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Solar Wi-Fi To Bring Net to Developing Countries
JLavezzo writes "TreeHugger.com has an article today on a new wifi development organization: MIT and the UN have teamed up to provide kids living in the world's least developed nations $100 laptops, their 2 watts of juice provided by hand or foot crank. Cool, but - and this was one of Bill Gates' criticisms - what's a computer without internet access? Enter Green Wi-Fi, a non-profit that seeks to provide 'last mile internet access with nothing more than a single broadband internet connection, rooftops and the sun.' Their wi-fi access nodes, which consist of a small solar panel, a heavy-duty battery, and a router, can be linked together to extend one internet connection into a larger network. The two guys who started the company - Bruce Baikie and Marc Pomerleau - happen to be veterans of Sun Microsystems. Deployment is set to start in India at the end of this summer."
Now not only can citizens of impoverished countries starve due to gross mismanagement of funds by their governments (who are themselves living very well off of foreign aid intended for the citizens) but they can IM each other about who has more flies.
Now Indians will have to deal with Indian tech support.
The complaints are coming, so let me just preempt them. Yes, money should be spent on feeding people. Yes, they need food, water, and medical care first and foremost. The problem is that the basic necessities of life are not enough.
The rich nations of the world could divert massive portions of their GDP to feed the impoverished world. Even if you could political find the will to do this, it would solve nothing. Poverty is a symptom of a much larger problem. The core of the problem lies in education. If they can be educated, they can save themselves. Hence, things like cheap Wi-fi while certainly is not a silver bullet, it at least begins to pick away at the problem.
Education is the key. With education and access to information other problems can start be solved. Good democratic governance absolutely demands an education population that is able to vote outside of tribal ties. Educated leaders are need to tackle both social and economic problems, and not just in government, but in business as well. The core of a functional democratic government is an educated population. We can feed the impoverished nations of the world from now until the end of time, but until educated leaders step up they will remain impoverished.
So yes to those that will surely complain about this "waste" of money, these people need food and clean water. Food and water is not the cure though. Education, information, a fiscal boost once good governance is in place are the solution. Throwing money at the worlds poor just to feed them is like pumping blood into a man with a severed artery; the problem isn't that he is running out of blood, the problem is that he has a severed artery.
please refer to any of the past OLPC post. These are not countries in extreme poverty. They have an infrastructure in plance. The projects are designed to break the cycle of poverty. Unless you teach these people to survive in a 21st century workplace, you can give them all the aid you want and it will not help. I repeat, BREAK THE CYCLE OF POVERTY, and the programs are not designed for countries with extreme poverty, but ones with an infrastructure in place
This sig is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.