One Laptop per Child
September 29, 2005 6:41 PM Subscribe

A $100 Laptop for Every Kid. With a plan to distribute up to 15 million rugged, innovative, and very low cost laptop computers by the end of 2007, MIT Media Labs may be calling Steve Ballmer's year old bluff, in ways commercial vendors haven't. [more inside]
posted by paulsc (139 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

You won't be able to buy one directly, but at an initial design cost goal of $100 per unit, millions of school kids around the globe will soon have full featured, WiFi enabled, portable machines which can be powered by an included hand crank when no electrical power is available. With a 500Mhz processor, 1 GB of memory, and a Linux based OS, such machines, in large numbers, may have a profound impact on much more than education.

Because it doesn't appear to be a cheap toy, MIT Media Labs director Nicholas Negroponte believes they will be highly desirable, and develop in each child a pride of ownership that will make them protective of the devices. And at the same time, he feels that commercial licenses to allow commercial organizations to manufacture and sell the devices at a low profit could still inhibit "grey markets" for the machines, by removing most of the profit.
posted by paulsc at 6:44 PM on September 29, 2005

Cheap = disposable. Gosh, it's breathtaking to think of all the pollution once those laptops get tossed. I'm practically certain that MIT's $100 unit cost includes no environmental engineering or forethought whatsoever.

China and India's poor will be overjoyed to melt down these fifteen million toys for scrap metals, breathing in all that solder flux and polluting their drinking water.
posted by Rothko at 6:51 PM on September 29, 2005

$100 for that snazzy case right? how much for the innards?
posted by godawful at 6:59 PM on September 29, 2005

MIT Media Labs may be calling Steve Ballmer's year old bluff

when i look at the "photos" of this laptop, i see a ray trace and a bunch of schematicized graphic illustrations, leading me to feel like it's MIT who is bluffing.
posted by 3.2.3 at 7:06 PM on September 29, 2005

An American lecturing Indians or Chinese about waste?

Gimme a fucking break.
posted by docgonzo at 7:08 PM on September 29, 2005

Cheap = disposable

Average annual income in Bangladesh = $380

China and India's poor will be overjoyed to melt down these fifteen million toys for scrap metals, breathing in all that solder flux and polluting their drinking water.

Yep. Sure.
posted by Jimbob at 7:09 PM on September 29, 2005

An American lecturing Indians or Chinese about waste?

Gimme a fucking break.
posted by docgonzo at 10:08 PM EST on September 29 [!]

Maybe you're misunderstanding what I said. You know that there are whole wastelands in China and India where industrialized countries, including the US, China and India, dump their toxic computer waste, right?
posted by Rothko at 7:14 PM on September 29, 2005 [1 favorite]

3.2.3, read the article. Those images weren't meant to fool anybody. It states quite clearly, in many different ways, that the machine does not exist yet.
posted by George_Spiggott at 7:14 PM on September 29, 2005

there are whole wastelands in China and India where industrialized countries, including the US, China and India, dump their toxic computer waste

Yeah, but your comment made it sound like Chinese and Indians enjoy pulling apart perfectly good laptops for the sheer hell of it.

India is full of yards where they dismantle ships too. That doesn't mean poor Indian fishermen deliberately run their boats ashore to sell the scrap iron.
posted by Jimbob at 7:16 PM on September 29, 2005

People won't melt them down because that would be a stupid thing to do. Even at 100 dollars they're worth a lot more than the scrap metal, they might sell the working laptop to others but they won't melt them down, shit that's crazy.
posted by I Foody at 10:08 PM EST on September 29 [!]

These things are made cheaply, which in engineering terms means they are made to be disposable. If these things ever get made I'll give them about a three- or four-year lifespan, maybe five, before they are either dead or obsolete. I doubt very much that Negroponte considered what to do with the computer once it is past its usable lifespan.
posted by Rothko at 7:16 PM on September 29, 2005

Some reading material:

• Don't toss that old computer (Wired)
• Poison PCs (Salon)
• Costly computer casualties (Infoworld)
• Technology's Toxic Trash Is Sent to Poor Nations (NY Times)

These laptops seem like an obscenely bad idea.
posted by Rothko at 7:21 PM on September 29, 2005

If these things ever get made I'll give them about a three- or four-year lifespan, maybe five, before they are either dead or obsolete. I doubt very much that Negroponte considered what to do with the computer once it is past its usable lifespan.
Um, How is that different from any other laptop?
posted by Popular Ethics at 7:22 PM on September 29, 2005

So what's your solution then, Alex? Sounds like you feel the poor shouldn't be allowed to have fancy electronics because there's just too many of them, and that if all the poor people were throwing away computers too we'd be screwed.
posted by Jimbob at 7:23 PM on September 29, 2005

Very good point, Rothko. Computers need to designed and manufactured with recycling and remanufacturing as a forethought.

Millions of metric tons of caustic and carcinogenic chemicals mixed with dangerous heavy metals make for a very toxic brew. This is the dirty little secret of the "Information Age". The decentralization of computing power, by placing it in hundreds of millions of homes leaves quite al ot of waste for when the next upgrade cycle occurs.

There's a part of me that thinks that this is a good development... but since becoming a mainframer, I personally feel that computing resources should become more centralized... controlled. Manufacturing could also be scaled back.... give the people dumb terminals and cheap broadband.

Otherwise, our reliance on technology may just drown us in very deadly filth.
posted by PROD_TPSL at 7:25 PM on September 29, 2005

what a negative buncha people in here! what i like about these is that these things are designed to be hand-cranked.
and what is 'past' a usable lifespan for us, is not likely the same thing for that part of the world. so long as it actually functions, it most likely will be used, unlike in our spoiled dispoable society. not everyone everywhere upgrades everything all the time.
posted by TrinityB5 at 7:26 PM on September 29, 2005

Oh, mercy mercy me,
oh things aren't what they used to be,
all these laptops with Wi-Fi
animals and plants that live nearby will die
posted by zek at 7:27 PM on September 29, 2005

Um, How is that different from any other laptop?
posted by Popular Ethics at 10:22 PM EST on September 29 [!]

The difference is that we in the West seem to want to hand these out like candy:

By 2007, they hope to be shipping 150 million units to the world annually. That's three times the number of notebooks that the entire industry ships today.

Again: how much of that $100 per unit cost is going to environmental engineering, reusability, recycling, processing — I mean anything that will give us a solution to dispose of or reuse these things properly?
posted by Rothko at 7:28 PM on September 29, 2005

Yeah, Rothko, and since desperately poor communities have terrible health problems due to lack of proper sewers or sanitation facilities, we shouldn't give them food, either: they'll only turn it into feces and compound the problem.
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:28 PM EST on September 29 [!]

Amazing non sequitor with no relation to my comments whatsoever, but I'll respond anyway: agrarian cultures handle human waste the same way they have for centuries.
posted by Rothko at 7:30 PM on September 29, 2005

Rothko, I don't think I disagree with you as much as I thought I did, the inclusion of the phrases "overjoyed" and "for scrap metals" in this context seemed like you were suggesting that they could think of no better use for the technology than destroying it for a few pennies. That seemed crazy and kind of condescending.
posted by I Foody at 7:39 PM on September 29, 2005

I am curious about this statement frm the FAQ: "Today's laptops have become obese. Two-thirds of their software is used to manage the other third, which mostly does the same functions nine different ways."

Is that a fair statement? If so, why? I don't know shit about this stuff.
posted by LarryC at 7:42 PM on September 29, 2005

It's not a non sequitur at all. You're saying that since they currently can't dispose of them properly they shouldn't have them. You have a funny, antiquated illusion about the world's poor: hundreds of millions of them live in ghettos, villages, shantytowns and other dense informal settlements without sanitation facilities and are subject to dreadful illness rates because of it.

You're conflating two different problems; you're saying that because they have a certain problem they can't have a certain benefit. Yes, the problem of toxic leaching from improperly disposed of electronics is terrible. But so is the problem of shit, and we need to solve them both.
posted by George_Spiggott at 7:42 PM on September 29, 2005

Frankly, between trusting that the MIT Media Lab knows what it's doing, and trusting that Rothko knows better, my money's on MIT. That's not to say that Rothko is an unintelligent person, but the MIT Media Lab is a grouping of brain power that's pretty formidable.
posted by clevershark at 7:43 PM on September 29, 2005

LarryC: "Today's laptops have become obese. Two-thirds of their software is used to manage the other third

This is actually a fairly smart statement. How big is, say, a typical Windows XP install? Well over a 1 gigabyte, I'd say, but I'm not completely sure. How much space does a web browser take up? Opera or Firefox could probably squeeze into 10 megabytes. How much for a word processor? You could get a fully functional, simple one in a similar amount of space.

So much space wasted by the operating system and all it's bits and pieces, when, for something like this, you can get by with something much simpler and more efficient. Hell, Puppy Linux fits all you need and more into about 60 megabytes.
posted by Jimbob at 7:46 PM on September 29, 2005

This sounds like a terrific idea to me. If you could get 150 million poor kids online a year, I believe it would change the world. Not sure how, but it's a wild idea. Given that we're all using disposable computers right here, I find it hypocritcal to deny it them to anybody else. Yes, the waste problem ought to be solved. There are a lot of problems that ought to get solved--perhaps by a brilliant Egyptian kid with a $100 laptop.
posted by muckster at 7:49 PM on September 29, 2005

My sister bought a refurbished desk top for $50 for my
11 yr old nephew. She bought it through a special program
through the school district. After paying another $150 for
modem, speakers, cords, power strip, etc. the thing sits in a corner collecting dust because the cost of connectivity is
ridiculous and she hasn't any computer knowledge.

