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Would the Developing World Use E-Readers More Than Laptops?
Barence writes "Stuart Turton writes about how the local children reacted to his Kindle on a recent visit to the Nagpur region of India. 'About 20 kids stood in a big group, just watching me: big eyes, curious expressions, ridiculously cute and all intent on the Kindle,' he writes. 'Just turning the page caused them to drag their friends over, and there's no reality where changing the font size of your book should make you cooler than a Jimmy Hendrix guitar solo. That was just the warm-up act though; it was the text-to-speech feature that pretty much made me the best friend of the entire village. A charity could do a lot worse than to load a few up with dictionaries, school books and novels and send them to some remote schools in developing nations,' he observes."
Better than text-to-speech: http://librivox.org/
It's a project where volunteers make audio books of public domain works. So you get a real reading rather than a robotic best effort.
I hope free software projects combine this with the public domain texts to make cool materials for people (kids and adults) learning languages.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Can anybody with one of these say whether you find the text-to-speech to be good enough to use? It's hard to come by audio editions of many books, and reading while driving isn't a great combo.
They would buy both if they were paid fairly for their work and therefore had the money to afford expensive, first-world gimmicks. Meanwhile, school books and malaria medicine would also do.
It's a good idea, and I'm sure they'd get used... until they break.. If you send high tech electronics to the middle of Africa to help schools, what will happen when they break? There is no local Apple Store, Best Buy, or Kindle repair hut to help get them back up and running...
If you turn off the wireless, a Kindle can go for over a month without a charge. If you want to get information to people who lack reliable power, eink displays really do make a huge difference.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
He wouldn't leave the Kindle with the kids.
I find it interesting that the Kindle is seen as this great magical device for the developing world, when it in fact: 1. Limits the ability to share a book 2. Has a way to delete the entire book without recourse. Why would anyone want such a device in the developed world? Why would they not resist such a device in a developing world? Me thinks this is just kindle product placement.
> can you package it up and send it to the developing world so the kids can read along, for cheap?
Obviously, yes. It's data, audio data with no copyright restrictions. If you can get a computer (such as an Amazon Swindle) to a village, you can get data there too.
Sending data is either just as easy (put the data on the computer), or much easier (via the nearest Internet-enabled building/village rather than having to travel from another country).
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
"A charity could do a lot worse than to load a few up with dictionaries, school books and novels and send them to some remote schools in developing nations,"
Or they could send a few dictionaries, school books and novels. Much cheaper and much more accessible (any book accessible instead of a single kindle with many books). I know it's a sin to say on Slashdot, but technology isn't always the best way.
to just send a few dictionaries, school books and novels and send them to some remote schools in developing nations... Not to knock technology but why load up a single electronic device when the same amount of money could by 20 books and they could be used by 20 kids simultaneously without being charged... I think the Kindle is a great device for me when I want to carry 30 books around with me, but it really doesn't make ANY sense to give them to developing nations except for the PR value to Amazon.
20 books? Can you buy a new non-used non-fiction hardcover textbook for less than $7? Also why can you only load 30 books on your kindle? My ipod touch kindle reader has more. Project gutenberg claims 33000 works...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
And you think the internet access and mobile phones are the problem? Try electricity. Last I checked regular books didn't need batteries, then again e-readers are cool and all, but why make a poor village expend on electricity when they have bigger problems, such as perhaps housing and clean water?
They would have gone absolutely crazy about the iPad! I'm only kind of joking. After checking out my inlaw's Kindle, I'm unimpressed.
Unimpressed in what way? The screen looks just like a paper book and it is far more convenient than normal books.
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
E-readers are fragile, expensive, & hard to share compared to books. In a "developing" country I would wonder how you would service the e-reader.
You cannot use an e-reader easily with two people. So, if one person wants to read something, everyone reads the same page. Books can be shared among several people. If you have two books, you can have two people reading at the same time.
