$7 USB Stick Aims To Bring Thousands of Poor People Online

dryriver sends this BBC report: "The USB flash drive is one of the most simple, everyday pieces of technology that many people take for granted. Now it's being eyed as a possible solution to bridging the digital divide, by two colourful entrepreneurs behind the start-up Keepod. Nissan Bahar and Franky Imbesi aim to combat the lack of access to computers by providing what amounts to an operating-system-on-a-stick. In six weeks, their idea managed to raise more than $40,000 (£23,750) on fundraising site Indiegogo, providing the cash to begin a campaign to offer low-cost computing to the two-thirds of the globe's population that currently has little or no access. The test bed for the project is the slums of Nairobi in Kenya. The typical income for the half a million people in the city's Mathare district is about $2 (£1.20) a day. Very few people here use a computer or have access to the net. But Mr Bahar and Mr Imbesi want to change that with their Keepod USB stick. It will allow old, discarded and potentially non-functional PCs to be revived, while allowing each user to have ownership of their own 'personal computer' experience — with their chosen desktop layout, programs and data — at a fraction of the cost of providing a unique laptop, tablet or other machine to each person.'"

Comments

How is Burying Africa Under PCs Going to Help?

[Irate Engineer]

Can someone explain to me what dumping piles and piles of computers into Africa is going to accomplish?

In Africa I see waves of ethnic turmoil coupled with basic infrastructure problems, all played by the governments to keep a few powerful folks in power.

Are we trying to turn Africa into our next call center and need to get the kids up to speed with computers? I don't think that is going to happen until something resembling stability (i.e. taking care of food, clothing and shelter for entire years without fear of a machete attack) takes hold.

Re:How is Burying Africa Under PCs Going to Help?

[BitZtream]

No, not really, because it will only end up in the hands of warlords and anyone caught trying to make themselves better will be 'punished', which may mean killed, or worse.

Re:How is Burying Africa Under PCs Going to Help?

[Nidi62]

something is better than nothing

And that something should be access to reliable electricity,clean water, and most importantly physical safety(seeing as how even teh 3rd richest state in Africa-Nigeria-can't even guarantee safety for its citizens as roughly 300 kidnapped girls can tell you) before it is access to a personal computer. Africa needs infrastructure, not internet.

Re:How is Burying Africa Under PCs Going to Help?

[retroworks]

That's because of the news cycle, or your news sources. "If it bleeds, it leads". Your emphasis on "machete attacks" shows you should read the Economist instead of whatever you're getting your news from. Here's an article with some simple graphs and pictures about what's going on in Africa internet today. http://o3bnetworks.wordpress.c...

Re:How is Burying Africa Under PCs Going to Help?

[Hognoxious]

A kick in the nads is something. What would you rather have, that or nothing?

Re:How is Burying Africa Under PCs Going to Help?

[JoeMerchant]

A lot of the demand for safety, clean water, healthcare, etc. comes from constant, believable exposure to the concept that it is a human right that people should expect. This is why communist countries wanted to control the media and prevent exposure to decadent western cultures. Getting people in Africa "online" and otherwise educated in how the rest of the world really functions, day in and day out, will go a long way to motivating the oppressed into doing something about their condition for themselves.

Re:How is Burying Africa Under PCs Going to Help?

[frovingslosh]

Don't you understand? They got $40,000 on Indiegogo and all they had to do was give an African village 5 old worthless broken computers and a few flash drives. Clearly this is a life lesson for the starving Africans. If they would just take something that has already been done many times before and claim it was new, and send their old trash to someone else, the chumps on Indiegogo might give them $40,000 too. That's over 54 years worth of African wages. If the Africans are too focused on how to get food, somewhat clean water and staying alive to follow this example, then its not my problem. They should learn from this and, now that they have flash drives and those 5 crappy computers, go on Indiegogo and post some scam of their own.

Re:How is Burying Africa Under PCs Going to Help?

