coral cache is up and running now

A laptop for the 3rd world maybe...

[bkontr]

But even I don't the 3rd world will bother with this either. It looks a bit too cheap, and there are much better alternatives for slightly more money. Who are they marketing this to anyway? Developing countries are probably more interested in desktops, for the price and performance factor. Besides, if $100 is expensive to people in the 3rd world (and you can bet on that) they're not going to want to carry a laptop around where it can get stolen or damaged. What do you all think?

Re:A laptop for the 3rd world maybe...

[wpiman]

Good points- but also remember in the third world there isn't really houses or apartments with doors. No police and courts to really enforce the ownership laws- if any exist at all.

Also- there isn't much power to plug desktops into and if there is- it usually is not very reliable. A laptop it better suited to deal with places where power is spotty and unreliable.

Re:A laptop for the 3rd world maybe...

[maxter3185]

The government is going to pay for these laptops, not common people, I mean: this computers won't be for sale, so this is going to be free for the kids. And, as many have said, not everybody in the 3rd world has currency in their house, so at least with these laptops they have "the crank" to power it up.

Re:A laptop for the 3rd world maybe...

[evilviper]

Besides, if $100 is expensive to people in the 3rd world (and you can bet on that) they're not going to want to carry a laptop around where it can get stolen or damaged. What do you all think?

Every one of these that comes along is always over-arching, over-expensive, and still too inflexible to be worthwhile. It seems like they're not sure whether they're designing it for CEOs or poor children.

For example: They talk about how expensive the hinges are to allow the screen to rotate around, so you can use the laptop as a tablet. WHO THE FUCK CARES? Who really thinks: if it can't be folded out into a tablet, poor African school-children won't use it?

The same for the display. If they would just use a simple black&white LCD like digital watches (and the old Palm handhelds) it would be dirt cheap. Instead, they insist on color, backlighting, etc. You don't really need color to read a book, it just makes the occasional illustrations a bit nicer. And a small light that clips on the top of the laptop would be better and cheaper than a LCD backlight. Backlights don't light-up the keyboard for one thing.

I want one

[CastrTroy]

I'll pay $200 for one of these if it does simple wordprocessing and appointment scheduling. Maybe even some spreadsheets and stuff. Internet might be nice too. Maybe I should be able to buy it and they give one to some kid in a developing country, without any expense to them.

Crank Faster!

[iamlucky13]

You're going to need a lot more than a hand crank-powered laptop to serve 1,000,000 page views over the time this article is sitting at the top of Slashdot.

Right now I have a funny image of Iago from Aladdin spinning on that bicycle with Jafar screaming "faster" at him while frantically trying to check his server logs.

Cheaper than the $100 laptop

[t0qer]

Was the p-233 laptop I picked up for $30. I slapped a $7 wireless card on it, removed the hinge and put it in a picture frame. I use it at the karaoke bar I work at so singers know when they're coming up.

http://www.7bamboo.com/modules.php?name=News&file= article&sid=212

--toq

/.'ed webpage (coral cache)

[OctaneZ]

Coral Cache of the Website for your viewing pleasure.

8th grade reading level is "literate" in USA

[davidwr]

Well by conventional wisdom anyways.

By 4th grade you can pronounce almost every word other than a few oddballs and words adopted from foreign languages. You can take a good guess at spelling words and names that you've never heard before.

By 8th grade you've probably read dozens if not hundreds of children's books and a few non-challenging adult books too. This assumes at least 1 book a week checked out from the school library for 8 years - not a universal assumption but something most teachers encourage. You've also done some expository and other writing.

Most newspapers are written on an 8th grade reading level.

High school and college add things like:
exposure to more literature, literary analysis, writing papers for various audiences and purposes, etc.

Graduation brings spending 24x7 in front of a computer reading /. j/k :)

What does "functionally literate" mean? Off the cuff I'd say it means knowing how to read and write well enough to get along in society without having someone read or interpret things for you. Can you grocery shop, use an ATM, read a paper or at least the crawl on CNN, read your utility bills and catch and respond to billing errors, etc. without help?

Fool me once...

[RafaelGCPP]

C'mon guys... If you do an exercise on the cost analysis there is no way on doing this 100 dollars laptop. I tried it myself, using the mfg suggested prices for 10k units, on processors, drives, memory, and not counting the display, it led me to US$80.00 Now, show me a VGA capable LCD or TFT display that costs under US$20.00 and I will believe it!

Re:Fool me once...

[eyebits]

10K units for pricing is *way* to small. You should be looking at pricing if it were 1 million units or more.

Keyboard

[eyebits]

Detachable or fold-out keyboard...that will end badly.