Let's see what a kindle costs: right now it's $139.00 in the US. ( What will it cost when you get to the "developing" country?) Some refubished netbooks cost this much.
How do you get content onto the e-reader? Most need another computer or WLAN/WiFi internet connections. In a "developing" country, how easy is this to have access to?
Also, in general, an e-reader isn't as flexible as a netbook in what you can achieve. E-readers make lousy netbooks. Netbooks make decent e-readers.
Kindles are for consumers, laptops for creators.
You can't write on a Kindle, you can't code on a Kindle. It is okay as a book replacement but it does NOT allow the same freedom as a laptop.
I do not oppose the use of tech in teaching but let us remember that some of the brightest mind that ever lived did their work long before the PC or any of its parts where ever invented. You can do amazing things with some paper and ink.
Westerners also forget that places like India got one difference. You need to beat the kids to get out of school instead of in. They WANT to learn. They don't need gadgets or special programs to motivate them. Al they need is teachers. Less gadgets, more teachers. And really, if a paper mathbook is ten years out of date, so what? That only matters if you wish to overhaul the entire education system every 2 years so teachers spend more time on administration then teaching. 1+1=2, it has done so for a long time and will continue to do so and teachers have educated children with slates better then most kids get educated with PC's.
If you really wish to help as a westerner, fund open books, so school books costs only the printing costs (trivial) and not the copyright costs. In some places in the world you can have an education for the price of a Kindle. Send a child to school, not have him become a Amazon consumer.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
A kindle or equivalent book reader would also be a lot easier to keep charged with a small solar panel than most other tiny computers or tablets. Charge both a small light and the kindle with solar during the day, read/study a bit after sunset until the light batteries start to fade. I've read about lots of remote villages becoming much more productive due to having a few hours of light before sunrise and after sunset because of relatively cheap solar charged lights, and a kindle (or a ruggedized stripped down equivalent) wouldn't take much power to keep charged. Keep the whispernet and wifi options though. That could be the only way to get new content since remote locations may not have any network other than cellphones.
Having been to the heart of Ethiopia, I can tell you what they really need are jobs. Yea, food, education, clean water... that's all good, but none of it will remain there without money and they only way to keep money there is to build factories to employee the people. "Nothing but nets" nearly put every net manufacturer in Africa out of business. Food aid in Hattie drove most of the local food growers, distribution networks and street vendors out of business.
Instead of giving them free laptops, how about we invest in real books... put the publishing company IN the community where the books are needed and hire the populace to produce them. Then sell those books to charities at a discount rate to be given to school children. You employ hundreds of adults, educate thousands of kids and leave an industry in place that could last for decades.
Paper...
Or vellum for the win, but not if you're a vegie.
In my experience over the last few decades, the problem with anything electronic is durability. It's all designed to break or be obsolete within three years and thereby provide revenue for the corporations and banks.
Can you still read 10 year old word documents?
What happens when Amazon go out of business?
Can you replace the battery when it wears out?
etc etc.
Deleted
20 books? Can you buy a new non-used non-fiction hardcover textbook for less than $7?
Sure, in lots of places there's cheaper editions of many of the same books we have... They're printed on cheaper paper, cheaper ink, cheaper binding, and have lots of pages of ads for other books by the same publisher in the back, but they cost a lot less... They're usually printed with stuff like "for sale in Indian subcontinent and Africa only".
worldreader.org has this mission:
Our mission is to put a library of books into the hands of children and families in the developing world with e-reader technology.
(disclosure: A friend of mine from College is on the team)
coding is life
Buying toys...er, appliances...and batteries with their disposable income in the heart of the 3rd world. I mean, welfare is secondary to becoming an emerging consumer market. Right?
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
Indeed... these kids have probably seen a laptop or 2, but not a Kindle, which may explain the "OMG!" response he said he got..