I looked it over and I think it's a piece of junk. It doesn't have enough power to sustain much of the software out today, but kids need computers now to complete school work, turn in homework etc.

With stores now selling laptops for around $500 you know
that manufacturers could create a usable, durable computer for around $100 to $200.

With the price of computers going down, it makes sense sometimes to just buy a new one, refurbishing or fixing
laptops is pricey business. My last computer was only a
year old but in order to repair it a part would have to be
scavenged from another computer. With technology advancing as it has old computers simply don't make sense.

Shouldn't our children have access to affordable computers? Passing down dad's old computer is not an option for many families, dad doesn't own one.
posted by bat at 7:52 PM on September 29, 2005

I think the "waste" problem with these may be controllable. For a start, the project seems based around the idea that laptops go to schools rather than direct to individuals. This provides central points for broken / out of date ones to be taken back and refurbished. I don't think this is about wandering around Mumbai handing out laptops to people. I think it's about providing very inexpensive options for schools in the third world. Schools that are very used to getting by on very little and making things last.
posted by Jimbob at 7:53 PM on September 29, 2005

Step one: One hundred and fifty million poor kids online a year

Step two:

Step three: world peace
posted by longsleeves at 7:55 PM on September 29, 2005

You're conflating two different problems; you're saying that because they have a certain problem they can't have a certain benefit. Yes, the problem of toxic leaching from improperly disposed of electronics is terrible. But so is the problem of shit, and we need to solve them both.
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:42 PM EST on September 29 [!]

You brought up the human shit-handing problem, not me.

Anyway, I'm not "conflating" at all, but saying that, from a handwaving cost-benefit analysis, given the projected number of laptops that would be out there, between - say - 2007 and 2010 (when the first batch of laptops would likely start to fail, probably much sooner given a first-gen product, its usage environment, etc. etc.) we'll need to figure out how to handle the exponential presence of probably around 300-500 million dead or dying laptops (and their nasty components).

That's an engineering problem I don't believe can be solved with a $100 per unit cost — at least, nothing I've read so far from MIT's Media Lab has remotely touched upon this issue.

Knowing engineers personally (my dad being one of them), if it's not in the spec it's someone else's problem. I don't think I'm allowed as much optimism as clevershark.
posted by Rothko at 7:56 PM on September 29, 2005

RE Computer Waste: I think that the amount of waste produced by a several million tiny laptops that will last years is negligible compared with the normal waste of our everyday lives - throwing away packaging, food waste, unrecycled stuff, etc. And these computers will be disposed of in the same way all their other potentially dangerous trash is disposed of. Anyway, I think it's a fair trade, a fair amount of trash in exchange for a generation of savvy, educated children in developing countries.

I think it's a great idea, and I'd like one myself - I'm sure it's a barebones thing with a word processor, illustration tools, calculator software, that kind of thing. And once people get an SDK there will be all sorts of extra stuff, and I guarantee if this happens you'll be able to get one on ebay.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 7:56 PM on September 29, 2005

Let's say Rothko has a point, given that Negroponte is talking about ramping up for distribution of 150 million of these things a year, within a few years, at perhaps even lower price points. So let's say that 10 years down the road, the world has 1+ billion of these things, and a couple hundred million of 'em are dead. That's a pretty big pile of e-waste, but if that's the big negative in this, the utilitarian question becomes, is there a greater good that will result from a 1+ billion kids having better educations, sufficient to outweigh a couple thousand tons of e-waste?

I'm betting the answer is "Sure!" So is Negroponte, I think.

Actually, supposing this project really does deliver anything near what its aims are, I think it is really hard to predict what the outcomes are. In the tech sector, it's obviously a huge shift that the current industry leaders (MS, Intel, Dell, Oracle, et al) may not be nimble enough to navigate. But it's also fodder for potentially tremendous social and political change, beyond just the educational sphere.

I've lived long enough to be really skeptical of "this changes everything!" about any thing. But I'm thinking that putting millions of pretty capable boxes out in areas of the world which have so far missed the tech wave could have stunning results. I'm no social scientist, but I think dropping a couple hundred million each of these things into Africa, China, India, and the Mideast, through grass roots distribution schemes initially tied to education has got to level the playing field in ways that are not so easily forecasted, and give the poor folks Rothko is worried about some other options. Because if little Johnnie brings home a computer, I bet Dad and Mom can get some use of it, too.

Give poor farmers access to weather info and market data, and they'll still be poor if they can't get seed, fertilizer and transport for what crops they grow. But give them means to organize and communicate regionally, and they may find ways to cooperate to solve intractable problems. They may even see for themselves, with very little demonstration, that such things are not only possible, but are being done elsewhere.

On preview: what muckster said.
posted by paulsc at 7:59 PM on September 29, 2005

It was an analogy, Rothko. Beneficial thing A leads to waste product B. If they can't dispose of B, then they must not be allowed to have A.

Ergo, no food for poor people until they get some damn toilets.
posted by George_Spiggott at 8:04 PM on September 29, 2005

Hey, if the world goes to hell in a handbasket and our entire global infrastructure collapses, we might wish we had efficient, hand-crank operated computers, too...

Considering something like that "Disposable" isn't a function of how much it costs, it's a function of how YOU look at the device. As a nation, America tosses its appliances at a far faster rate than the rest of the world. "Planned obsolescence" is something our market perfected.

If what you REALLY mean is that a $100 computer is likely to be cheaply made and break quickly, making it trash, then you're talking about an engineering question rather than a fundamental philosophical flaw in their plan. Do you know something about the designs, and the durability of the materials they're using?
posted by verb at 8:07 PM on September 29, 2005

Rothko writes "I don't think I'm allowed as much optimism as clevershark."

Why is it that you can garner so much negativity about a project to put laptops in the hands of the world's poor, yet aren't out crusading against the commercial computer industry that puts computers into the hands of first-worlders like you and me?
posted by clevershark at 8:07 PM on September 29, 2005

I'd be worried about the effect on the MMORPG economy.
posted by I Foody at 8:10 PM on September 29, 2005

It was an analogy, Rothko. Beneficial thing A leads to waste product B. If they can't dispose of B, then they must not be allowed to have A.

A bad analogy. Food != laptops. I'd love for poor people to get laptops, but I'd love more that we have some important angles thought out.

Anyway, all of this reminds me of a story told by an African interior minister who remarked on some Westerners coming in from the World Bank, energetically throwing a lot of money and engineers at the country to put together a large, ornate building with escalators, elevators and lighting.

Ten years later, for lack of funding towards a stable electricity supply for the country, this wonderful building is damn near unusable most of the time. I think the symbolism of this real-world story says something (to me, at least) about Negroponte's well-meaning, but short-sighted view of the benefits his technology would provide.
posted by Rothko at 8:14 PM on September 29, 2005

The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, full-color, full-screen laptop that will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data.

I predict a massive increase in upper-arm strength in developing nations. Of course, with larger hard drives, we could probably boost it even more!

China and India's poor will be overjoyed to melt down these fifteen million toys for scrap metals

I'm not sure that even fifteen million of these things will make a significant difference, since about 45 million computers were sold worldwide last year alone. In addition, I suspect that they will be more durable in some respects - for one thing, they don't have disks. But don't worry too much, I suspect this whole thing will fail before it starts. Viable network access seems like a weak point, despite Negroponte's claims.
posted by me & my monkey at 8:15 PM on September 29, 2005

Why is it that you can garner so much negativity about a project to put laptops in the hands of the world's poor, yet aren't out crusading against the commercial computer industry that puts computers into the hands of first-worlders like you and me?
posted by clevershark at 11:07 PM EST on September 29 [!]

I work in tech and organize computer recycling drives for my department. Any other personal complaints, feel free to email me privately. Thanks.
posted by Rothko at 8:16 PM on September 29, 2005

are they only going to give them to poor kids in "developing" nations?

what about the poor kids in the US?
posted by gminks at 8:17 PM on September 29, 2005

Viable network access seems like a weak point, despite Negroponte's claims.

Wouldn't peer-to-peer networking be possible? The WiFi hardware is there, it's just a matter of getting the laptops talking to each other...
posted by verb at 8:20 PM on September 29, 2005

Nuclear power plants currently generate a waste that, according to modern standards, cannot yet be properly disposed of. China, India, the US, among others, have all of the most brilliant nuclear scientists in the world. Are we to deprive people of clean, non-polluting energy, a basic human need, simply because our technological standards have not yet caught up with the clean-up effort?

In today's world, laptops are like energy. They deliver essential needs to people on an everyday basis. Few in this world can get by anymore without a computer. If these laptops are used in classrooms and publicly accessible areas, like libraries, cafes, parks, whatever...they have accomplished their purpose of proliferating information and therefore deserve to be distributed.

It is short-sighted and small minded to think simply of the waste generated by the laptops, when you don't even try to comprehend the benefits this type of program would create.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 8:21 PM on September 29, 2005

What worries me is the possibility/probability that these laptops could be easily stolen since many of the kids who receive them wouldn't necessarily live in very secure places.

