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Negroponte Responds to $100 Laptop Criticisms
teefaf writes "Wired News is running an article on the most recent developments surrounding Nicholas Negroponte's (of MIT) $100 laptop project. The project aims to make 'cheap' computers available to children in developing countries. In the article, Negroponte responds to the inevitable criticism from Intel and Microsoft, "When you have both Intel and Microsoft on your case, you know you're doing something right", and elaborates on his vision for the future of the project, "He also said the display and other specifications could change as enhancements are made. In other words, he seemed to be saying to his critics: Don't get too hung up on how this thing operates now, 'The hundred-dollar laptop is an education project,' he said. 'It's not a laptop project.'". The article also states that the initial production cost of the laptops is expected to be $135; the $100 price-point probably won't be hit until 2008. It's possible that the cost could drop as low as $50 by 2010."
I thought the most interesting thing about this was Negroponte saying "The hundred-dollar laptop is an educaton project. It's not a laptop project."
Given that, it hardly matters what OS it runs, as long as school systems, educators, and students have the ability to write and run the educational software they need on it.
IMHO, the real value of a machine like this in a students hands (especially if they are taught programming) is that they learn problem solving, not just information.
This project is designed to benefit countries as a whole. Some countries have populations with no high-level skills. By providing these cheap laptops (along with a wireless infrastructure) to their citizens, they can prepare them for more high-level work, which will attract business, which will create jobs, which will put bread on the table.
Ergo, $100 laptops will [indirectly] put bread on the tables of those who need it.
Or, just maybe, he thinks fightng AIDS among Africa's orphaned kids fills a tad more urgent need than MITS phantom $100 laptop.
In 1990 I was given an old x86 machine that ran DOS off of floppy, and then Word off of floppy. I took to that computer immediately, and 17 years later, after many different jobs, I work in IT. Without that x86, I wouldn't have pushed my parents to get me a 486 for my birthday, or tried to get a job at the college helpdesk before I arrived at college. Maybe I would have still ended up here, but I doubt it. Putting a computer in the hands of a child can be a powerful thing.
Why knock it?
How do you fight AIDS in Africa, with a sub-machine gun?
No, you fight it with education. "The hundred dollar laptop is an education project." I'm watching this program on PBS talking about AIDS in Africa, and this doctor is explaining the birds and the bees to this 19-year old kid who has just infected his wife, because he used to have unprotected sex with prostitutes while he was off fighting a war for his country (from the time he was 14). The kid had no idea how AIDS was spread.
Education is the silver bullet.
"First, they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win."
It appears that we are currently transitioning from 2 to 3.
No, it will be an excellent business machine. Writing documents, doing spreadsheets, inventory, email. We used to do that on 286s 10 years ago. That's 98% of what most small businesses use a PC for. And there are lots of more specialised apps on SourceForge, they can probably use DOS apps under emulation, and with millions of these machines around there will be a demand and market for more to be created. That's what Gates is afraid of, a whole world of non-MS software.
That explains why they are not helping him, but it does not explain why they are opposing him. And they are opposing him.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
Wait a second there ... now, I'm willing to give Gates credit where credit's due, particularly in terms of being a shrewd (one might say ruthless) businessman, but I think it's totally out of line to just hand him credit for the PC revolution. Anybody who believes that is either seriously misguided, or getting a paycheck from Redmond, or both.
If IBM had gone with a different company to make an OS for its computers, nobody would have ever heard of Bill Gates or Microsoft, 90% of the world would be running some other operating system, and we'd still have computers on our desks. In fact, if you wanted to find a single company to give the majority of the credit to, I'd say Compaq is probably the most deserving, for reverse-engineering the IBM BIOS and producing the first clones, thus breaking IBM's pricing structure.
Really I think the only credit you can give Microsoft and Windows is for driving a very rapid hardware upgrade cycle over the last decade; this created sales volumes which led to economies of scale in the past few years which have kept the price of computer hardware on an ever-decreasing spiral.
I don't think there's anything that Microsoft did that you can't argue would have happened anyway, had they never existed or had IBM adopted a different OS. And frankly I can think of several scenarios which might have resulted in better outcomes for the average PC owner than the current one.
On the other hand, maybe you were just trolling.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I lived in Central America (Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama) for two years, back in 1972-74. The literacy rate in Honduras and Nicaragua at that time was around 25-30%; there were no public schools; still, most people had electricity and a significant number had telephones. I knew lots of bright kids and young adults who would have benefitted tremendously from something like the $100 laptop. Using the US consumer price index as a crude measure of purchasing power, a current (2006) $100 laptop would be a $25 laptop back then--and lots of families I knew could have afforded that (and would have leapt at the opportunity).