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Here is the Great White Man, here to exploit the resources of the region while returning nothing to the community. In this particular case the resource is tigers, at least he's shooting them for pictures not pelts so that's a step forward of sorts. Ordinarily, he would never have stooped to socialize with "these people" but he was waiting for a ride (to get the hell out of there). He basks in the attention of these stupid natives - they're amazed by the text to speech functionality, what morons! He revels in the wonderful privilege not only to be White but also to be able to leave this squalor. Does anyone else find this racially offensive? How is this any different from the Victorian attitude that it was the White Man's Burden to civilize India?
He's also a sucker for "the narrative" which says that Whites were good, Bob Geldof was good, and raising money helped to alleviate the Ethiopian famine. It did no such thing. The journalist-heroes of the BBC exposed the fraud some time ago (Geldof's response? Attacking the credibility of the BBC. Yeah, you heard me - like the BBC has an agenda, it is objective reporting of facts without any regard for interpretation.)
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
At a famous ereader maker I prosed a stripped down ereader device. To only be sold in bulk quantities to fix public school libraries for elementary and middle school students in the US. (Have you seen the state of an elementary school's library? it's terrible) with the hope that we could also partner with agencies interested in distributing the device internationally. Specs, arm11, 32MB ram, 600x800 eInk or reflective LCD (didn't decide which, but we like that high resolution), USB "dock" for syncing (checking out books), no wifi for cost cutting reasons (less certification requirements, easier to manufacturer, smaller battery, one less part). Could be sold at a profit initially for about $80 we estimated, and half that in serious volume. Several people, including VPs were excited. But the next week I was called in and accused of "wasting time" and "going over my boss's head". It essentially resulted in my resignation.
Something like the Kindle actually sounds like a good idea for several reasons: Once an ebook is loaded, it's loaded, so you don't need to worry about syncing or network connectivity. You don't need a network or an Internet connection to use one. You don't need a power source other than some batteries or a hand-crank charger. etc.
In developed nations, we take for granted such simple things that we often want to impose complexities in areas where they really aren't needed. Getting the populous to learn to read, to read for both education and entertainment, and to learn to apply that knowledge to practical, real world applications. Maybe frmo a political perspective, Twitter might be useful, but how about learning the basics first?
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Why use a device (Kindle, iPad) that is optimized for consumption, when the most benefit comes from creating content. A computer is a far better educational tool, and eventually a better economic driver. While we picture the developing world as a bunch of mud huts, there is a significant population that live in urban settings, with internet access and electricity. They can use real computers to create web sites, download sophisticated open source software to run businesses, and take online courses in multiple subjects.
for foodstuffs at any rate:
http://www.heifer.org/
Putting in a printing plant is an interesting idea, but needs a _lot_ of infrastructure (where do you get paper and ink from? printing plates? glue?).
The problem is, any sort of competitive printing press would quickly saturate and over-whelm the local market --- where do they sell to after the local school has a full set of textbooks (less than a month's production effort).
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
This is really what OLPC was supposed to be. A $100 (or $200, whatever) ereader and laptop. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line people got more interested in trying to deploy untested educational software rather than make the ebook part work properly. It still doesn't.
A kindle like e-paper deivce could be recharged by a small $25 solar panel no bigger than a sheet of paper, better yet it would probably provide enough charge capacity to be shared between several readers.
When I first read the title of this article, I though it was asking if [software] developers would prefer to use e-readers instead of laptops. I thought... duh! I barely have enough screen real estate with two screens on my desktop, much less a laptop... and you want me to work on a 5 - 9 inch e-reader screen? Then I read a couple of comments and realized what it was really about.
E-readers instead of laptops in developing countries? Makes sense, since in general the laptop will have a lot of unused capability.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
I think most families would prefer clean drinking water before kindle power charging.
If you gave them the hundred dollars or whatever a kindle is worth I think a kindle might be well down the list from my very limited experience of rural communities in India. Clean water systems, vaccination against the worst childhood diseases, guaranteeing their children one decent meal a day for the next year, those kind of things. Maybe shoes, school uniforms, pencil and paper for their kids next, etc....