If the school gives every kid a laptop, you can bet the curriculum will assume that every kids has a laptop. What's the plan for the kid whose laptop is stolen?
posted by duck at 8:24 PM on September 29, 2005

Let me add something: the fundamental benefit of laptops is the dissemination of information, something 1st worlders take for granted far too often. If these laptops can slow the corruption in Indian politics, loosen the socialist grip that the Chinese have upon their people, educate men and women regarding condom usage, etc...these laptops have more than accomplished their mission and outweighed any pollution caused by their disposal.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 8:25 PM on September 29, 2005

I read a book titled "Earthweb" some years back, author name of Marc Stiegler. It was a sort of popcorn-muncher of a book, quick-flowing little sci-fi yarn, but with one truly great idea in it. It was part of the near-future world history that the first world got its shit together and embarked on a massive project to get pretty much everyone access--they mass-produced rugged tablet-pc-ish devices, solar-and-otherwise rechargeable, by the billions, with infrastructure to get them all online, wherever they were (some sort of satellite/weather-balloon-fleet supported wireless or somesuch). They didn't enter into negotiations with regimes hostile to the idea, they air-dropped the little gizmos all over.

It's a nifty idea. This story made it leap right back to memory, as a more down-to-earth first baby steps toward such a dream.
posted by Drastic at 8:33 PM on September 29, 2005

what about the poor kids in the US?
posted by gminks at 11:17 PM EST on September 29 [!]

From David Berlind's article for ZDNet:

"Negroponte was also involved in the State of Maine's Learning Technology Initiative where laptops will be given to every 7th and 8th grade student as well as all teachers. Massachusetts recently adopted a similar program that Negroponte was instrumental in as well. In his keynote speech to attendees (one that he admitted included his first PowerPoint presentation, ever), Negroponte said that someone tried to place an order with him during the breakfast before the event. He advised them to first come see the prototype at the WSIS on November 17. "

And from PC Magazine's PCMag.com article:

"According to Negroponte, One Laptop per Child's promise is being embraced stateside as well, as Massachusetts is currently in negotiations to introduce some of the machines in its public school systems."
posted by paulsc at 8:37 PM on September 29, 2005

Wouldn't peer-to-peer networking be possible? The WiFi hardware is there, it's just a matter of getting the laptops talking to each other...

That's not where the interesting stuff is. What good is peer-to-peer networking, if none of your peers have anything worthwhile?
posted by me & my monkey at 8:38 PM on September 29, 2005

If the school gives every kid a laptop, you can bet the curriculum will assume that every kids has a laptop. What's the plan for the kid whose laptop is stolen?
posted by duck at 11:24 PM EST on September 29 [!]

Give him another laptop?

I get your point, and so does Negroponte, I think. Certianly, there's an element of faith in this program, that low cunning and base human nature might subvert. But I think they are operating on the theory that when you have a big enough fire hose, very shortly, nobody in range is thirsty...
posted by paulsc at 8:43 PM on September 29, 2005

Rothko writes "I work in tech and organize computer recycling drives for my department."

Good for you, but to get back to the actual relevant aspect of this, it's still an industry that's produced several times the projected 100 million PCs the MML is intending to put into kids' hands, and frankly the vast majority of the computers produced right now have a vastly greater number of parts than this project's seems geared to have.

If you're planning on having a low-cost, one-spec machine built in vast numbers you're basically going to opt for a design which is as efficient as possible, with the CPU and possibly the RAM soldered down directly on the mainboard, so you're dealing with very few parts arranged in a very efficient way, most likely in a way that minimizes the required area of the mainboard itself. In this way you're also minimizing, incidentally or not, the amount of materials required to manufacture the PC's internals. Whether or not the environment is a prime concern, the sort of efficiency you need to implement in the design of something that would be manufactured on that planned scale would result in a reduction of the materials used anyway, so in all likelihood those laptops will have a considerably smaller environmental footprint than the ones every single one of us on MeFi uses.

And it'll certainly be very small indeed when compared to the hundreds of millions (if not outright billions) of conventional, general-purpose PCs that have been made to date, most of which are in fact rotting in landfills.
posted by clevershark at 8:58 PM on September 29, 2005

If these laptops can slow the corruption in Indian politics, loosen the socialist grip that the Chinese have upon their people, educate men and women regarding condom usage, etc...these laptops have more than accomplished their mission and outweighed any pollution caused by their disposal.

Hmm. Yes. But...

(FTA)
"On the next night, after the parents had been reassured that the notebooks could not be broken (at least not easily) and that the children wouldn't be held responsible even if something did break, the parents loved them. Not because of what the computer was capable of, but because the computers were the brightest light sources in the Cambodian villagers' one-room houses."

...it's going to be a while...
posted by voltairemodern at 9:01 PM on September 29, 2005

My mom paid $64 for her PC, and it's faster then the one I'm using now...
posted by delmoi at 9:05 PM on September 29, 2005

Rothko = idiot.
posted by delmoi at 9:07 PM on September 29, 2005

Good for you, but to get back to the actual relevant aspect of this...
posted by clevershark at 11:58 PM EST on September 29 [!]

Good for me? It certainly answered your question.
posted by Rothko at 9:08 PM on September 29, 2005

Admittedly, my first thought was "Wouldn't potable water be even more helpful?" But I suppose MIT can't focus on EVERY problem.
posted by verb at 9:11 PM on September 29, 2005

LarryC: "Today's laptops have become obese. Two-thirds of their software is used to manage the other third

I'd say it's more like 95%. Or 99% if you're talking about source code. The benefit is that it makes programs easier (and cheaper) to develop, because the programmer needs to do less work.

But, you could take a pentium-60 laptop with windows 3.1 and it would seem redonkulously fast. The software industry is very strange. I think it's mostly due to programers lazyness and attraction to shiny new things.
posted by delmoi at 9:11 PM on September 29, 2005

Rothko writes "Good for me? It certainly answered your question."

You know what? I really can't be bothered anymore. Congrats. You won an argument on the internet! Your prize includes inclusion in my exclusive blacklist where you'll be free to hang out with such luminaries as ParisParamus, dios, dhoyt and Witty.
posted by clevershark at 9:12 PM on September 29, 2005

That's not where the interesting stuff is. What good is peer-to-peer networking, if none of your peers have anything worthwhile?
posted by me & my monkey at 11:38 PM EST on September 29 [!]

That's the $64,000 question, in the $100 computer game, isn't it? Couple of thoughts:

1) If you were one of the two or three brightest kids in a school where you got one of these things, but didn't have good net access, yet heard about the wider world and had in your hands, finally, the very instrument that could put you in touch with with the most interesting stuff you could dream of, and more bright people than you could ever hope to really know, how much more determined would you be to get somewhere better, as soon as you possibly could? And maybe just as important, suppose that, because of your promise as an exceptional student, you did make it "out," would that mean you forgot your family and friends back home? I imagine that inspiring ambition in the brightest kids, and having them pull others along, is an engine of change this program will stimulate tremendously.

Huge network effects, if you ask me. and mostly not in the electronic networks...

2) Fairly cheap, long range WiMax technology may mean that village level broadband deployment across wide regions will arrive just about the time that millions of new users want it. What a fortuitous coincidence!
posted by paulsc at 9:12 PM on September 29, 2005

You won an argument on the internet! Your prize includes inclusion in my exclusive blacklist where you'll be free to hang out with such luminaries as ParisParamus, dios, dhoyt and Witty.
posted by clevershark at 12:12 AM EST on September 30 [!]

Enjoy your snide, condescending paradise!
posted by Rothko at 9:14 PM on September 29, 2005

That's not where the interesting stuff is. What good is peer-to-peer networking, if none of your peers have anything worthwhile?

Okay, I'll bite.

Are you saying that networking is useless if kids can't use napster? Or that locally-developed information resources are not interesting? I'm sure you're not implying that ignorant third-worlders are incapable of generating ideas and sharing them without help from People Like Us, or perhaps Wikipedia, but it does sound like it from that comment.

What if useful information develops locally, informally, via ad-hoc networks? Back in the days of FidoNet, things weren't instantaneous, but information disseminated.

And anyhow... giving people internet access is a chicken-egg problem. Having a working, network-capable computer is almost certainly the most important step in the 'getting a village wired' equation.
posted by verb at 9:20 PM on September 29, 2005

While I think the pollution/reclamation issue is a bit of a red herring I have to agree with those who are pessimistic about this. Giving people stuff doesn't tend to work very well if their societies are corrupt and dysfunctional. Ask anyone who's ever put in a clean well in some destitute village and come back six months later to find that the gangs have taken possession of it and are extorting money -- and the poor still have to hump water three miles from a bacteria-laden stream. Giving stuff to the poor doesn't work half as well as attacking the causes of poverty, and while this sort of leans in that direction, its so long term, indirect and fraught with ways to fail between now and the eventual supposed benefit that I'd be amazed if it worked very well, anywhere.
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:20 PM on September 29, 2005

Are you saying that networking is useless if kids can't use napster? Or that locally-developed information resources are not interesting? I'm sure you're not implying that ignorant third-worlders are incapable of generating ideas and sharing them without help from People Like Us, or perhaps Wikipedia, but it does sound like it from that comment.