[Elfich47]

Problems: No food, no water, no money, no electricity. Anything not nailed down is stolen, anybody who has a claw hammer steals everything else.
If you want to help these people, you get them something from the following list:
More of the straws that filter out the guinea worm. Google the guinea worm yourself, it is a horrid way to die.
Clean drinking water
Food
A permanent shelter to live in
And if you have any of those three things, expect to have to defend it with tooth and claw because someone with a gun will shoot you for it.

Re:How is Burying Africa Under PCs Going to Help?

[voss]

This is Nairobi, Kenya. Its a multiparty Democracy. Yes they are poor but Kenya is a developing nation not a failed state.

Re:How is Burying Africa Under PCs Going to Help?

[pslytely psycho]

"That's because of the news cycle, or your news sources. "If it bleeds, it leads"."

Such a good point. I admit, this was my view of Africa before I met a couple of real Africans. One from Liberia, another from Somalia.
They both paint very different pictures of the Dark Continent.

Fungbey, my friend from Liberia, paints a modern picture, tarnished only by the civil war that ended in (I think) 2003. The country is nearly indistinguishable from any western country, but much poorer. Education is very valued and easy to obtain and for many emigrating to the west they're education is the only thing they bring with them. Yes, they have a lot more problems and poverty than most of the west, but it is nowhere near what you see on the news, which focuses on the problematic interior, where warlords are still the problem .

Kannah, my friend from Somalia, paints a picture of abject poverty, corruption, and pretty much everything you see bad about Africa.
You almost never see Fungbeys Africa in the news. Except for the civil war, Liberia is just too normal and boring to be interesting.

For the worst of Africa, yeah, no electricity, internet, food shortages, etc, the PC is a no starter. But a lot of Africans live in modern Africa. Ignored by the mainstream news until something bad happens.

  And I personally think Africa will become the next China, just as China replaced S. Korea, that replaced Japan and so on for cheap labor.
I see it as a good thing. This cycle has left all of those countries better off than before.

But I understand why so many have the same incorrect view of Africa that I did. No one reports on Africa's good points, or Europe's, or America's. All any of us hear are the bad parts of other cultures. You have to search for anything beyond sensationalism.

Re:How is Burying Africa Under PCs Going to Help?

[Gavagai80]

A multiparty democracy whose president is wanted by the ICC for war crimes relating to the deadly ethnic riots he caused in the last election.

Re:How is Burying Africa Under PCs Going to Help?

[rrohbeck]

Bravo. I wish I had mod points. Running an OS off a USB stick is not exactly novel - it's been done for years. I can remember my first experiments with Knoppix and a persistent home directory, maybe 5 or 6 years ago.
The one thing that's novel is exploting this idea to make money.

Re:How is Burying Africa Under PCs Going to Help?

[Ol Olsoc]

If you want to help these people, you get them something from the following list:

Sure, why not?

Unfortunately, you appear to believe that you can only do one thing at a time? Some reason that you cannot do things concurrently? If so then you can help them live longer and give them your old computer. At the same time. It's amazing!

Imagine if you will.......

Some African goes to the internet - say Youtube.p> He or she sees a Youtube video about making clean drinking water

He or she sees a Youtube video about growing Food with implementable ideas

He or she sees a Youtube video about making a good shelter

That's just Youtube. They can get information via email orrelevant webpages. All manner of things. Information is a very powerful thing.

Re:How is Burying Africa Under PCs Going to Help?

[wvmarle]

And I personally think Africa will become the next China, just as China replaced S. Korea, that replaced Japan and so on for cheap labor. I see it as a good thing. This cycle has left all of those countries better off than before.

There is a major difference between most African countries and most Asian countries, and that is a strong, stable government. This as political stability is a requirement for businesses to thrive. In too many countries, larger companies need their own private army to protect their factories. You don't need that in China, or even Myanmar. Those countries are far more stable than most African countries. (note: in this argument I don't care about WHAT KIND OF government there is, just that it is STABLE).