"A 10 watt solar panel is about the size of a large sheet of paper and costs around $30" - what would you do given 30 days wages? (because that's what 30 dollars represents to some families in India). Probably not buy a charger for an electronic device...
While readers are good for teaching people to read, laptops have the massive advantage that people can learn to create stuff. Doesn't matter whether it is code, blogs, videos, art, spreadsheets, science, whatever. Far better for users to have the opportunity to be 'creators' and not just 'consumers'. Even though the vast majority of sheeple in the West consume only (which is ok, not everyone can or wants to create) it is the creators who drive innovation and progress (even if it is only a little website for their hobby). IMHOm it is far better for the developing world to also have this opportunity via cheap laptops, than be stuck in a read-only world.
Though is there some way I can change the font of a PDF I got onto the device? You can download the PDF of "The Macintosh Way" from the author's web site, but it's very hard to read on the Kindle. You don't seem to be able to change the fonts in a PDF like you can with the regular books. And/or an easy "conversion" of the book to then send the result to the Kindle.
(BTW, this is a serious question, I'm not joking because of the iPad/Apple/Macintosh Way vs Kindle issue.)
um, bullshit. You cannot claim that a single e-reader is difficult to share with two people, then turn around and claim that two books can be shared with two people. Epic fail. You share one kindle the same way you share one book: either give it to them or you both read the same page at the same time.
How many books can be placed on a Kindle? That is, how many free works can be pre-loaded onto the device? Now every Kindle recipient has a huge library. Contrast that with getting multiple dead-tree copies of all of those works (which take up a lot more space and cost a lot more to ship). At some point, dead-tree books are the way to go. But there is a cross-over point where Kindles are better.
*Kindle = Kleenex = generic => insert your e-reader of choice.
Actually one thing I've always wondered is why they don't come with a solar panel built into the back of them
Though is there some way I can change the font of a PDF I got onto the device? You can download the PDF of "The Macintosh Way" from the author's web site, but it's very hard to read on the Kindle. You don't seem to be able to change the fonts in a PDF like you can with the regular books. And/or an easy "conversion" of the book to then send the result to the Kindle.
I haven't tried reading PDFs on the Kindle but I have heard that not all of them display very well. If they are made with the Kindle in mind then they are fine.
Again, this is going on what I have read about it rather than experiencing it myself.
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
I would be handing out Ectaco JetBook Lites and Solar AA battery chargers (with batteries) as fast as I could get them!
I wish American kids were that excited about reading.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
One e-reader: everyone reads the same page.
One book: everyone reads the same page.
Two books: Two people can read. Each one reading a single book. (More, if they read the same page.)
This, of course, can be extended to:
Three books: Three people can read. Each one reading a single book. (More, if they read the same page.)
Yes, books are heavy, and take up more space. They also don't use electricity and are inexpensive. If you want to have something electronic, just get a netbook. How many devices does someone in a developing country need to purchase?
Sure, e-readers can be preloaded, but who decides what is preloaded? How is new content put on the e-reader? What about copyrighted works?
Also, if people are really concerned with books made from "dead-trees", just pause to consider how much damage to the environment electronic devices do.
@Libertarian001: Epic misinterpretation = epic dumb-ass response!
So-called "dead-tree" may go away, but the existing ones will outlast digital media. If you are so keen at ending "dead-tree" media, why don't you point your haughty finger at junk mail and let people keep their books?
PDF is designed as a display format. Which means that it should display the same on every device. This is very good if you are sending your term paper to your professor electronically, but not so good if you are trying to read it on a phone. There are some devices which can adjust the font on a PDF, but since the PDF format was not designed with this in mind I very much doubt that an e-reader has the horsepower to accomplish it.
You could get probably 1500 classic used books if you bought them in bulk.
These wouldn't die when the power goes out.
They could be dropped, stepped on, even get wet and probably still be usable.
Then 1500 people could read them instead of...one.