Do these laptops have much (any) non-volatile storage to do anything like P2P on a significant scale?
posted by Rothko at 9:23 PM on September 29, 2005

Lets see. 500 million laptops at, oh, 4 pounds a peice. That's a million tons of stuff to dispose. Over ten years, that's a hundred thousand tons of extra electronics to dispose of per year. In comparison a single person in an industrialized nation creates one ton of waste per year. In a few years India and china, along with the US and Europe today will be outputting billions of tons per year. Meaning these laptops will account for one hundredth of one percent of the global waste problem. Thus I stand by my asertion that rothko = idiot. At least in this respect.
posted by delmoi at 9:23 PM on September 29, 2005

Great rationalization. Radioactive waste accounts for a miniscule fraction of a fraction of the global waste problem by simple weight, so how we have to handle radioactive waste doesn't matter. I guess I'll have to stand by my assertion that "delmoi = idiot".
posted by Rothko at 9:26 PM on September 29, 2005

Do these laptops have much (any) non-volatile storage to do anything like P2P on a significant scale?

If you're sharing instructions on how to get better crop yields, or information about a corrupt politician's dealings, sure. If you're sharing ripped DVDs, no.
posted by verb at 9:27 PM on September 29, 2005

If you're sharing instructions on how to get better crop yields, or information about a corrupt politician's dealings, sure. If you're sharing ripped DVDs, no.
posted by verb at 12:27 AM EST on September 30 [!]

This is an issue as far as their utility. I see 1 GB of volatile RAM but nothing else. Are there specifications posted?
posted by Rothko at 9:29 PM on September 29, 2005

(If there is no non-volatile storage and access to document data is managed through a centralized service, then corrupt governments could easily control the content on and shared between these devices.)
posted by Rothko at 9:31 PM on September 29, 2005

(Looks like they might be able to use USB flash keys?)
posted by Rothko at 9:32 PM on September 29, 2005

Obsolescence is a non-issue as the device is for reading and pictures, not streaming video porn and high power video games, nor does it require software bloatgrades. Why doesn't it need such things? Simple, it has no competition from them, as, by definition, its target users cannot afford computers.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:46 PM on September 29, 2005

I can't find any references in the links above, but when I read about this in the newspaper this morning, I understood the "1gb of memory" to actually mean "1gb of storage".
posted by Jimbob at 9:52 PM on September 29, 2005

From the article:

What about connectivity? Aren't telecommunications services expensive in the developing world?
When these machines pop out of the box, they will make a mesh network of their own, peer-to-peer. This is something initially developed at MIT and the Media Lab. We are also exploring ways to connect them to the backbone of the Internet at very low cost.

What can a $1000 laptop do that the $100 version can't?
Not much. The plan is for the $100 Laptop to do almost everything. What it will not do is store a massive amount of data.

I'm assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that "it doesn't story massive amounts of data" doesn't mean "it has no storage space." The peer-to-peer network discussed is what I was talking about, not grabbing Torrents of Battlestar Galactica.

But geeze, a little hostility towards rothko? He did raise a good point, even if I think it's ultimately misguided.
posted by verb at 9:54 PM on September 29, 2005

Do these laptops have much (any) non-volatile storage to do anything like P2P on a significant scale?
posted by Rothko at 12:23 AM EST on September 30 [!]

Just my opinion, but P2P doesn't have to scale very much to be "significant," once the "peers" identify one another:

Lerner & Loewe
Rogers & Hammerstein
Abbott & Costello
The Three Stooges
Watson & Crick
Lennon & McCartney
Ben & Jerry

posted by paulsc at 9:54 PM on September 29, 2005

Check the hand crank link Rothko/Jimbob. The gig is flash memory, for storage. They don't specify how much RAM.
posted by queen zixi at 9:57 PM on September 29, 2005

This part caught my eye especially and got me excited about this project. It makes me think these devices would be useful in the developed world as well.

When these machines pop out of the box, they will make a mesh network of their own, peer-to-peer. This is something initially developed at MIT and the Media Lab. We are also exploring ways to connect them to the backbone of the Internet at very low cost.

I also love the idea of being able to generate and use your own power. In the west, couldn't you harness your walking, sports, workout, etc?
posted by cell divide at 10:23 PM on September 29, 2005

Are you saying that networking is useless if kids can't use napster? Or that locally-developed information resources are not interesting?

No, and no. I'm saying that the value of the network is derived from the number of nodes on that network, to a large degree. I don't think I'm the first to arrive at that formulation.

It's worth pointing out that the phrase "peer-to-peer networking" can mean a couple of different things. While stuff like Napster and BitTorrent are peer-to-peer programs, they rely on the existence of a large network to which everyone's attached. Peer-to-peer networking in the context of this article is a bit different - it's simply connecting one computer to another. So now, those two computers are connected in a vacuum, essentially.

To put it in another context, the utility of networking would be pretty limited for me if I could only network with, say, the people in my office building. They're smart people, but I just wouldn't be that interested in the information resources they develop.

I'm sure you're not implying that ignorant third-worlders are incapable of generating ideas and sharing them without help from People Like Us, or perhaps Wikipedia, but it does sound like it from that comment.

At first, I was going to respond to this by saying, "oh no, of course not!" But then I thought about it a little, and yes, I guess I am. After all, these laptops are exactly that - "help from People Like Us." I would hesitate to use the word "ignorant" because of its negative connotations, but much of the undeveloped world is exactly that, through no fault of its own.
posted by me & my monkey at 10:27 PM on September 29, 2005

Talk about not seeing the man for the straw. Y'all were too patient by half.

I don't think this will "change everything" in that the computer revolution -- once it reaches Amazonia or the Congo Basin -- already bears that potential. This is just going to scootch things up a bit, and point it in a socially responsible direction.

I'm not thinking crop yields here, or P2P DVD piracy -- both of those will happen, they're net intrinsic parts of the technology. What I'm thinking in change a life terms is AIDS information, global government transparency, Yanomame hip-hop. We'll also get the Sarawak 419 scam and the Madagascar money-order fraud -- we have to know that. But we'll have a whole generation of kids making the jump from subsistence farming to knowledge worker. H1B, offshoring, and whatnot, yes, but someday soon(er) there'll be a 37signals building online applications for the Peruvian mestizo population. That's going to be a tremendously gifted world.
posted by dhartung at 10:29 PM on September 29, 2005

Oh geez, nice to see Three Stooges in company with Watson & Crick and the Beatles. Good point, though.

Rothko, I think you've brought up a perfectly valid and very insightful point. Unfortunately, you're hammering it to death. Disposing of the units is something to be concerned about, but it shouldn't be so much of a concern to completely invalidate the project. If the project is unsuccessful (say, due to lack of communications infrastructure), then these machines won't become that widespread and the pollution they cause will be a drop in the bucket compared to the number of PCs thrown away by wealthy nations. If the project is successful, then the economic benefit will far outweigh the damage. For one thing, better informed individuals will dispose of their units much more carefully.

If someone can manufacture and sell these things for a profit, I'd love to buy one. Full price.
posted by Loudmax at 10:30 PM on September 29, 2005

I have problems with laptops too, but it sounds like the planned designs are addressing these concerns. They have a plan to eliminate the mercury in the monitor, and (I read this hours ago and might be forgetting details) the nastyness of the battery. It is not so bad after that really. At least compared to any other manufactured thing down to a plastic bucket.

Some friends were discussing a similar idea of a flash memory based computer the other day. They made a strong argument that that sort of memory cannot stand up to the constant rewriting inherent to an operating system, which makes me wonder what the plan is to get around that sort of thing.

What the world really needs is a Gibson Sandbender machine with replacable guts. I stick with my tower because I can upgrade it for a good long time. if I could buy a laptop today, and be confident that I could keep upgrading it for the next 15 years, I would pay a premium for that as fast as I could manage.
posted by thirteen at 10:33 PM on September 29, 2005

Finally. Porn for all.
posted by Bonzai at 10:37 PM on September 29, 2005

that sort of memory cannot stand up to the constant rewriting inherent to an operating system

Depends on what you mean by "inherent." Computers do more reading than writing by an order of magnitude (maybe two). Modern operating systems do all sorts of caching and such to optimize performance, but they certainly don't have to do those sorts of things. One nice thing about using flash for storage -- you won't ever have to defrag!
posted by kindall at 10:41 PM on September 29, 2005

No, and no. I'm saying that the value of the network is derived from the number of nodes on that network, to a large degree. I don't think I'm the first to arrive at that formulation.

No, and I do think that's an excellent point. But I don't think that all of those nodes have to be simultaneously connected for the network to have value.

I'm just tossing out concepts, but imagine a scenerio like this: pockets of people share information, transparently. When one of them leaves the pocket, she takes with her shared content from the group that is considered 'most valuable' and most desirable to disseminate. When this person comes in contact with another group (via sitting down and taking a breather and cranking up the laptop, or what not), high-value information is exchanged transparently.

Think of it as viral transmission of valuable information. It keeps storage requirements down, and it uses a distribution method not unlike the old FidoNet network to relay messages.

It's not as fast as The Internet Proper, but it's definitely a step up. And it also provides a readymade network that an internet access point can 'bring online.'