The developing world is awash in good intentions

[Anonymous Coward]

first of all, this is a good read for anyone interested in the topic. The fact is your can get more out of economies of scale with more expensive hardware that more people want to buy than you can out of getting small runs of cheaper hardware....Not to mention a lot of the poorest parts of the world are landlocked, and that makes shipping a nightmare that will dwarf the cost of the pc....
But more importantly, when you look at the developing world, they are awash in good intentions. Good intentions that actually hurt more than they help because they create a fake economy. Africans don't need people with good intentions telling them what they need and don't need. What they really do need is less corruption in their governments and a more stable geo-political situation, something $100 laptops are not going to help solve. If anyone has a one sentence answer to those problems, book your flight to Oslo now. In the end this will end up being an overpriced failure that will just make a bunch of people feel good about themselves because THEY obviously know more about what poor people need than poor people do....

Other Uses

[http101]

Hey kid, wanna buy some weed? I currently accept cash, baseball cards, and $100 laptops.

Re:Other Uses

[Ossifer]

I wonder how much food for their families these kids could trade their $100 laptops for...

Re:Other Uses

[http101]

No kidding... this is one of THE dumbest ideas I've ever heard. It's right up there with providing Carnival cruise ships for Katrina victims. It's premium bullshit. Do you really think these kids are going to keep a laptop when they can't even remember their lunches for school? Why would they keep something expensive that they can't understand when they can just as easily trade it for a new pair of kicks? (Nikees) *swoosh!*

Mod Parent Up

[Fareq]

Damn but I wish I had mod points... That's... awesome!

Because it's *so* apt...

Sex Ed

[Blade80]

It would be perfect for learning about sex ed.....

Required every-x-year replacement is bogus too

[davidwr]

There's no reason in the world most textbooks should go out of adoption in less than 10-20 years. The only differences between a 7th grade math book now and one 20 years ago are:
1) calculator-related exercises
2) flashy color
3) "hip" teaching methods

A good teacher can use a 20 year old math book along with supplimental calculator exercises and teach the same material.

On the other hand, some books DO need updating even MORE often than the usual 5-10 year cycle:
Any book or part of a book that touches on historical and political events of the last 10 years.
Any book or part of a book that deals with those parts of science that are rapily-evolving. Science books that teach "classic" science such as Newton's laws don't need updating.
Any book or part of a book that cites "facts" that are now passe, such as a health book that cites the "four food groups."

Re:Required every-x-year replacement is bogus too

[bigtrike]

Science books that teach "classic" science such as Newton's laws don't need updating.

Would these be the same books which state that the universe is expanding at a decreasing rate?

Re:Required every-x-year replacement is bogus too

[orkysoft]

I don't think the GP meant to categorize 20th century science as classic science...

Re:Do they really need a laptop?

[ZeroExistenZ]

My first reaction was about the same; "Millions of western children / students do not have a laptop. Why the effort to get children who even don't have food a laptop?!"

But on the other hand; Western kids have ALOT more opportunities and resources to get educated and create a future. A laptop wont make too much of a difference for the average western kid in order to "make it".
These kids even can't afford paper (in which aspect such a laptop is a great tool for education!) They can even pass on their studymaterial to their siblings, neighbours, whoever doesn't have the ability to go to school. Once they have their laptop - which I believe only needs to be crancked to run - they're set for lenght of their education. You can't help those people by dumping food, and making them dependant, but by educating and making them selfsufficient. (these people are very creative as well. Hook them up on the internet, give them info... and be amazed.)

I for one, applaud this project!

Who wants a laptop!

[cyn1c77]

I think it would be better for kids in developing countries to have food, money or a $100 worth of books. All they are going to do with the laptop is dick around on it all day. Besides, who is going to pay for their internet access?

Re:Who wants a laptop!

[Breakfast Pants]

Yeah, food would be so much better. Food is just a patchwork solution that falls apart. Pump in more food, more babies get pumped out. You have to build education and infrastructure. If these things were done right you coulddo way better than $100 books--for example project gutenburg has hundreds of thousands of books available free that could be loaded onto the things by default (blatantly assuming english language...).

Congratulations!

[geekoid]

You just invented then 500 dollar laptop!

I'm not sure this is best use of resources

[toomanyhandles]

Depending on what you mean by "developing world", the issues are clean water and regular food. Heck, it's only since the late 80's (?) that the were able to get vitamin A to places so that their kids would quit getting sick and blind.

Laptop is neat, but basic needs need met first. Sick kids do not learn well.

Re:I'm not sure this is best use of resources

[fiannaFailMan]

You're responding to a post about a:

( ) Technical innovation in a developing country
(*) Product shipped to a developing market
( ) General discussion about IT in the devbeloping world

The location is:

( ) Africa
( ) India
( ) Bangladesh
( ) China
( ) Somewhere else in Asia
( ) South America
( ) Central America
(*) Other __unspecified__

You're objecting to it on the basis that:

(*) Poverty hasn't been eliminated in that country yet
( ) American jobs will be lost

Your argument is bogus because:

(*) Poverty hasn't been eliminated in the developed world either, that doesn't mean we should halt all technological research
(*) This will not adversely affect any efforts to alleviate poverty
(*) This will help to alleviate poverty
( ) Poverty in that country isn't as widespread as you say it is
( ) The US does not have a divine right to keep all the cool jobs

Re:I'm not sure this is best use of resources

[endeavour31]

I want to know how you think this will alleviate poverty? Better education implies that there are jobs and opportunities to take advantage of such education. Unfortunately this is not always the case - even within some countries. I have travelled in many countries where this idea makes some sense and others where it would be a waste of money. Education only makes sense where: 1) there is a growing middle class and positive economic growth rate; and 2) where the majority of the poor are not engaged in a subsistence economy. The $100 could be better spent elsewhere in these places.