Secondly, China alone has a far larger population than the whole of Africa. And even China is currently suffering from serious labour shortages, with factories not being able to take on more orders as they don't have the people to manufacture them.

I agree with you that Africa is a great candidate to become the next low-cost manufacturing hub, however first they'll have to get their politics in order. A stable government, that is firmly in power, and that rules the whole country, not just the big cities. Factories need space, they're not in the cities, they're out of the cities. Without proper safety there, and at least a half-decent protection of land ownership, it's a no-go.

Re:How is Burying Africa Under PCs Going to Help?

[AmiMoJo]

There is a major difference between most African countries and most Asian countries, and that is a strong, stable government.

What do you mean? Somalia is a libertarian paradise! In fact much of Africa benefits from minimal government interference and high levels of gun ownership.

Ssshhhhh

[ArchieBunker]

You're going to ruin the liberal feel good circle jerk. Yeah someones discarded PII-266 box will boot Linux and get Africa online. Now they just have to fix the other issues like drought, drug trade, poaching, blood diamonds, genocide....

Re:Ssshhhhh

[bondsbw]

To be fair, getting them online and sharing knowledge can be a catalyst for those kinds of changes.

Re:Ssshhhhh

[ArchieBunker]

Oh yeah that old Linux box really filters water or prints money. How the hell do you even power it when you have no electricity? Whatever you send there will be seized by whoever is running the country this month and sold for profit.

Re:Ssshhhhh

[OneAhead]

OK, I'll bite: what does "liberal" have to do with this? "This is something I don't like, and liberals are something I don't like, hence this must be something liberal?"

To clue you in, fixing issues like drought, drug trade, poaching, blood diamonds, genocide in Africa is more often seen on a liberal agenda than the conservative one, and if conservatives want to do something, it is usually something like:
(1) Some intervention that directly benefits the US (actually, nowadays it's more "benefits the oil or weapon industry that paid for our campaign")
(2) Let the magic of the free market do its thing
(3) ???
(4) oh never mind, we already had our profit at step (1) and now our term in office is over, suckers!

Re:Ssshhhhh

[Hognoxious]

If there was a "hopelessly naïve" mod would it be +1 or -1?

Re:Cloud vs stick

[93 Escort Wagon]

It's not clear to me how a bootable thumb drive is going to resurrect a non-functional computer. Neither is it clear what this will accomplish for all those people too poor to own one at all - although in the article it says these guys did provide five old laptops to a school where they were testing this.

OS on a stick is not novel

[Artifex]

We have other OS distributions that that live just fine on SD cards or sticks, already. If you want to bring computing to slums as a useful resource, the big problems are probably really:

1) actual hardware, shared or not, to run whatever open source OS you pick;
2) electricity to run the hardware and shelter for the hardware;
3) people to train those who have never used computers before, may have other literacy issues besides, and quite possibly speak dialects you will have difficulty getting localization for; and
4) affordable/free network access if these people want to use the internet.

I'll bet these are not the only issues, but if you don't address these, I suspect your money and time will be mostly wasted.

Re:OS on a stick is not novel

[JoeMerchant]

There's different ways of measuring the success or "waste percentage" of a program like this. Just putting two boots on the ground costs more than hundreds of these USB sticks, so, if you can air-drop a thousand of them and only 10 find actual use, you're still doing better, efficiency wise, than hand delivering them and successfully personally training 10 people how to use them.

If a village has a solar powered "computer center" with a satellite internet link and 3 ten year old PCs that these sticks can work in, all people within walking distance of that computer center have potential access to a miracle greater than the mythical Oracle at Delphi. Yes, people will have to learn a western language to access most information, yes it would be slicker if they had a satellite linked laptop with a urine powered battery that they could carry with them, but with $40K in funding, this project has the potential to positively impact a few thousand lives, figuring 10 people benefiting from every one that gains useful information from the internet.