I'm no expert, and I'm not saying this is what WILL happen, just saying that 'useful' and 'works like our infrastructure' don't have to mean the same thing -- especially when you're integrating into an existing third world culture and lifestyle.
posted by verb at 10:41 PM on September 29, 2005

One nice thing about using flash for storage -- you won't ever have to defrag!
posted by kindall at 1:41 AM EST on September 30 [!]

Flash memory does give each "hermetically sealed" laptop a definite, finite lifespan.
posted by Rothko at 10:47 PM on September 29, 2005

100 and 50 million members of the third world, participating in the internet. That sounds like a fucking awesome idea. 150 million new voices. Now all we need is for google to finish its new translation software.
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 10:59 PM on September 29, 2005

I'm just tossing out concepts, but imagine a scenerio like this: pockets of people share information, transparently. When one of them leaves the pocket, she takes with her shared content from the group that is considered 'most valuable' and most desirable to disseminate. When this person comes in contact with another group (via sitting down and taking a breather and cranking up the laptop, or what not), high-value information is exchanged transparently.

That's a nice future scenario, but we haven't figured out how to make that happen for ourselves.

I'm no expert, and I'm not saying this is what WILL happen, just saying that 'useful' and 'works like our infrastructure' don't have to mean the same thing -- especially when you're integrating into an existing third world culture and lifestyle.

If this happens, we're not just integrating into an existing culture and lifestyle, we're attempting to change the parts of that culture and lifestyle that we think are inferior to our own. Any judgment of the results will be based on what we think is useful. For example, we could give a bunch of laptops to a third-world country, and they could decide that the way to maximize the utility of these laptops would be to sell them, or to build a giant statue out of them, or whatever. I don't think we'd be clapping each other on the back over that.
posted by me & my monkey at 11:12 PM on September 29, 2005

This is a fucking moronic idea, and it is only a bunch of well-educated, well meaning privileged idiots at MIT and here on the web that would think it's a possible goer.

How about teh fact that there's no fucking basic literacy for a start? let alone computer tech manuals. Why don't we try and buy them some books first? And some trained teachers? And school buildings? And electricity?

Or how about some potable water and basic nutrition and healthcare? Or vaguely non-corrupt governments, so that the first roving milita that comes along doesn't appropriate them for their own uses?

Man, I realise we all sit in front of computers all day, so therefore think that it's an integral part of the world, but trust me it's got nothing to do with the solution for world peace and third world development.
posted by wilful at 11:13 PM on September 29, 2005

Cheap = disposable. Gosh, it's breathtaking to think of all the pollution once those laptops get tossed.

Food? Fuck it, I'll just have to poop.
posted by undule at 11:26 PM on September 29, 2005

Y'know, we used to do some pretty impressive things using Photoshop 3.0 on a Quadra 610 with a 25MHz 68040, 256MB RAM and a 2GB HD, back in the day, about equivalent to a 486SX PC... and DOOM used to run pretty well on a Pentium 90.

It boggles me that systems today really only do incrementally more, qualitatively, although they are much faster and hard drives can store much more.

A 500MHz machine with a gig of RAM - or even 256MB - is a pretty capable machine, and if there are 100 million of them out there, software co's will develop really efficient apps to run in that space and give results comparable to the best of today's software - or they'll go back and recompile the older versions to run on this system, and make some more money.

Imagine Adobe going back to Photoshop 3.0 - which shipped on two floppies, IIRC, and would run in 14MB RAM - recompiling it up to run on this box, and selling it for $5 a copy.

Half a billion is nothing to sneeze at, even for Adobe.

A Unix version of Pshop 3 already exists, so this would be very, very cheap for them. And they could distribute it online exclusively - remember, it would only be about a 2.8 MB download!

Plenty of "previous versions" of highly capable software that could be worked this way, including AutoCAD, LightWave, ElectricImage, and 3DS Max, to say nothing of Office-type stuff and relational databases...
posted by zoogleplex at 11:28 PM on September 29, 2005

How about teh fact that there's no fucking basic literacy for a start?

Indeed.

How about the fact that you're an ill-formed poobah in a world of need, jackass? Clean up your own yard, don't complain about the meaninglessness and futility of someone else's plan to do away with yards.
posted by undule at 11:30 PM on September 29, 2005

I guess wilful is under the impression that computers are completely useless as tools for teaching reading, writing, math and science.
posted by Orb at 2:57 AM on September 30, 2005

Perhaps the complaints here are out of a veiled sense of fear...

Literacy can be learned, what you need is resources. I am not that optimistic though, in the end the powers that be don't want peasants to be so empowered - just look at the attempts to ban municipal wifi in the USA.

Regarding reliability: The electronics on the motherboard are very robust, in the right package you would have to be intentionally malicious to make them stop working - burning the unit for more than an hour would do permanent damage... The batteries, flash memory, and hand crank generator would be the limiting factors. I'm not sure about the display, but my guess is that apart from scratches making it less beautiful it would retain utility nearly as well as the other electronics.

My understanding (and to some extent my experience) is that NiMH batteries have a lifetime of about 1000 cycles and flash memory is routinely specified with a minimum lifetime of 100,000 erases. However, even designing the system to erase the flash a minimal number of times you may still have an average of 10-100 erases in one charge cycle of the computer. So, I think a reasonable guess at the expected life of a unit is 1000 full charge cycles, which might be as short as 3 years. You would have to be a very lucky child to get to use one of these for an entire charge cycle every single day, but I agree that it is not enough.

It wouldn't require much to have the volatile components in replaceable modules though, and it wouldn't harm reliability much either. Two pins for the power supply module, perhaps four pins for the memory module... The interfaces don't have to be delicate like IDC line sockets or DB connectors. The mounting points themselves could provide the connections, and they could be friction fit in such a way that you would require a press to attach or detach the modules...
posted by Chuckles at 4:26 AM on September 30, 2005

150 million new voices

STFU, n00bs!

150 million new voices... if they all join Metafilter @ 5 bucks a head, that's $750,000,000 straight into Matt's pocket! Of course, it might be hard for someone in the developing world to scrounge up an extra 5 bucks U.S....
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 4:38 AM on September 30, 2005

That's a nice future scenario, but we haven't figured out how to make that happen for ourselves.

Haven't we? I thought we called them 'home pages' or 'de.lici.us' or 'metafilter.' Information people think is valuable gets shared, and recognized, and disseminated widely. They require that everyone be connected permanently to the same network, though -- I was tossing out ideas of how it might function in a scenerio where the 'network' consists of lots of occasionally-overlapping mini-networks.

No, it's not a sure thing. But as others have said, either is the idea that people won't use them as weapons. They've got some heft, after all. My response was directed specifically to someone who (I thought) was implying that always-on connections were a requirement for useful networking.
posted by verb at 5:45 AM on September 30, 2005

Haven't we? I thought we called them 'home pages' or 'de.lici.us' or 'metafilter.' Information people think is valuable gets shared, and recognized, and disseminated widely. They require that everyone be connected permanently to the same network, though -- I was tossing out ideas of how it might function in a scenerio where the 'network' consists of lots of occasionally-overlapping mini-networks.

Information sharing as exemplified by the web is a far cry from the automatic data synchronization you mentioned earlier.

My response was directed specifically to someone who (I thought) was implying that always-on connections were a requirement for useful networking.

That was probably me, although I'm less concerned with the constancy of the connection than what you're actually connected to.
posted by me & my monkey at 5:51 AM on September 30, 2005

How quickly does flash memory degrade? Anyone got any better specs? I expect this uses only real memory for things like web cashing, and has the OS burnned onto roms.
posted by jeffburdges at 6:03 AM on September 30, 2005

Information sharing as exemplified by the web is a far cry from the automatic data synchronization you mentioned earlier.

Well, yes, that's very true. That was the point, though. Ad-hoc networks as a distribution model are doable, we just haven't done them yet -- because we have a trivially small number of ad-hoc networks.

I'm not suggesting that the end-user software for this exists yet, just that different models for disseminating information can be used when occasionally-overlapping ad-hoc networks of people are the norm.
posted by verb at 6:21 AM on September 30, 2005

I suspect that an intelligent combination of RAM and flash could offer pretty good reliability over a four or five year device life. Shadowing the high I/O sections of a stripped down OS into a small ramdisk seems pretty cost effective to me, and writing out state info and maintaining buffers is less of a problem in an environment of lightweight apps and small documents, than it is in high reliability disk based application systems.

Also, if deployments of these devices are backed with locally deployed small, ruggedized, and maybe even solar powered WiFi/router/server nodes, a lot of the functionality for key elements of the strategy can be offloaded to server side technologies. It wouldn't be unreasonable from either a cost or technical standpoint to augment village level deployments with a similarly designed "service hub" consisting of a blade server, a couple of WiFi access points, and a WiMax uplink, in a package which had pretty minimal power requirements, low setup and maintenance issues, and remote administration. I'm sure such an obvious functionality pump strategy will be forthcoming pretty quickly, if this base project succeeds. Even now, with less unit scale on the "service hub" idea to work with, I'd think it possible to do a "service hub" for $1000 (maybe sans the solar power option at that price point) that could support a few hundred simultaneous users.

Put together a village level deployment kit that consisted of a service hub, a couple hundred $100 laptops, some localized setup instructions, and you'd have educational collaboration in a crate... Or at least the infrastructure for such.
posted by paulsc at 6:42 AM on September 30, 2005

I can't believe some of the stuff in this thread...