Re:I'm not sure this is best use of resources

[fiannaFailMan]

Education only makes sense where: 1) there is a growing middle class and positive economic growth rate; and 2) where the majority of the poor are not engaged in a subsistence economy.

You've been listening to too much Pink Floyd. "We don't need no education" is not something you're going to hear in most of the developing world. Education makes sense everywhere. If you need me to explain how education can alleviate poverty, you're clearly in need of some education yourself.

Re:A picture of...

[The Mysterious X]

They look like they are reaching to the sky, grasping at a bright future to me...

No more FAT KIDS!

[Ossifer]

We should give these things out to American kids!

Since they'll be required to hand-crank them every few minutes to continue playing gangbangers-shoot-the-cops, it'll be the only exercise they'll ever get!

Raising a whole new generation of ...

[Lead Butthead]

Raising a whole new generation of script kiddies. My own opinion of the world has always been that "anything that can go wrong WILL go wrong." This venture is no exception.

Mod parent insightful

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the choice between investing months or years into using these laptops to learn about computers for no immediate gain, and selling it for quick cash so they can have a nice meal that day, it seems obvious what most of the recipients will do.

I met my husband thanks to it

[dptalia]

Technology is not the answer to every problem. Remember all those silly computer labs back in high schools in the '80s? Did anyone get any real educational value out of them?

I met my husband thanks to one of them - I was running the school's BBS and he was hacking it!

IF infrastructure in place, here's what you can do

[davidwr]

ASSUMING teachers were trained, tech support was in place, electricity was in place, and network infrastructure was in place, here's what I see laptops being used for:

Paper-and-book work being done on a computer:
writing/composition, test-taking, e-books, journal-keeping, drill-and-practice, homework, etc. Much of this will be submitted for grading electronically, saving paper costs and making it easier for the teacher to catch cheaters by spotting patterns.

As an enabling technology:
Email, web-based research, multi-site collaborative research by students, remote- or time-delayed teaching, and many other uses.

As a hook to get kids interested in technology:
Some kids will insist on taking their PCs apart and putting them back together, or compiling their own kernel.

As a way to cheat:
Smart, lazy students will find a way and learn in the experience, they'll show not-so-smart-but-lazy students who will lose educational opportunities in the process.

As a way to make money:
Smart students will figure out how to use the PCs for their own profit. So will greedy parents.

As a distraction:
playing games, visiting slashdot, need I say more?

I do hope that for while-attached-to-the-school-network use the schools can force the PCs to boot to a trusted kernel and trusted / directory, while allowing students to boot to their own environment while at home.

no moving parts.

[fantomas]

"while it didn't include a functioning prototype... Negroponte keeps a cardboard mockup"

Vapourware until proven otherwise. Let's see what the working mass produced version has...

Never gonna happen, hardware aint that cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a great idea and I second those who the 3rd would benefit more from food and medical care than computers. That notwithstanding the reality is that, the hardware today cannot be made for $100, here's why, even the Cheapest TFT cost around $50.00 (when bought in bulk), assuming similar bottom of the barrel hadware discounting: Drives $15, CPU $10 , MB $10 , case $5, not to mention the specialized hand crank , so on and so on, its more like a $200 machine, no manufacturer will do it for the price of $100.. Keep in mind something like the XBOX , playstation which is essentially a very specialized PC only now is approaching the $100 mark, and it was sold as a loss leader.. not gonna happen for a while..

This Is A Big Step Forward For Third-World Kids

[Anonymous Coward]

Soon they'll be able to download tons of free pr0n just like first-world kids.

You KNOW they're gonna do it.

Hell, this is bigger than giving whiskey to the native Americans.

Re:This Is A Big Step Forward For Third-World Kids

[bmalia]

Soon they'll be able to download tons of free pr0n just like first-world kids. Yes, National Geographic's web master won't know what hit him.

It's like old adage

[brian0918]

Give a kid some food, and he'll be set for the day... Teach a kid to download porn, and he'll be set for life.

Re:It's like old adage

[brian0918]

I know there's a reason for preview button. Now if could only figure out.

How to fund these things

[JemalCole]

Sell them for $200 in America with the understanding that you're paying for one in the 3rd world. Buy one, get one sent to somebody who really needs it. I'll take two.

Re:How to fund these things

[Hobart]

Keep modding parent up. This method he outlined is how http://www.freeplayfoundation.org/ has been giving away crank-powered shortwave radios to kids in poor countries to listen to educational shortwave broadcasts for several years now.

100$ laptops for... everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing that always irks me whenever I read a story about these ultra-cheap laptops is that they are ALWAYS presented as some kind of solution for "kids" in "developing nations".

