Note that the article summary incorrectly identifies the venue of the speech as an IIT. The institute that Kalam inaugurated is an IIIT (note the 3 I-s?), or Indian Insititue of Information Technology; these teach people to program, as opposed to the IITs (Indian Institute of Technology) which, among other things, teach computer science. May I point out they have an/excellent/ Aerospace Engineering program? (alumnus pride)
Yeah. Percolation of information into the villages is good and all, but I live in India and fail to see why they didn't target their platform at a standard desktop PC. Without doubt, a second-hand desktop could be purchased for the same price in India. Don't see how illiterate farmers would be coaxed to squint at a palm-sized b&w screen with arcane symbols. Nor do I see how one simputer per village is going to make people literate. There are already initiatives for a Tamil and a Hindi linux distro - clearly, coupled with inexpensive desktops, these can take computer literacy a long way. I would still be skeptical about these delivering the three R's to the illiterate. At any rate, the internet still is not something that a villager has access to. Even at cities, internet usage (via dial-up) costs 80 cents an hour. In villages, typically $2 an hour. And a typical middle class family pulls in $400 every month. A poor man earns only $40 a month. In summary, I'd say: yes, the greatest handicap of the Indian peasant is lack of information. But the simputer is a remarkably bad solution.
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Note that the article summary incorrectly identifies the venue of the speech as an IIT. The institute that Kalam inaugurated is an IIIT (note the 3 I-s?), or Indian Insititue of Information Technology; these teach people to program, as opposed to the IITs (Indian Institute of Technology) which, among other things, teach computer science. May I point out they have an /excellent/ Aerospace Engineering program? (alumnus pride)
Yeah. Percolation of information into the villages is good and all, but I live in India and fail to see why they didn't target their platform at a standard desktop PC.
Without doubt, a second-hand desktop could be purchased for the same price in India. Don't see how illiterate farmers would be coaxed to squint at a palm-sized b&w screen with arcane symbols. Nor do I see how one simputer per village is going to make people literate.
There are already initiatives for a Tamil and a Hindi linux distro - clearly, coupled with inexpensive desktops, these can take computer literacy a long way. I would still be skeptical about these delivering the three R's to the illiterate.
At any rate, the internet still is not something that a villager has access to. Even at cities, internet usage (via dial-up) costs 80 cents an hour. In villages, typically $2 an hour. And a typical middle class family pulls in $400 every month. A poor man earns only $40 a month.
In summary, I'd say: yes, the greatest handicap of the Indian peasant is lack of information. But the simputer is a remarkably bad solution.