Like clevershark, I have a feeling perhaps the MIT people are not a bunch of clueless idiots and may even know what they're doing.

To me it sounds like a brilliant idea.
posted by funambulist at 6:56 AM on September 30, 2005

jeffburdges, I can't find any white papers on the life of a flash device, but I can point you to lots of data sheets that make the claim 'minimum 100,000 erase cycles'. Hopefully someone else has some more details...
posted by Chuckles at 6:57 AM on September 30, 2005

I'm just tossing out concepts, but imagine a scenerio like this: pockets of people share information, transparently. When one of them leaves the pocket, she takes with her shared content from the group that is considered 'most valuable' and most desirable to disseminate. When this person comes in contact with another group (via sitting down and taking a breather and cranking up the laptop, or what not), high-value information is exchanged transparently.

Isn't this what actually happens all the time in the non-computer networked world? In fact I'd say it accurately describes most human group interactions (where the information being shared is not generally accessible) - be it as trivial as me hearing a funny story from a colleague at work and telling another group of friends later, or as important as (in the developing world context) a health worker travelling around rural villages giving up to date information to the people there. The same thing holds for education too where people go to school/training and (you'd hope) pick up and retain the most high-value information then return to their families and can share it there.

In each case I guess the laptop means that the information sharing happens quicker and that you can improve the odds that the information disseminated/retained will be the most high-value. But I'd say that ad-hoc human networks are the norm, not the exception, so will translate into the computer networked world easily..
posted by patricio at 7:00 AM on September 30, 2005

Thanks, Patricio. That's what I was trying to get at.
posted by verb at 7:17 AM on September 30, 2005

Ok, I'm not going to touch Alex's environment flamewar with a ten foot pole, it's already been done to death. That aside, I think that the biggest thing that will influence the success or failure of this thing is teaching. If you give a kid in a Cambodian village a laptop, he probably won't know what to do with it, unless you teach him. You need to teach him, and his parents, how to use a laptop effectively for real-world tasks, and you need to equip the laptop with helpful software and resources, like a Farmer's Alamanac, that will make the product useful not just in the schoolroom, but in the real world.
posted by unreason at 8:08 AM on September 30, 2005

Or how about some potable water and basic nutrition and healthcare? Or vaguely non-corrupt governments, so that the first roving milita that comes along doesn't appropriate them for their own uses?

While healthcare is nice, its not necessary for a developing economy at all. Almost everything that humans have accomplished, save for the last hundred years or so was done without any kind of sensible healthcare at all.

The idea that you have to fix the worse problems before you do anything else at all is stupid. Educate people, and they can fix their own problems. Help them build a god economy and they can fix their own problems. History shows that for a population (rather then an individual) adequate healthcare is a luxury.
posted by delmoi at 8:35 AM on September 30, 2005

Well I agree that disposal is clearly a legitimate concern and should be considered, but I believe that disposal of anything and everything will soon be a concern for everyone. I do believe however we need to give these poor people just a little credit. I have been to some third world situations and trust me they waste nothing that the don't absolutely have to and are fairly innovative about it. In mexico you see ancient cars on the road that are maintained by innovative resuse of old cars and a healthy bit of southern engineering. these laptops will be fixed with the scraps of others for a long as humanly possible. Most of these places will have like one pc from 1992 that is email access for everyone in the area, they keep the old shit running and use it to the maximum of it potential. This could also really be a boon for the industry as I can only begin to imagine the implications of 500,000 indian kids working on open source apps for these guys, it could be a real boon. Somebody in each village or whatever will soon become an expert at keeping these things alive for as long as possible even if it is just to use it as a light source. Ah the future always accompanied by much keeping and screaming. At least this is spreading a "good" technology to the world and in a non profit way, unlike say landmines which all the children seem to have access to. I highly doubt that MIT is out to screw the world over with waste. I think you guys just fear being pwned by someone in a shanty, but soon enough Tiger will be playing at your club. I for one, welcome our new poor kid overlords.
posted by los pijamas del gato at 8:42 AM on September 30, 2005

".... If you give a kid in a Cambodian village a laptop, he probably won't know what to do with it, unless you teach him. ..."
posted by unreason at 11:08 AM EST on September 30 [!]

Precisely.

Which is why, in my mind, both the scale being discussed by Negroponte, and the linkage with distribution through non-profit educational channels are key elements of whether this project will work. Scale implies both universality and importance, and both are vital to getting subsistence cultures to buy in to the notion with participation and time. If everybody in your village is suddenly in contact with the world of technology in an approachable way, it is easier to make the jump together. No point in encouraging your child to dream, if there are pressing economic needs, and little hope of improvement in anyone's life that you can see as a result.

But if every child in the village is getting a better education pretty quickly as a result of something like this, you as a parent are going to want your child to have the same benefit, I think. Even if you don't think you personally can use it, it will be easier for those that are uncertian to give it a chance.

And I think the project is focusing pretty clearly on providing tools that are robust, and simple. In my own experience with putting a Linux based box and WiFi network in my technophobic sister's home, for her and her kids to have Web access, I re-learned that one of the biggest hinderances to delivering the benefits of computers to average people, is their own fear that they'll somehow "break" the thing, and be thought even more stupid than they personally feel they are. But with a locked down, simplified "appliance" approach, a lot of this fear goes away pretty quickly, and curiousity and convenience take over as drivers.

That's not to say that an initiative like this won't face real problems in many cultures, for a whole host of reasons. Anything that competes with the local culture's existing expectations for child development is bound to run head on into problems in many cultures. In a lot of traditional societies, alternatives like this are going to be seen as direct competitors for the limited time and attention of children, and as threats to traditional teachings for roles, religion, and tribal customs.

But, if we have the ability to try this, in a way that is reasonably respectful of opportunities for local control and content development, we of the so called "first world" should try, I think. Because if we don't come to understandings in classrooms, we will, pretty surely, come to continued misunderstandings, terrorism and fear.
posted by paulsc at 8:48 AM on September 30, 2005

If someone can manufacture and sell these things for a profit, I'd love to buy one. Full price.

Me too. In fact, I'd pay well over the odds for one if, say, $100 of the $500 I paid went towards funding the One Laptop Per Child programme.

How about teh fact that there's no fucking basic literacy for a start?

I hope that 'teh' was deliberate. The Hole In The Wall computer project in India found that semi-literate children with no experience with computers were able to learn to use them incredibly quickly, and were even picking up basic English from surfing the web. (The Radio 4 report on this, which I can't find a link to, was gobsmacking - little kids saying 'Hello, I've been learning English on the computer' within weeks of seeing a computer for the first time.)

Also, with regard to folk wondering if the money might be better spent on potable water, etc., education is arguably as important as apparently more practical projects, especially when it comes to educating girls and women.
posted by jack_mo at 9:05 AM on September 30, 2005

If you give a kid in a Cambodian village a laptop, he probably won't know what to do with it, unless you teach him.

Call me optimistic, but I would imagine those who started this initiative probably thought about that too. I mean, I doubt the idea is "let's air drop these computers into villages and let them figure it out"...
No one is born with computer skills.

In a lot of traditional societies, alternatives like this are going to be seen as direct competitors for the limited time and attention of children, and as threats to traditional teachings for roles, religion, and tribal customs.

How would anyone know that? examples of outright rejection of technology and/or education? regardless of the scale and actual specifics of the initiative, it is not going to do something totally unprecedented.

And it's not all tribal societies just because kids can't afford a laptop.
posted by funambulist at 9:55 AM on September 30, 2005

I like the technology, but the assertion that the distribution and management should be non-profit couldn't be more wrong.

The profit motive is the only thing that will permit efficient distribution and sustained support -- anyone who's been to the Third World should realize that the only sophisticated things which function well there are things which have a profit-motivated owner keeping a very close eye on it. Morever, cell phones give us an elegant example of how fast a technology can spread, even among quite poor people, when it is market-driven and minimally regulated.
posted by MattD at 9:58 AM on September 30, 2005

Step one: One hundred and fifty million poor kids online a year

Step two:

Step three: world peace

I love this joke. LOOOOOVE it. Some people hate it. But not me.

As for these guys at MIT ( and the "world-wide internet for everybody" movement) I think this is an obvious example of good intentions but with little practice research time spent on the ground.

People have already mention the infrastructure problem. And other people get all pissed about that. But it's valid.

These places don't have electricity or ways to service technical problems. People have no idea how to use them or more importanly why?

Educating them is real hurdle here. They don't get basic literacy now for all sorts of reasons - how is this going to solve that? It's not. The same hurdles exist for computer literacy. Cultural problems. Geographic problems. Economic problems. Kids can't go to school when they HAVE to work.

So. Why? Is the goal to give these starving impoverished kids eventual shots at becoming programmers or something? Great. So every couple years a new generation of cheap Hi-tech labor comes on the market and drives the previous group out of work.

Not a bad idea per se. I say do it slowly. In targeted areas. See how it works first.
posted by tkchrist at 10:18 AM on September 30, 2005

The MIT Media Lab is well known for pie-in-the-sky crap. They're really not as impressive as some people here seem to think they are. They survive by using the MIT name to generate publicity, but rarely follow through with anything interesting. I can't think of a single technology developed there that has made any sort of impact other than a splurt of hype and then nothing.
posted by snoktruix at 10:42 AM on September 30, 2005

"... How would anyone know that? examples of outright rejection of technology and/or education? ..."
posted by funambulist at 12:55 PM EST on September 30 [!]