Maybe it catches on as a fad and thousands upon thousands start to access computers and the internet this way, probably not, but for the same investment level as a project to put a drinking well into a couple of villages, this project can have a different positive impact on a larger number of people - who might learn how to dig their own wells, among other things.

Re:Cloud vs stick

[pushing-robot]

It's less vulnerable to keyloggers and other garbage you might find on a shared PC, and there are plenty of computers junked due to bad or malware-ridden hard drives that could quickly and cheaply be brought back to life with something like this.

On the other hand, there's no standard method for changing the boot device on PCs (it's typically a rather arcane procedure) and libraries and Internet cafes often won't let you boot from your own media for security reasons. I'm not sure how practical this would be for someone with no computer experience.

pointless?

[bloodhawk]

Perhaps it is just me, but I fail to see any benefit to this whatsoever. seems completely pointless, everything from windows to many distros of linux already can run on a USB stick and a USB stick doesn't solve the problem of internet access, a computer or more importantly the food and water they lack. I guess at least it gives them something to sell at the markets for a couple of bucks to buy something useful.

Re:pointless?

[Nyder]

Perhaps it is just me, but I fail to see any benefit to this whatsoever. seems completely pointless, everything from windows to many distros of linux already can run on a USB stick and a USB stick doesn't solve the problem of internet access, a computer or more importantly the food and water they lack. I guess at least it gives them something to sell at the markets for a couple of bucks to buy something useful.

This is the modern day Sally Struthers. Instead of parading little starving kids across the TV, we have "tech" solutions to make our selves better for how life is in Africa since we really do NOTHING to help have a better life.

Because we know having access to computers & internet are going to feed their starving children, just like it feeds ours.

This is how people think they are helping the poor countries by making shit they really have no use for, but it makes us feel better about them starving. Doesn't fix the starving mind you, but it makes us feel better. Not them, but US.

Re:pointless?

[Elfich47]

Then get people cell phones with SMS options. They are portable, easily charged and CHEAP.

any computer???

[Joe_Dragon]

Some older systems can't boot usb and other need bios updates to do it.

also what about drivers for all of there hardware?

Completely Pointless

[Elfich47]

This is a solution in need a problem. Until the people in impoverished countries have some other things first, a USB stick that can reboot dead computers is kind of insulting.

How about we provide (in this order):
1. Food, shelter, sleep, and sex.
2. Security, employment, health, morality.
3. Friendship and family
4. Self-Esteem
5. Self-actualization

Until all of items in group 1 and most of the items in group 2 are secured, self booting: internet USB sticks is like trying to teach dog to play banjo.
And this is assuming that the local infrastructure can support USB booted computers for internet access.

Mixed feelings

[CuteSteveJobs]

As a geek I love the idea, but to the dirt poor and especially in the third world $7 could go towards more pressing needs like sanitation, clean water and medicine. There are many problems the poor of the world face. We can fix more than one problem at a time, but lack of Internet access is no where close to the #1 position - unless those kidnapped Nigerian girls can adapt a USB stick into an improvised weapon. Problem when the only tool you know how to use is a hammer every problem looks like a nail, and geeks are geeks.

PS Saw a funny motivational of this pic lamenting the poor kid was being deprived of the joys of facebook and twitter: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

Dead hard drive or EOL Windows

[tepples]

I could think of two ways this could "revive" a computer. First, a computer with a no-longer-updated version of Windows that is incapable of running Windows 8.1 may be capable of running Xubuntu or Lubuntu or Puppy. Second, a computer with a dead internal hard drive may be capable of running an operating system from USB storage. True, 24 MB per second (Hi-Speed USB effective data rate after various overheads) isn't very fast for sustained transfers compared to something more SATAnic, but flash still has the seek time advantage.

Re:Dead hard drive or EOL Windows

[marcello_dl]

Maybe the answer is even simpler. A personal usb stick lets you use shared computers, without internet, without having to learn which apps reside on each pc. Linux distros already do that, so I'd customize one with some applications that are useful for sneakernet and backups.

