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U.N. Lends Backing to the $100 Laptop
willki wrote to mention an AP story stating that The United Nations has pledged support to the $100 Laptop. From the article: "Kemal Dervis, head of the U.N. Development Program, will sign a memorandum of understanding Saturday with Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of One Laptop per Child, on the $100 laptop project, at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting. The program aims to ship 1 million units by the end of next year to sell to governments at cost for distribution to school children and teachers. UNDP will work with Negroponte's organization to deliver 'technology and resources to targeted schools in the least developed countries,' the U.N. agency said in a statement."
Will the $100 Notebook ship with the QWERTY Keyboard or will it be regional? (Arabesque, Hindi, Cryllic?)
The aim is to have governments or donors buy them and give full ownership to the children.
I'm going to be real curious as to the after market value of these things. If it goes above $100, you can bet that those kids won't be getting them.
The devices will be lime green in color, with a yellow hand crank, to make them appealing to children and, so the thinking goes, to fend off potential thieves.
So, if I paint a Ferrari lime green and put a hand crank on it, nobody will steal it?
Pay to clean up the governments in these regions by bringing in consultants to train new police forces, etc. and then encourage 1st world investors to invest in the infrastructure. This approach is starting to work in some of the small Eastern European countries like Macedonia where former US agents train their national police forces to use American standards and procedures. Or how about a food aid plan where they buy the native crops first and then hire locals (with 1st world military oversight) to prepare and distribute the food (that way our soldiers can shoot them if they try ransoming the food or handing it over to warlords like what happened in Somalia).
But... it I guess it appeals to Kofi Annan's inner geek and it's politically correct to attack the digital divide when the food, running water, electricity and semi-functional government divide is a far more serious threat to life, liberty, property and the future in these countries.
It's good for the project to get the thumbs up from the U.N. but I have alot of difficulty with the overall concept of delivering technology to populations that are having trouble getting their basic biological needs met.
Maybe they have the food/water/basic education working but widespread corruption keeps the country poor. Do you see where I'm going? How is this computer going to eliminate pervasive political/social problems or otherwise redistribute wealth?
All of the boot-strapping capitalists will flame me for "denying others the opportunity to...." That would be avoiding my question.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Originally I was a big fan of this concept, but I'm now skeptical since I've yet to see anything on the most important part of this project, namely the educational materials that will run on or be made available via the laptop. Providing Squeak is not sufficient. What material will help kids learn to read/type, basic math, history, art, etc.? Why has there been no mention of that?
And for those of you who would link to wikipedia, etc., that's not a suitable starting place for young kids. Who is supplying the basic educational material the laptop recipients will need to get started?
Certainly, but consider this: while money can be moved from project to project, the unique drive, vision, and skillset posessed by those guys from MIT who led this project are less portable.
It required strong leadership to get the project off the ground and through the UN. It is probably not likely that the same guys could have found a solution within their area of expertise to those other problems you mentioned. So, while those problems might be worse, and efforts to solve them might be in more need of the money, the confluence of skills and drive and circumstance in this particular place & time have led to the success of this project, which incidentally is quite a good thing, so maybe show a little support, eh?
No Child Left Behind . . . . . Without a Laptop
With high tech countries like the US performing so poorly in math/science and just about everything else... why on earth would we unleash this on poor nations? Would they be better of with a $100 device that makes clean drinking water? I mean there has to be something better to put all this effort towards. I understand its a noble cause, but I think its misdirected.
http://religiousfreaks.com/Shouldn't we focus of give everychild in the UNITED STATES/EU a laptop BEFORE we give a massive amount of funds that will be stolen by warlords. Billings, Montana
Windows Vista Help Forum
something tells me you are a fool....
this program is targeted for poverty stricken children but children that are above the point of survival..
not everything is about the absolute worst off, some programs are *GASP* desigend to help other people too.
basically those children you mentioned have nothing to do with this article or the focus of this device.
the children that will greatly benefit are already going to some form of school (which will hopefully be made quite a bit better with some technology)
different programs have different targets, this program is not targeting the child prostitutes and orphans of the world.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
The $100 laptop is being sold at cost right? I'm sure there are geeks out there who would be willing to pay $200 or more for something like this to hack.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Mkay. I see this type of troll everytime these stories come up. These laptops aren't for starving children with hanta on their death beds. These are for children who live in poor nations, but are otherwise living and doing ok. Countries that education is their next step to becoming a modernized country. Their governments are concerned with getting their own people education right now, not feeding starving children half way around the world. It wasn't long ago they were the starving ones. You act as if the money would go to one or the other. That's not the case. If the money weren't going towards these laptops, it'd probably go right into their education systems.