I didn't mean to imply that only tribal societies or poor cultures have elements of society which don't embrace technology readily. But it's not hard to find examples of parents and cultures, which, sometimes for what seem locally valid reasons, don't always place a premium on education for their children, particularly if they feel that what their children are learning is drawing them away from their culture. Even in the U.S., the growing home school movement raises new questions of public policy for those who choose for their children not to attend public schools.

So what I was trying to say was that I just think technology which is simple, robust, and ubiquitous enough to become a feature of a lot of homes pretty quickly, is more likely to be effective in accomplishing the goals of this project. That's one of Negroponte's points too - that the transportable nature of these laptops means that parents can look them over, and see how their kids are using them in home settings, which is potentially far less threatening.
posted by paulsc at 10:43 AM on September 30, 2005

unreason & paulsc, please read the content of jack_mo's 'hole in the wall' link or my 'litarcy can be learned' link.

It turns out the teaching is much less important than most people think. You could make an argument that a scarce community resource like a hole-in-the-wall computer will create more self learning opportunity than a more individual oriented and less valued resource (if only because it is less scarce, lets not argue the semantics of 'valued' please).

Damn I miss the big tag...

Hole in the wall computing - Hole in the wall computing - Hole in the wall computing

(resists urge to use blink...)
posted by Chuckles at 10:54 AM on September 30, 2005

Argh, I hate myself for using that stupid voice - 'resists urge to use blink' - so irratating!
posted by Chuckles at 10:57 AM on September 30, 2005

So every couple years a new generation of cheap Hi-tech labor comes on the market and drives the previous group out of work.

Not a bad idea per se. I say do it slowly.

Yes, very slowly. Very very slowly. So that no more damn Chinese and Indians take away your and your children's jobs for the next forty years, presumably!

Hmm, now I see where all this "skepticism" comes from... ;)
posted by funambulist at 10:58 AM on September 30, 2005

If you give a kid in a Cambodian village a laptop, he probably won't know what to do with it, unless you teach him.

See Chuckles' and jack_mo's links.

Brilliant idea. Hope it works.
posted by mrgrimm at 11:09 AM on September 30, 2005

paulsc: but Turkey, Syria and China are hardly "traditional cultures" with "tribal customs" or "third world" for that matter. Sure you can have all sorts of backwards parents vs. education issues in any country, even the richest ones, exactly, like in the US. They are never an objection to attempts at promoting education in those countries, so they shouldn't be when it comes to attempts to provide more and cheaper access to education and technology in less developed nations.

Otherwise it's like putting the cart before the horse (sort of like with the "producing waste" objection).

Also, children can often be more free from excessive parental control in poorer, more deprived areas than in a middle class environment where parents can have enough free time to spend a lot of it obsessing over what the kids do and what they read and what they watch and how will it corrupt their young minds. That kind of thing is a luxury. Not to mention home schooling... it's for people rich enough to spend their time teaching the kids themselves. You don't have that option if you don't have a lot of money and have to raise several kids at a time.
posted by funambulist at 11:12 AM on September 30, 2005

The hand crank thing intrigues me, and coincidentally, I just came across this set of instructions for hand-crank-powering on iPod. [via Largehearted Boy]
posted by aaronetc at 11:24 AM on September 30, 2005

I can't think of a single technology developed there that has made any sort of impact other than a splurt of hype and then nothing.

Have you tried ginkgo biloba?
posted by kindall at 11:43 AM on September 30, 2005

"... unreason & paulsc, please read the content of jack_mo's 'hole in the wall' link or my 'litarcy can be learned' link. ..."
posted by Chuckles at 1:54 PM EST on September 30 [!]

Point taken, and I did.

I don't have an argument with the Hole-in-the-Wall approach, as far as it goes, and in fact, it parallels my own limited experience with introducing the desktop metaphor to kids. But a few things make me think that it is not enough to depend solely on the natural curiousity of kids to make a better world work.

The first is noted by Mitra himself:

"But we also found that they would tend to plateau out. They would surf the Web -- Disney.com is very popular with them because they like games. And they would use [Microsoft] Paint. It's very, very popular with all of them.

Because these are deprived children who do not have easy access to paper and paint. Every child likes to paint, so they would do it with that program. However, that's all they could do. So I intervened, and I played an MP3 [digital-music file] for them. They were astonished to hear music come out of the computer for the first time. They said, "Oh, does it work like a TV or radio?" I said, in keeping with my approach, "Well, I know how to get there but I don't know how it works." Then I [left]."

While it's true that groups of kids can use an object oriented interface pretty naturally (and one would hope that good interfaces would be this "natural"), there seems to be a point where at least some direction and intervention in the form of additional information and guidance is needed. Maybe it could be programmed into the Hole-in-the-Wall itself, and not require teachers. I don't know. It probably deserves some investigation.

The second thing I'd be concerned about for a purely Hole-in-the-Wall (HITW) based approach is that it works only for those kids with the curiousity and opportunity. Neither article goes into much detail about kids who didn't succeed with the HITW approach, perhaps because they were shy, learning disabled, handicapped, etc. The group that succeeded in teaching themselves what they learned may have been only a small percentage of the total population, and while what they achieved seems pretty impressive, and certianly in my mind justifies more resources being put into such programs, I'm not as sanguine as Mitra about it being a universal model for tech or for general education.

A third concern I have about a pure HITW approach is simply the Wikipedia problem. Plainly put, there's a lot of junk on the Internet, and it takes, still I think, some formal education in critical thinking skills, scholarship, and logic to help people sort out the garbage from the good. I think it is asking a lot of kids to bootstrap themselves into this without guidance and direction, or to be able make the bridge to such skills learned off the computer, to the computer world, without some skilled help. Even as an adult learner in college myself, I found many classmates who were pretty non-judgemental when citing Internet sources, and more than once, I'd find their contributions to a group project based on some dubious Web site, that happened to look pretty professional.

Fourth point I'd make is purely personal. I don't know about you, but I remember distinctly getting the first book that was mine, as I do my own first computer. There was something powerfully enabling about having something I didn't have to share, and which pulled me to those things. I guess I'd like to have as many people have that feeling as possible, and that's one major benefit, if you consider it such, of Negroponte's vision that resonates with me.

Finally, I think it may turn out that some hybrids of the HTIW and the One Laptop per Child models are going to exist in the next 10 years, which even at Negorponte's most optimistic schedule, is how long it is going to take to get hundreds of millions of his machines out there. In the meantime, there is a whole generation of people passing through the educational systems of the world, and if HTIW is a means of making many of them computer savvy in some degree, it deserves support.
posted by paulsc at 12:28 PM on September 30, 2005

Have you tried ginkgo biloba?
posted by kindall at 2:43 PM EST on September 30 [!]

I think snoktruix makes a good point. What tangible goods have been created by the MIT Media Lab that have gone beyond a research paper, press conference or concept/prototype phase to mass manufacture and distribution?
posted by Rothko at 12:32 PM on September 30, 2005

Recently, I was installing Linux on an old laptop from the early 90's. Big old clunker of a machine. While I was doing this, my six month old daughter was in my lap. Now, she is only six months old and right now she reaches out for anything that is in front of her. So of course she reached out for the laptop. She banged on the keyboard, and watched the letters form in the text editor I had opened (just so that she wouldn't "break anything!") Rather quickly, she found the little green cursor controller in the middle of the keyboard and was quite pleased when she could make the arrow zoom across the screen.

Now, this is nothing really phenomenal. She did not complete anysort of task, nor did she actually use the computer. She did have an experience with a tool. We are humans, we make tools. It is even reported the gorillas use tools to test how deep rivers are, but that is besides the point. When engineers make tools, they design them to be used by humans. There has been lots and lots of software which stakes out the claim of having Intuitive Interfaces, or the big buzz from the 90s, User Friendly. This is not presupposing that the User has any literacy in computers, or even any literacy peroid. In fact, knowing the language of any 'environment' is not necessary to begin learning the language of the 'environment.' You don't wait to learn French until you have already learned French.

Ok, there are environmental issues invovled with this program. There are environmental issues with First World Computing, and First World Cars and First World Energy, but because we are First World, we can have it. Third World, does not get anything because they are Third World. This program is designed to give something to people who have a need to learn, and even if the final cost is $200 a laptop, and they manage to get half of the target distributed through schools to children who need them, who may even want them, I am certain that it will have an impact in those children's lives. Personalize it, realize that we are talking about human beings here, human beings who do not want to live in a society that has less than other societies and cultures here on the planet.

Pie-in-the sky concepts like World Peace ain't such a bad dream to have, nor is it a terrible goal to work towards. If the end result of the effort is that the chance, or the possiblity that a child from Cambodia is given the opportunity to learn to read, even if all they manage to read is high literature like People Magazine, then there is the ever so delicate amount of progress towards the Greater Good.