I don't "get" the compulsion some people seem to feel that tech is the solution to everything. I'd guess chalkboards and writing slates would be a better investment to teach them basic reading skills.
-Styopa
They would have gone absolutely crazy about the iPad! I'm only kind of joking. After checking out my inlaw's Kindle, I'm unimpressed.
These are very different devices. I can effortlessly hold my Kindle in one hand for hours while reading, the screen is amazing to read for long periods, and battery last for weeks (weeks!). It's library+book in an amazing package, when you get over not being able to touch the screen. iPad is a cool couch/cafe surfing device, but something very different from the Kindle.
I agree with the comment above and then some. I think Slashdot should cool it when it comes to the third world. When one lacks access to electricity, it's superfluous to talk about electronic devices. And very few people can afford any kind of electronic device - this being very ironic because those societies are very unequal (they have very high ginni coefficients) so that the elites are very wealthy even by Western standards and can easily afford laptops, plasma TVs and gaming devices galore. The problems of the third world revolve around authoritarian, unaccountable, inept and corrupt government. No nifty piece of tech will change that, only revolutions where people demand democratic accountability will - Egypt and Tunisia style.
Instead of the fancy electronic gadgetry how about:
Food supply issues
Potable water
Sewage methods
Medical needs
When you get that taken care of then:
Electricity
STD needs
Year round housing
Basic education
Blinky light toys and internet access
are generally pretty far down the priority list IMHO.
When everyone is housed, fed, disease is under control, and
aren't worrying about how you are going to live for the next 24 hours
Then you can start worrying about internet access.
Volunteer for the Peace Corp, Doctors without borders, or similar
and you will get a better idea of whats important.
www.effectiveelectrons.com "chips that work" Analog, RF, Mixed Signal
Also, in general, an e-reader isn't as flexible as a netbook in what you can achieve. E-readers make lousy netbooks. Netbooks make decent e-readers.
Netbooks make shitty e-readers. It's very awkward to use them sideways, which is the only way a page is visible with decent resolution without scrolling. Netbooks have their place, they're great for versatility when one needs to travel light, but that's it. For an e-reader, the tablet form factor is the only one that makes sense.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
I reckon whether these devices have Internet access is more important than the actual specifics of the device.
Surely for most of these sorts of communities, either a laptop or an e-reader is going to be fantastically advanced technology. I don't really like the idea of giving them e-books or laptops unless they have access to the Internet because it just makes it to easy for authorities or other evil minded people to give them only access to a closed pool or walled garden of knowledge.
I tend to imagine a similar project in North Korea - give everyone e-book readers and they'll no doubt be pre-loaded with the propaganda of the state. Without Internet access for people to be able to read more on certain topics and discuss them and debate them with others, they'll just get a version of reality that is skewed depending on who is controlling their information.
As we've seen in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya (and no doubt more to come) Internet access is one thing that these sorts of authorities (where control is hugely important) hate and fear, precisely because it puts information in the hands of people that can then use it to make informed decisions about what is best for them.
I talk back on my laptop. I read subserviently on my Kindle. One kindle per subservient child.
Gently reply
hang on a second.
Text to speech has one big point over audio-books: No memory footprint..
let's think about this from a charity standpoint ok?
if you are a charity and your goal is to provide, say, kindles to the developing world what you want is get large quantities of product for minimal cost. sou you will probably be talking about a low memory device in the first place. now forgive me if I'm worng but going with audio-books would mean that a) you could cram less into the device in the first place (having to possibly sacrifice flexibility from a content perspective) b) you don't actually promote literature since what you create is well trained listeners.
as a concept it sure is very interesting, it's not the first time i have heard about the idea of using e-readers as teaching equipment. And if you think about it, the refresh rate might be a bit slow but by using devices with a built in keyboard e-reader applications could not only be tomorrow's casual reading all over the world school children's place to do homework as well.
just my 2 cents on this.
-- no sig today