Sure they could use cheap solutions, but hell, so can I!

I'm a student, I have VERY little money right now. I'm fortunate to have a computer, I realize that, but my laptop is slowly dying. I'd love to buy one for $100, even if it wasn't the best, fastest thing around, just to have as a word processing/note-taking/small jobs kind of machine. Why would they refuse to sell these in north america? I think there's definitely a potential market here... why ignore that?

The fact is, not everyone needs a 3.0Ghz AMD64 with a GPU and 512 megs of ram! (Well not until Vista comes out anyways.) *Some* people just need a little machine to do small jobs, like browsing and email. I would love to have the option of walking into a store and picking up a machine like this for $100.

Re:100$ laptops for... everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, try a pencil?

How's the waterproofing?

[smchris]

Just thinking that a lot of 3rd-world kids won't get a ride to school and back in the family SUV.

Economic Realities

[TheSync]

The article says "The laptop is not 'for sale' - it's going to be available for students only."

The problem is that handing someone in a country that has limited economic freedom a $100 value product may result in that product being sold for $100, as often the return on education in those countries is negligable because the market is so constrained by government that more skills does not always result in more pay.

On the other hand, I think there may be some niches this fits into, they should develop it and see how it works out, just keeping in mind that until you change anti-market laws, you are dismotivating education.

A friend of mine is currently in a small village in Guinea. People are so poor here that there rarely is currency exchanged, generally just bartering. Her parents thought about sending her a satellite phone to stay in touch, but at $1000, it would be the most valuable item in the whole village, and the risk of theft was very high. She already had her glasses stolen!

The rule of thumb:

[davidwr]

If the information is NOT outdated and the teaching methods, if any, are usable by a good teacher, then keep the book.

If the teaching methods are so archaic as to be unusable, or the content is obsolete, then look for new books and in the meantime tell the students to ignore that part of the book and use non-book materials instead.

Teaching methods usually change slowly enough that this won't be a problem for any book under 15-20 years old.

As far as physics goes I was thinking of books that teach Newtonian Mechanics. Of course part of teaching Newtonian Mechanics is teaching that it doesn't work for the very massive or the very small.

Idea

[NilObject]

I have an idea how they could use the $100 laptop: Sell it and use the money for better health-care or maybe even food.

Shocking idea, I know.

Re:Idea

[fiannaFailMan]

You're responding to a post about a:

( ) Technical innovation in a developing country
(*) Product shipped to a developing market
( ) General discussion about IT in the devbeloping world

The location is:

( ) Africa
( ) India
( ) Bangladesh
( ) China
( ) Somewhere else in Asia
( ) South America
( ) Central America
(*) Other _unspecified_

You're objecting to it on the basis that:

(*) Poverty hasn't been eliminated in that country yet
( ) American jobs will be lost

Your argument is bogus because:

(*) Poverty hasn't been eliminated in the developed world either, that doesn't mean we should halt all technological research
(*) This will not adversely affect any efforts to alleviate poverty
(*) This will help to alleviate poverty
( ) Poverty in that country isn't as widespread as you say it is
( ) The US does not have a divine right to keep all the cool jobs

Give the laptop to the parents

[Anonymous Coward]

What can those at MIT do with this $100 laptop? Simple. Give it to the kid's parents, so they can use it to raise the family income, get medical advice, news and weather predictions, etc.

The kids will do better with a living, breathing human teacher, even if the classroom is a mere one-room mud hut. I know, for a time I lived on a little island in the West Indies next door to a grade school run by a single teacher in the ruins of a home that had be damaged by a hurricane and abandoned. She beat the socks of anything that any computer could do.

--Mike Perry, Seattle

Better than Math, History, or Social Studies

[QMO]

I learned problem solving.

$100 =/= that cheap

[Douglas Simmons]

I'm glad we're "doin' it for the shorties" but from the looks of the laptop, $100 seems a little steep.

What crap!

[maillemaker]

"2- The component suppliers are subsidizing the cost of the parts with profits made from developed countries. One condition of this arrangement is that the $100 laptops cannot be sold here and undercut the profits."

Of course. Once again, we will subsidize other countries. This is just like damn drugs! I have to pay through the nose so that the drug companies get enough profit to offset the cheap ones they sell to Canada and the like!

This is the one thing I love about globalization. While the multinationals would LOVE to be able to sell, say, a CD, or a DVD, or a computer for one amount in one country and another amount in another country, globalization insures that the cheapest ones will always be available on eBay for me to buy.

I predict $100 laptops will be available on eBay for around $50 shortly after they are introduced.

Steve

Will it work as an Xbox controller?

[Anonymous Coward]

With all the extra buttons, it sounds like it
would be a great controller for an Xbox.

waste of time!

[recharged95]

The $100 laptop does exist. And it's used.

With my Acer 3002 at $399 (just got my rebates!) that model will be about $200 a year from now making Negroponte's idea a sham.