..bruce..
Interestingly enough, the literacy rate in neighboring Costa Rica at that time was something over 95%, higher than even in the US. The people were well educated, but (compared to the US) poor. I can argue that they would benefit even more from the $100 laptop.
Several posters here seem stuck on a image of giving these laptops to Masai tribes in unelectrified Kenyan backcountry. The potential market for such laptops is global; there are many millions of people who live in countries with the requisite electric infrastructure, who could eke out $100 for one of these laptops, and who could benefit thereby due to poor educational opportunities in their countries.
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
You're 25 miles from an electrical outlet. You don't have a car and the bus doesn't come by for two more days. Your powerbook battery just died.
Which computer is more useful? Your shiny $2000 powerbook, or the $100 computer that can be charged with a hand crank?
Pretty obvious if you think about it.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
We, the people who live in those needy countries do not need cheap computers.
Thank you Nicholas, but we need some other stuff first if you guys want to help us. And our governments are so stupid that they will buy these computers for our people instead of using that money to address some other issues.
The will is ok, but it will end up doing us worse.
In my country (Argentina) all those computers will end up in wrong hands. We dont need computers for education; it seems that americans believe that are helping the world, but from this side of the counter it is all different.
Countries dont need to be invaded to get help... not with your armies, not with your patents, not with your companies that take full advantage of our corrupt governments (as this project)... It is our fault, but please stop "helping" us in those ways because it harms people seriously.
Your banks lend money to our govs, that money goes somewhere else, no-one controls that seriously and we all end up paying that "help" and nobody gets anything.
Nicholas, if you want to help then travel to our country and do something punctual. But SKIP governments; or else you will be feeding corruption and you will never know.
Regards,
AiZ
The laptop is going to be distributed for free by governments and NGOs.
That's the one part of this plan that I have the most serious reservations about.
Here's what I think is likely to happen. Plane full of laptops is unloaded at airfield in Uganda. Negroponte gets photo op, handing first unit to smiling child. Technology companies, computer users, all get warm fuzzy feeling.
Cameras go off, Negroponte and cadre go home. Ugandan government officials come out, confiscate laptops, load into trucks, take to black-market smuggler, trade for AK-47s. Laptops go in shipping container, shipped to India where workers in sweatshops file serial numbers off, then to LA where they get sold in stores and via eBay for $125. Ugandan goverment officials draft children into Army, give each one an AK-47.
Net result: African children get guns, Americans get warm fuzzy feeling and cheap black-market technology.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
What an incredibly simplistic, narrow and ignorant viewpoint.
The challanges facing emerging third-world nations are very much rooted in education (or lack-there-of). Anachronistic feudal systems are a symptom, not a cause.
When one's only knowledge of issues like disease and sexuality comes from an oral tradition that is lacking in causality-based logic, being told "don't shoot up drugs with strangers and don't have sex with them" is going to be completely meaningless; especially if one's heard such gems as "having sex with a virgin will cure you of X disease" from your peers for most of your life. In order to understand and incorporate the importance of "don't have sex with strangers", one first needs to understand what can happen when this rule is broken and why/how it happens.
This means teaching, at a minimum, the basis of critical thinking; e.g. causality. In developed societies, east or west, causality is taught almost from birth (whether explicitly or implicitly); and it is often assumed that causality-reasoning is a "built-in" human feature. This is very much not true, and has not been the majority-case until relatively recent history. Such knowledge comes no more naturally or automatically to man than it does to your dog. The difference is that humans have the physiological capability to significantly extend and modify their reasoning abilities, while rover is somewhat limited in this capacity.
someone is out-charitying him
You're kidding, right? You think a $100 laptop project -- working with $29 million dollars donated by some tech companies -- has surpassed the Gates Foundation's $10 billion in donations to nonprofits (particularly to solve health issues in Third World countries)? Try working in the international nonprofit sector for awhile, you'll start getting ticked at Negroponte too. These kids needs nutrition, vaccines, and education. A laptop might help with the latter, but good teachers, clinics, and/or radio networks would solve this problem MUCH MORE CHEAPLY.
Negroponte is a visionary, and I like him a lot, but in this case he is using a chainsaw to hammer a nail.
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