And money isn't what those starving countries need. It's social order usually. America pays farmers for their food and buries it to control food prices. We have PLENTY of food to give away. Getting it in the hands of starving people is the problem. More often than not they will end up in the hands of warlords or destroyed. Throwing money at the problem isn't going to help those countries. Until dictator X is overthrown their people will continue to starve. And the UN isn't about raiding countries to overthrow dictators.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
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
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I think one reason people on Slashdot have such a pessimistic view of the $100 laptop, is the images that have been conjured up by Negroponte and co. Mostly extremely poor children living in some jungle village somewhere.
In reality, these laptops would probably be used by the urban poor and working class or those in well developed rural areas in rapidly developing countries. I have been to Fujian porvince in China, stood in a rice field and then used the internet, in a small village composed of mostly really old windowless stone buildings.
Urban infrastructure was near enough to provide internet and electricity to those who could afford it, but even so, people were very poor. This is the kind of setting I can easily see the laptop coming to its own. Those people were poor enough so as not to be able to afford good educational material, but can sustain themselves and would not benefit from food or whatever Slashdotters are offering instead of laptops.
I think those pessimistic views reflect an inherent ignorance about the world. The media often paints a rather bleak picture of the rest of the world, whereas most people get along fine, though could always use a little help.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
The project: http://laptop.media.mit.edu/
It might seem a bad idea to offer laptops over water, food and shelter, especially to governments/organizations, who in the past have held donations at ransom or misappropriated funds.
However, one can only hope, there are some smarter distribution plans this time.
As to the value;
Give a man a fish and feed him for a day...
Teach a man how to fish, and feed him for a lifetime.
Best to think of the project in these terms, no?
What OS is going to be on these $100.00 laptops?
...was not food and not freedom... the key was education and information.
Giving people food fixes the problem for a short time, they will be hungry again in a week, giving them tools nessesary for groving their own food fixes the problem permanently. Starting with the children is a very smart move, they learn quicker and do not have the limitations (and bad habits) their parents has learned from their parents...
I do however still not understand why mr. Negroponte don't want to sell these laptops on the free market, it would give the project both a competent user base and a much larger developer base.
Will be able to download the latest crappy music and get sued for it like the rest of the world.
I am not going to take a position yet on how well these laptops are going to work out. However, the fact that they are now going to be distributed by governments, paid for with government funds, means that market economics and reality will get shoved aside for politics... this is never a good thing. Especially with the track record of the UN and corruption.
Secondly, I really take offense with the notion that "the UN" is backing the laptop. The UN is primarily funded by the USA. They take up a sizeable portion of valuable real estate on US land. And the US government gets funded by "non-voluntary contributions" from US citizens. Therefore, the title should read, US Citizens Backing the $100 Laptop (Involuntarily). The distinction is important. It's very easy to spend other people's money on ideas which may not be the best use of the funds.
(Sorry, just got done spending about 3 days working on my taxes, sending uncle sam and arnie $20,000 of my hard earned, so they can put about 1% of it to good use, and blow the rest on politics and vote-buying.)
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
If someone wants to use their talents to make this happen, I applaud it. One cannot dictate to other the form of charity they wish to participate in. There are many dedicated to feeding the malnourished. There are others who work towards better treatment of disease and preventing the spread thereof. Perhaps there are those who think passing out crackers is a higher priority than passing out condoms, but there are valid arguments for both. Only by taking a big picture approach can the third world nations be granted the tools to bring themselves out of poverty. This laptop program is a commendable step in the right direction, and only one of many neccessary.
What success? Not a single laptop has been made! There's not one manufacturer that has agreed that this can even be done for $100! This is pure, unadulterated vaporware. They've found a company that has agreed to look into it to see if it's possible. That's it!
The only thing that the organizers have succeeded in doing is whipping the geek media into a frenzy.
But, while we're on the subject, I'm working on building a car for developing countries that will have most of the features of modern cars, but will be indestuctible, will operate via a hand crank, and will cost $1000. I'm accepting funding now.