Really, Negroponte as a computer geek, I'm surprise he just didn't scoop up all the used/cheap laptops on ebay, install linux and build a real application fit for 3rd world countries. Using that roadmap:

• People would learn/see/touch "the history" of computers (and why they're so important--hey we've all been though it),
• have some commonality with the rest of the world (I see a lot of humble attitude to those users: "yeah, that C64 was awesome back then" stuff),
• those countries would have an incredible amount of FREE (or paid) support cause we're all experts on the old stuff,
• Have technology THAT WORKS and has a track record,
• And with linux and FOSS, those who are talented or really interested in software can contribute!

It's basically the used car business model. And we all owned a used car--why? heck, cause that system works.

Instead this guy is creating another "industry" that provides no real impact except to his wallet and ego. Great, computers and the internet are tying people together, and now the 100$ laptop is creating a seperate system of devices between the have's and have nots. That what happens in academia when corporate $$$ mixes with big egos... oh well.

OMG, I just spit out my NERDS candy!!

[boy_afraid]

I just about spit out the NERDS candy when I read your post! I think it was OREGON TRAILS or something that was a CGA graphics DOS game in the mid to late 80s. I remember using the library computers to play this game. I ROOL!

LOGO.

[antdude]

Learning LOGO to improve geometry skills. Same for learning how to use word processor, spreadsheets, etc. The basic stuff. That was useful and how I got into computers. :)

Reality check

[Ancient_Hacker]

Okay, it's fun to be a bubble-headed academic and design things in your ivory tower.

But if you get real you might want to do a few things differently:

• Do a survey in the third world-- talk to people and ask them what they need.
• You might find they put food, water, housing, bicicles, security, land reform, tribal peace, roads, and electricity waay ahead of "laptops".
• Even if they mention "laptops", you should probably consult with like real laptop engineers, builders, and marketers.
• There's a huge difference between cardboard prototypes and actual working, stable, marketable, sustainable and supportable products.

Re:Reality check

[fiannaFailMan]

Yeah yeah 'people need food first yadda yadda running water blah blah.'
I don't know why this stuff continues to get modded 'insightful.'

You're responding to a post about a:

( ) Technical innovation in a developing country
(*) Product shipped to a developing market
( ) General discussion about IT in the devbeloping world

The location is:

( ) Africa
( ) India
( ) Bangladesh
( ) China
( ) Somewhere else in Asia
( ) South America
( ) Central America
(*) Other _unspecified_

You're objecting to it on the basis that:

(*) Poverty hasn't been eliminated in that country yet
( ) American jobs will be lost

Your argument is bogus because:

(*) Poverty hasn't been eliminated in the developed world either, that doesn't mean we should halt all technological research
(*) This will not adversely affect any efforts to alleviate poverty
(*) This will help to alleviate poverty
( ) Poverty in that country isn't as widespread as you say it is
( ) The US does not have a divine right to keep all the cool jobs

If this thing has one USB port...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can finally create a Lego Robotics camera robot without the silly "tether to my PC". I'll be able to build the camera robot around the laptop :)

SimPuter?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, this is a lot like the "SimPuter".

That project has been reported on with hand-waving and mockups too.
It hasn't yet materialized in the vast numbers predicted.

Social stigma?

[BaltikaTroika]

I have a problem with this: "To keep the $100 laptops from being widely stolen or sold off in poor countries, he expects to make them so pervasive in schools and so distinctive in design that it would be 'socially a stigma to be carrying one if you are not a student or a teacher.'"

This kind of machine is a geek's dream. Most of us, I'm sure, *will* get our hands on them as soon as they're available, which means that we will be fueling a black market.

This whole idea will not benefit poor children if the machines aren't available to those of us in Western Europe/North America, and other developed areas. Others have come up with the "sponsor" idea before, where I buy the computer for $300 (legally) and end up footing the bill for two poor kids to get the computer for free somewhere. I get a bargain geeky toy, poor third world kids get the chance to come onto Slashdot themselves. Everybody wins and the black market gets the steam taken out of it.

Social stigma or not, I'll be walking around with one of these no more than a month after release. Sorry, poor kids, but I was born a geek and I'll die a geek - and they'll be prying my cold, dead fingers from your $100 laptop.

Baltika

Summary: Gosh! Wow!

[xtermin8]

Have we not learned from Steve Jobs review of the Segway? Cheap micro computers will be used for porn and Solitaire. Period. Nothing to See Here.

What to do?

[mengel]

Actually, there are folks out there showing teachers how to use computers in the classroom effectively; so one thing the teachers could do is use the computers first, and take some classes to learn how to integrate the internet into their classes.

Or just use them to look things up in wikipedia, etc. since the third world classrooms don't have books either, and a couple of computers of this stripe are actually cheaper than a decent school library full of books.

Ridiculous

[endeavour31]

In the FAQS section of the linked site it is described how they were working with this laptop in some village in Cambodia without electricity and that it was the brightest item in the house at night!

Now I know they can hopefully recharge the batteries by solar cell but when dealing with people who need the basics of existence doesn't this sound just like a great idea from an ivory tower academic?

What happens when parts need replacement? WiFi? This just sounds stupid.

If routers can RETAIL for 60...