Unfortunately we don't have the equivalent of read only floppies, which coupled with a write protection on the BIOS and on peripherals' firmware would make the PC very difficult to pwn.
Because even write protected sd cards can be written to, as you easily discover running some card readers under linux.

Re:Cloud vs stick

[Arker]

"It's not clear to me how a bootable thumb drive is going to resurrect a non-functional computer."

No? What causes a computer to be written off as 'non-functional?'

The first thing that comes to mind is a failed hard drive. Plug in a system on a stick and it's functional again.

Very often there is actually *nothing* physically wrong with the hard drive, it's just a corrupted/infected filesystem, but the typical computer user doesnt know the difference and junks it anyway. And system on a stick fixes that too.

"Neither is it clear what this will accomplish for all those people too poor to own one at all"

It will allow them either a) pick up a 'dead' computer either free or a a very low (scrap metal value) price and use it or b) borrow/rent computer time but still be able to boot their own system on the temporary hardware, maintaining some semblance at least of their privacy.

They only raised shit money

[aliquis]

Seriously.

LIVE USB stick.

What a great new idea!

Free OS! What a great new idea.

Promises of being able to use an old PC. What a great new idea!

Fact is running OS from USB stick is slow as fuck and if you already have a PC why not install it on the HDD in said PC? Now they said personal and fine. Are there a requirement for that? Maybe they could store their files on the USB stick instead? both is ok.

How do they get actual Internet connection?

What about electricity?

If they have limited electricity then something more modern would likely be better.

Also how do they take care of old electronic goods in Africa? Environmental safe recycling? ..

If we really want to help Africa...

[caseih]

If we in the west really want to help Africa, there are a few things we can do right here that will make a difference. Eliminate agricultural subsidies, stop buying African diamonds, and stop using cheap African-sourced conflict minerals. Right now food prices are so artificially low that African farmers can't afford to grow food for their own countries. It's quite literally cheaper to buy food from abroad than to grow it locally. And the US is happy to give Africa food. In exchange for favors. Food quite literally has become a weapon and it's certainly part of what keeps Africa in a cycle of poverty and abuse. Meanwhile China has been buying up farm land in China to raise food that will be exported from Africa without really benefiting Africans themselves, except for a few that directly benefit.

Conflict minerals, including diamonds, also concentrate a tremendous amount of African wealth in the hands of just a very few who are quite happy to use this wealth to buy whole governments. Most times they *are* the governments. But hey, as long as we can get cheap goods made in China with cheap African resources, life is good, right?

But I guess my idea to not buy diamonds and kill the farm bill has about as much merit as handing out usb sticks after all. I doubt western policies that hurt Africa are going to change any time soon. Good luck to these folk. I'm personally quite skeptical.

Re:If we really want to help Africa...

[TrollstonButterbeans]

Look, you probably don't realize this but everything you said is horseshit. You just don't know why.

The countries that have risen from out of the abyss in the last 30 years did it through jobs relating to export (Look at East Asia).

Exporting things to the rest of the world.

And let me tell you, food is certainly not what Africa will be exporting --- the rest of the world has heavy machinery that reduces the costs of food, Africa will never be able to compete against heavily capitalized nations in cost of food prices in production.

The permanently screwed up countries sell simple natural resources --- oil, diamonds, whatever --- and to fix Africa they need to be exporting something that is a product of at least semi-skilled labor.

Even child shoe assembly factories would be a start, as grotesque as that sounds.

Re:What security reasons?

[QQBoss]

It isn't in the interest of an internet cafe, which charges for time logged in, to allow you to bypass their log-in environment (typically some form of cafe management software).

Additionally, using any USB stick that successfully bypassed the management software in China would get the user arrested.

The security reasons gp mentioned aren't related to the user, they are related to 'the man'.