I don't respond to AC's.
On the laptop keyboard there is a windows key perhaps MIT have switched to the dark side!
Seriously, sell these $100 laptops over here for $200. Every laptop purchased also buys one for a poor child on the other side of the economy scale. I'm sure $200 is about right for the "my first computer" age group. Or those who want a cheap lappy for email or aspiring authors. Also sell a solar panel as an accessory and all the greenies would go for it too!
The UN is more than aware of the poverty situations in these developing countries and I can't imagine that those in charge of this operation would send a $100 laptop to someone who'd just as soon eat the motherboard for SOME sort of sustinance(sp?)... For those kids that only know of a life where they manually slave all day to earn the meager earnings that keep their crappy hut up, completely oblivious to the climate (socially, politically, etc.) around them, they're doomed to repeat history. Also, give an organization 100 million dollars and guess how much will actually end up being effective. Give an organization tons of lime green colored laptops, it stands to reason that you'll face a whole HELL of a lot less corruption. It's easy to misappropriate funds, food, and supplies. Something as tangible and as non-consumable as a lime green laptop filled with software for kids? Why bother - your crappy $400 pc does more. Just seems that even if parts of this plan fail, it will still stand to do MUCH more good. FP on slashdot, flame away lol :)
Less Talk. More Stab.
No one in the industry is attempting quite the same thing at all. What the MIT project is attempting to do is to create new technology that compromises between performance and cost. In order to drive cost down, significant computing performance is lost.
I bet you were imagining $100 laptops that were exactly the same as the laptops we have now. That's what I get from your statement "Everyone in the industry is ALREADY focused on making laptops as cheap and plentiful as possible". That is quite wrong. These $100 laptops will be quite different from laptops presently on the market. Just try to find me a laptop that is powered by D cells and a handcrank. Or a laptop without a hard drive. Or a laptop with a screen that switches between color and monochromatic.
Why bother with reduced laptops? Because something is better than nothing at all.
And in terms of MIT taking credit, they started the whole initiative, did they not? Did they not propogate the idea and get the industry to think about it? Aren't they, in fact, developing some of the technology that will go into the laptop?
The poverty argument is akin to saying because there are poor people in the world we should disband NASA. Clearly economics is not a strongpoint with some posters. This is a fantastic, positive and inspiring initiative by Nicholas Negroponte and its disheartening to see so much cynisism on slashdot. One would think slashdotters would be at the forefront championing the cause.
Instead we have shortsighted speculation about its uses betraying an unbelievable ignorance of our own experience with technology. You can bet recipients will find creative and innovative ways to enrich and improve their lives.
The only problem will be distribution and ensuring the laptops ends up in the hands on the intended recepients which is a perennial problem in developing countries. And if there is demand for these laptops in first world as has already been displayed in some of the posts you can bet an active blackmarket will thrive to divert them back to the first world.
karma
Yes, they will. The commercial version should be around $225 and the proceed will help subsidize the $100 units. The initial units will be earmarked for the subsidized version, so the commercial version won't be out immediately.
Oooooo....a $100 laptop!!! Big deal. Here is everything you need to put together a perfectly capable $100 laptop today.
Battary Powered Monitor (Item# E21591) = $33.12
6v Battary powerd Computer that has a HUGE library of educational/business/entertainment software = $24.99
Hand crank generator for charging the battaries = $39.95
Total = $98.06
Now if I can find all of the components to put together a $100 laptop in 15 minutes, I'm sure someone smarter than me could do it better. This is $100 with a huge amount of waste. Extra light, built in radio, siren, and compass. Not to mention the cost that was added for retail profit, and the cost of putting together three seperate packages.
Some may whine that 'It's only an 8-bit computer' or 'It's already outdated'. Well, the $100 laptops that are being proposed are propriotary machines that are also very outdated today. With a C-64 based laptop, at least the end users would have access to actual software. I think these people would be perfectly happy having the standard of living we had in the 80's, and that is what the C-64 would bring.
What this tells me is that there are some people out there that are going to try to make a lot of money by asking for dontation that are way out of line for what they are providing.
Bullshit. Billy Gates sticks his big Windows dick up your ass and all of a sudden a free computer's the most wonderful thing in the world. Or do you retract your fawning praise you made over Microsoft's charitable donations all those times in the past?