[WoTG]

Try this, see that stack of routers at Best Buy? If a Linksys WRT54GS has 100+ MHz CPU, 32MB RAM, some flash memory, a wireless chipset, and can RETAIL for USD60, then it's bill of materials is probably half that. Say, 30. Swap the WiFi chips for VGA chips, then add a USB controller and keyboard and a I/O ports and you might have 50 for a TFT. It's still tight, but within reason.

I get the impression that this will be offered at little to no profit for developing nations so we don't need to factor in retail markups.

The true value of open information

[Froze]

In regard to your point about the material not beeing freely available. These machines have wireless if the school can afford to create an access point then there are wonderful resources like project gutenburg http://www.gutenberg.org/ and wikibooks http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page that will provide an imense amount of information just for the getting.

Providing a library of information, except in contrast to libraries every student can have a copy and in the instance of wikibooks, they can even contribute to the overall wealth of knowledge if they desire.

Give to UNICEF now!

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone willing to pay $300 for this gadget that they don't need should immediately go give their disposable $300 to unicef at http://www.unicef.org/uniteforchildren/index.html

Sheesh!

Negroponte will debut the laptop on Nov 18

[rikomatic]

I received the following invitation from the World Summit on the Information Society plenary listserv:

WorldSpace and the Club of Rome cordially invite you to a presentation by Professor Nicholas Negroponte, Chairman, MIT Media Lab and Founder of One Laptop per Child. Please join us on November 18, from 11:00am -12:00pm, at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), Tunis, to hear Professor Negroponte discuss his $100 Laptop world-wide education initiative.

I plan on being there and will post about this on my blog.

Better yet

[geekoid]

Problem Our Schools need roofs
Answer Go to internet to get adice on how to build a roof that will last this time. Then You should have a fundraiser to buy roofing construction supplies and some alumni to volunteer labor. Then Send an email to all the students to infomrthem of the fundraiser and to ask there parents(probably the only Alumni availabe in 3rd world countries) to help supply ther man power.
Result School has a roof that is built better, and the students can share how they did it with other schools via email.

So, Technology isn't the answer, but that doesn't mean it can't be a really good tool to get an even better answer.

A cheap really basic laptop with a connection the the internet is a fantastic way to help groups get the niformation they need to help them selves.
Also it gives a mean to aid worker as a way to get aid directly to towns, and not having to rely on governments to delever the food for you. Assuming they do.
Oh wait, there is more. community leader could try to get intouch with university, corporation, prive parties to help them with other issues. Like how to build a purifier for water, how to improve agriculture, when the next storm is lily to happen.

How about crop sharing with other towns that may be to far to walk to for the chance they may want to do some crop sharing? Now you shoot them an email, and if they do want to do crop sharing, you can help plan the lodistics. Even if the logistics means "I'll meet you at that funny looking tree in three days, and we can swap goods."

If a man is hungry, you can give him a fish. This may be the best answer if there is no way to teach him how to fish.
However, give him a step by step manual on how to fish, he may feed is community.

Re:Better yet

[griffjon]

You make a good point, but the $100 laptop project is specifically because they don't see much value in community cyber-center type models. And the laptop, if there's no internet to begin with in the area, won't make it magically appear.

I feel that community internet access has great value as an initial ramp-up into IT development -- the famous story of Indian farmers with community net access able to bargain for better prices once they can in real time find out the prices that the middleman can sell for, for example. I think in an ideal world also every child gets a laptop, because there's only so much "hacking" you can do at a community center, whereas a laptop in your home, there's some quality exploration time. (And not just for pr0n, either!)

Anyway, don't want to go on, because I think we're basically in agreement; I just wanted to clarify that this specific project is parallel to community internet access, which I think is (a) important and (b) largely enabled by cell phone networks

teachers cost a lot less than $100

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget, that a teacher must be educated for many years and costs way more than $100. And the idea of course, is to save money with text books and have them in electronic form -though the article does mention the possible problems with copyright law (damn them!).

I would think the biggest problem would be durability. I remebmer how me and all of my friends really missmanaged our schoolbooks and drew in them and stuff.

Of course, in a western country, a computer like this would be very low tech, with most students having a better one at home, or bringing it to school with them. In a developing country, a laptop is way more advanced than anything those kids have.

Re:Do they really need a laptop?

[kidcharles]

Wait a second. You are approaching this topic with optimism and enthusiasm, and expressing yourself without sarcasm? What are you doing posting on slashdot? :)

Standard rebuttal

[fiannaFailMan]

*Sigh*

You're responding to a post about a:

( ) Technical innovation in a developing country
(*) Product shipped to a developing market
( ) General discussion about IT in the devbeloping world

The location is:

( ) Africa
( ) India
( ) Bangladesh
( ) China
( ) Somewhere else in Asia
( ) South America
( ) Central America
(*) Other _unspecified_

You're objecting to it on the basis that:

(*) Poverty hasn't been eliminated in that country yet
( ) American jobs will be lost

Your argument is bogus because:

(*) Poverty hasn't been eliminated in the developed world either, that doesn't mean we should halt all technological research
(*) This will not adversely affect any efforts to alleviate poverty
(*) This will help to alleviate poverty
( ) Poverty in that country isn't as widespread as you say it is
( ) The US does not have a divine right to keep all the cool jobs

what's cheaper?

[zogger]

Quick pop quiz for the teach on figuring out at least *one technological benefit* of a wireless/network enabled free laptop at the ratio of one laptop per one kid...

What's cheaper in the long run, hundreds of dead tree books to be delivered to hundreds of millions of poor kids over their elementary and high school years, or access to e-books by the thousands across a network, along with other educational software? Take your time, no rush...

There's more benefits, that's the most glaringly obvious one. Remember, this has some design goals in mind, harsh climate hardened, multiple ways to power it, network access, built tough to take abuse by kids. If it was me as the poor kid, I wouldn't mind sitting under a tarp if I had the educational materials, rather than having a nice schoolroom but no educational materials. Ideally of course you would want both, but this is seen as a way to leapfrog the normal "western" industrialized nation way of doing things so those cultures won't need an additional entire generation to catch up.

This is similar to why wireless is much more important and being deployed faster in the second and third world, it is much cheaper and faster than developing and installing a complete hard wired infrastructure. They are skipping centralized electrical power in a lot of areas and going to locally produced, with wind and solar PV for example, and for telco and net going straight to wireless from..nothing much.

Similar with the laptop versus expensive books, it's just much much cheaper and faster to provide a data stream. All they need is one access point per small remote village, the bulk of the laptops then jump on with wifi for schooling.

At least, that's what I have read about the project.

Re:what's cheaper?

[Ossifer]

Quick pop quiz for the teach on figuring out at least *one technological benefit* of a wireless/network enabled free laptop at the ratio of one laptop per one kid...

[I assume this is being posed to me.] The premise of the entire post is that I reject *any* benefit of $100 laptops, technology in general, etc. This is not the case.

As to the specific quiz question, I do not know the answer. What's the cost of maintaining the laptops? What's the cost of the content material for the laptops? What's the cost of networking the laptops? Running the networks? Administering the program? Teaching the kids to use the computers (teachers!!)?

Hopefully, in the long run, there will be enough money not to have to choose...

Laptops? How about electricity, phone lines, water

[wired_parrot]

Negroponte has good intentions but he seems to fail to realize the reality of the poor areas he's trying to reach:
- Many of the developing world has no electricity, making the laptop as good as a paperweight
- They would be lucky to have telephone service, when it is available it may be in the form of a single public telephone for the village. Internet connection might be available only in the larger urban centres.
- Illiteracy rates still run high in many parts of the world, making use of the laptop difficult at best
- Many of the needy people who receive the laptop will likely resell them for a profit for essential goods to the well off in their country. Judging from the response here, there will be no shortage of people willing to pay more than a $100 for such a laptop - and a $100 is a lot of money for the poor in most parts of the world.
In short, he's got a lot of other development problems in the rest of the world to tackle before his sub-$100 laptop can be a successful reality.

not really

[zogger]

The kids are going to OWN the computers, that means take them home with them, to do homework and independent study and what kids do, games and such. If they are thin clients it sorta defeats that purpose.

Now I imagine it could be *both* theoretically, thin client at school and stand alone with some functionality at home, but I don't know what a middle ground is called there, "pleasingly plump" clients???

Re:A picture of...

[Anonymous Coward]

A bright future of being chained to a desk from 9 to 5, slogging away over a hot terminal.

What happened to Economics 101?

[Rogerborg]

If it were possible to make $100 laptops without making a loss, then why is nobody undercutting the incumbents and selling me a $105 laptop right now?

Want one? Support the pledge bank

[Anonymous Coward]

For anyone who wants to get his/her hands on one of these little lappies (assuming they are produced), Mike Liveright has started a pledge bank where you can promise to buy one for $300, and the extra $$ helps to support the project. A pledge bank works by getting people to commit to a challenge as long as a certain number of people also do the same. In this case, you commit to buying a $100 laptop for $300 if 100,000 people do the same. http://www.pledgebank.com/100laptop

6 DOF

[BenBoy]

From the article: the current design requires a hinge for the gasket and a separate hinge that allows 340 degrees of freedom between the screen and the keyboard.

Wow! This thing can rotate through hitherto unknown dimensions, and only costs a CNote? Sign me up!!!

Wikipedia

[Julian Morrison]

Supposing it comes with a canned version of Wikipedia, and the software to update it intermittently. Say either online update, or handoffs of canned databases via bluetooth or whatever. Oh, and throw in a copy of Project Gutenberg for good luck.

Right there, you've got an educational resource that, in anyplace without net connections, is worth its weight in gold.

Thay don'need to read n write

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of pre 70's arguments about teaching the poor / minorities how to read and write. Or actually learn maths, history,... let alone philosophy...

Always the same tired argument "They don't need that ! It'll only make them confused / go to their heads / give them ideas (oh, horror!) / get them in trouble / pull them away from their chores ! They need a job to help out at home / charity / a trade / an apprenticeship !".

Anything to keep them pulling the plow instead of educating themselves.

Computers and internet are the "new" literacy. The "new" crafts.

They should get it any way they can. The lucky few will use it to help leverage them out of poverty. And maybe help others out a bit. The local "overseers" cannot tolerate that. And snarl accordingly. In unison. And, frequently, from overseas.

Mod parent up.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too true. Nothing would ruin a program like this right out the gate then a bunch of families thinking it would be clever to 'lose' this, or kids becoming massive targets for thieves.

Red hat and squeak is a bad idea?

[ormvegr]

I really think this project sucks because they are using redhat
and are putting logo and squeak on the system is a bad idea.
I think they should use a Debian base for a *real* open system and instead of
using squeak they should build a system atop lua wich is small and fast
and well infix. I think about the cost of the machine because i wonder how much of it is expected to go to red$hat. Im thinking debian would probly be
better because it has more software available to the system.
A program grows to the size of its environment squeak is a HUGE system.
I think some people are retards. Using a large clunky system only increases
the cost of the neccesary hardware.

Re:Laptops? How about electricity, phone lines, wa

[didiken]

Please don't smear great ideas with your hindsights.

- Many of the developing world has no electricity, making the laptop as good as a paperweight
Did you RTFA? The laptop came with a handcrack. 1 minutes of cranking can generate great runtime.

- They would be lucky to have telephone service, when it is available it may be in the form of a single public telephone for the village. Internet connection might be available only in the larger urban centres.
Computers are useful in their own rights. Networks are great, but sneakernet works as well. Plus if you don't have the computers, how can you build the networks? And the reverse argument if somebody builds a network in 3rd world countries, nansayers will say "there are no computers".

- Illiteracy rates still run high in many parts of the world, making use of the laptop difficult at best
Okay, does this rephrase make sense: Illiteracy rates still run high in many parts of the world, making use of books difficult at best ?

- Many of the needy people who receive the laptop will likely resell them for a profit for essential goods to the well off in their country. Judging from the response here, there will be no shortage of people willing to pay more than a $100 for such a laptop - and a $100 is a lot of money for the poor in most parts of the world.

First they won't be available for sale, and it makes all the ebay and 2nd market look obviously greedious, and help reduce them. Also looking at the specs, it's hardly something the 1st world would use anyway given a $4xx Dell laptops can give you with Windows and all the bells and whistles, unless you really like the hand crank.

Re:A picture of...

[teslafreak]

I dunno, personally it strikes me as kinda zombie movie-ish.

Wrong approach to solving a real problem

[pkphilip]

The whole thought process behind a USD 100 laptop is misplaced. The assumption is that this is going to somehow allow disadvantaged kids to take advantage of the benefits of information technology is flawed from my experience with working with the poor.

The oft-quoted problems all all real. I quote them below:
1. Lack of a place to store these laptops / computers safely. USD 100 is a lot of money where I come from.
2. Lack of good quality electricity
3. Where electricity is available, it is expensive. (In most cases it is stolen so perhaps this does not count but this is nonetheless a precarious existence for the user)
4. Most documentation is available only in English or European languages and this is a real problem.

I have been trying to teach kids from the slums to take over small jobs on the computer such as simple php scripting etc. I provide the computers, the safe place, the electricity etc, but I have run up against a big wall which is basically lack of documentation which they can understand. Ofcourse, I could sit and translate some of the PHP stuff, but soon the kids want me to translate something on mysql, something in javascript, in HTML, on Linux etc.. the list is endless. The kids become completely dependent on me and they learn from me and are unable to fully benefit from the vast information store that is the Internet.

What will be more helpful than spending all this money on a USD 100 laptop would be to setup small netcafes across the developing world where the poor can come and register to become members. The registration could be given for a small amount each year (free registrations will never be valued).

Registered users will be allowed to work so many hours each day/week on the computers.

The netcafe should have staff who will be able to train the users in the usage of computers, who provide cheap computer books (translated into the local language) for purchase or lease.

In some parts of the developing world, the kids should also be taught English (especially in India since very little computer documentation is available in all Indian languages).

All this will IMHO be more useful than an inexpensive laptop.

We purchase, They benefit

[mllive]

I have have posted a "pledge" http://www.pledgebank.com/100laptop that would allow others to express their interest in supporting the project by purchasing one of the Laptops for ~$300 and letting the extra profits be used to subsidize the ones for developing companies.

If you think that this might be interesting, I suggest that you sign the pledge and also "forward" the link to others who might be interested also so that the media labs can gage the number of people who might support the project.

To repeat, the link to the fuller article on the $100 laptop is:

. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003707.html

and to the pledge site is:

. http://www.pledgebank.com/100laptop

Re:Laptops? How about electricity, phone lines, wa

[Anonymous Coward]

All of those things will be provided if the whole effort produces even 1 new Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.

There is the potential to generate thousands of people with useful skills, and millions with literary ability. (maybe more)

soon they will be on ebay

[digitallysick]

watch and see! haha