Flame me, call me an idiot, or a blind idealist, debunk my thoughts as preposterous, be derisive and demeaning about my intelligence or lack-thereof; I care not. You are here in a pay-for-service area of the WORLD WIDE WEB most likely accessing it from a country driven be greed and opportunity than from the ideals of noblesse orgin . Perhaps, just perhaps, 150 million new users of computers next year, could learn what democracy is. And perhaps, somewhere on the planet, somebody will be emboldened enough to actually put it into practice. But this tiny spark of hope will indeed go out, if it is not fanned and fueled. n
posted by N8k99 at 1:00 PM on September 30, 2005

Rothko writes "What tangible goods have been created by the MIT Media Lab that have gone beyond a research paper, press conference or concept/prototype phase to mass manufacture and distribution?"

Lego MindStorms? That all I've got....
posted by mr_roboto at 1:04 PM on September 30, 2005

What tangible goods have been created by the MIT Media Lab that have gone beyond a research paper, press conference or concept/prototype phase to mass manufacture and distribution?
posted by Rothko at 3:32 PM EST on September 30 [!]

From the MIT Media Labs Affective Computing Web site:

Q: Have you produced any products?

A: The MIT Media Lab is not in the business of making products, but we do work with many companies who make products. We have been told that we inspired or otherwise influenced products, such as Hasbro/iRobot's My Real Baby. (The development effort for this product was led by Jonathan Klein, an alumnus of our group.)

I picked this for you, Rothko, as prime snark fodder, and I hope you enjoy it...:-)

But past snark territory, it would be fair to ask of anyone proposing such a huge project "What have you done like this before?" So, it's fair to raise the point, and that's one reason I put up the Steve Ballmer reference in the FPP. Ballmer, of all people, put this challenge in public a year ago, and it dropped into the commercial world without, so far as I can see, raising so much as a ripple.

By the lights of the Media Lab, Negroponte's group is doing exactly what is in their charter, which is to propose feasible design and process for a project which hasn't, heretofore, found commercial interest. Nothing wrong with that, by my lights, and if any vaporware emanating from Cambridge, MA gets something good going, what's the problem with it being shilled at an early stage by Media Lab? I hope he does get manufactuing commitments and sponsorship by the ton, and I personally would call it a success if One Laptop per Child "only" got 15 million total units in the hands of kids who would use them effectively.
posted by paulsc at 1:08 PM on September 30, 2005

verb, you just hit one of my pet peeves, man. "Shouldn't they be focusing on potable water?" Well, the MIT media lab is full of people who study things generally related to electronics, comp sci, and the way people interact with those electronic systems. Of course there should be people working on increasing access to potable water, but that's waaay outside of the area of expertise of the researchers at the Media Lab. Say "this project is dumb," if you want, but stating "well, shouldn't they be working on [project utterly unrelated to their field of expertise" is dumber yet - particularly when, at a large research institute, there probably are other groups looking into just that sort of issue.

The idea of poor people using things like laptops and cellphones on a wireless network isn't as crazy as it seems. One of the reasons wireless is being emphasized is that not as much infrastructure is needed - that's why cellphones are becoming surprisingly widespread in Africa. Note also that the model would deal with lack of electricity [or lack of consistent electricity] with the handcrank mechanism. African farmers are using cellphones to keep track of changing produce prices and to run small businesses over the phone. Cellphones are often charged off of car batteries. Laptops could serve a similar purpose but provide even more possibilities, and the specific design for durability, efficiency, and hand-cranked power would help greatly. Finally, education is part of their importance, but the laptops aren't meant to replace teaching, and you'd have to be pretty shortsighted to think their only effects would be on children.

There are too many stupid or useless ideas to come of the Media Lab, true [it's a joke even among MIT students], but some of the stuff that comes out of there is real scientific research. Those sorts of projects don't garner as much attention as their other less practical [but flashier] cousins. The laptop initiative sounds like it has the potential to become a successful project, though, and not fluff - the ideas behind it are based on observable trends, and the suggested design seems quite reasonable.
posted by ubersturm at 1:13 PM on September 30, 2005

Yes, very slowly. Very very slowly. So that no more damn Chinese and Indians take away your and your children's jobs for the next forty years, presumably!

Wrong. I'm not a programmer. And wouldn't matter two shits of some kids in Srilanka charged 30¢ a day to do code.

But it would matter to the kids in India who charge 45¢ a day.

The third world in it's rush to take advantage of the "information super-highway" is itself getting exploited. Indians are getting put out of work by Pakistani's and Pakistani's by Chinese. And who profits? White rich guys in the first world.

Each country invests a fortune in "information" infrastructure, at the the expense of more important sustainable infrastructure, only to have it languish when another country does the same thing cheaper.

So THAT is why these things need to be studied before we all goo are pants over the warm-fuzzy idea of world-wide enlightenment via the Net Culture.
posted by tkchrist at 1:39 PM on September 30, 2005

Ballmer, of all people, put this challenge in public a year ago, and it dropped into the commercial world without, so far as I can see, raising so much as a ripple.

But there's no profit margin in a $100 Laptop project (not much, anyway); so far as I can see, these are being made at-cost. Even Negroponte seems to think it will take Dell et al. selling these things at $200 a pop to get the capitalistic motivation going in OEMs to make them in the first place.

Maybe my skepticism about the environmental issues is excessive, maybe not, but while the MIT Media Lab is good at getting stuff promoted in Wired, it does not have very much experience in actually turning intellectual property into something that works on a large scale.

Again, I'm reminded more than ever of the African country stuck with a useless, if beautiful building. The potential of this project seems fleeting, given the track record of the organization promoting it.
posted by Rothko at 1:41 PM on September 30, 2005

I can't think of a single technology developed there that has made any sort of impact other than a splurt of hype and then nothing

Did they do the Segway? Because THAT changed everything.

A Segway for Every Child!
posted by tkchrist at 1:43 PM on September 30, 2005

The Segway? Hell no. That's way too advanced. It's got like electronics and robotics and shit in it. Media Lab is more along the lines of cutting bits of cardboard and out and sticking them on motors, attaching blinking lights to stuff they bought from a shop, that sort of thing.
posted by snoktruix at 2:02 PM on September 30, 2005

I hope they make these things with a friendly handle like the Apple eMate.

I think it would be a lot of fun to come up with websites for these kids to take advantage of, to help them come up to speed on the information available out there and how to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Even just social websites for them to have penpals across the globe would be a really cool project.

Ok maybe I'm an idiot maybe all this stuff exists now anyway and I just have to find it. I haven't been searching the net for kid-oriented sites because my daughter just hasn't been that into it yet. Sure, she likes to do hidden pictures puzzles at highlights.com and games and stuff, but she's not quite literate yet and I think it will take greater reading ability before she can really take advantage of more sophisticated stuff.
posted by beth at 2:09 PM on September 30, 2005

--"Hi, Mr Negroponte? Cool. Listen, that $100 laptop thing? Just forget it. A bunch of miserable bastards on a website have decided that it is the height of folly. Yeah, I know. Sorry about that. Just thought you'd like to know. By the way, love your name! Take care now, bye bye then."
posted by ralphyk at 2:38 PM on September 30, 2005

Media labs made blogdex

which i use all the time to find interesting stuff....

but then i suppose that its a bit more advanced than attaching blinking lights to stuff they bought from a shop

sooooo maybe they got help
posted by sourbrew at 2:45 PM on September 30, 2005

"... Sure you can have all sorts of backwards parents vs. education issues in any country, even the richest ones, exactly, like in the US. They are never an objection to attempts at promoting education in those countries, so they shouldn't be when it comes to attempts to provide more and cheaper access to education and technology in less developed nations. ..."
posted by funambulist at 2:12 PM EST on September 30 [!]

funambulist, I confess to having some trouble parsing this part of your post, but I didn't mean to link the bits about China, Syria and Turkey as if they were tribal cultures. What I was trying to say was that people all over the world have complicated agendas for their children's education, and sometimes these agendas seem more important than developing the minds of the children. The Media Lab project seems to me in part an effort to disintermediate such agendas, putting children pretty directly in touch with the larger world, in hopes they'll get a less propagandized education.

Maybe another example of this will help illustrate what I meant. In a recent article on the BBC Web site, discussing the education of girls in Pakistan, I see a number of these factors in action:

"The teachers were eager to show me the computer room. With five computers, they have one for every 400 girls.

When I ask if they have access to the internet, the teachers laugh. "No, that is not possible for us," says Binte Rafiq.

"[We teach them] just only how to shut down the computer, and how to start it. Basic IT."

The teachers say they cannot afford more computers because the madrassa relies completely on private donations.

But at the same time they showed me construction work to add extra rooms, so they can take in even more students.

The teachers say much of the money they get comes from people who visit the madrassa, and are impressed by the work they're doing.

The madrassa's vice president, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, says there has been a change of thinking among religious leaders about girls education.

"We are told that we, religious people, are against women's education. But we have proved that we are not."

Asked about the curriculum, he said, "Islam is enough. It is a complete code for modern life." "

The writer of this article goes on to quote other souces with alternate views of girls education in the madrassas of Pakistan, and concludes the piece with a direct reference to the conservative Islamic clerics who supervise this system of education:

"And the clerics claim they have also changed their views about girls' education.

They seem to have concluded that what they teach a girl, she will teach her children. And many parents are keen to send their daughters to madrassas because they offer free lessons, food and lodging.

Others, however, send their children there because they do not want them to lose their Islamic identity.

For the girls learning to recite the Koran at the Jamia Hafza Madrassa, there seems little risk of that."

Of course I can't know that the choices culturally influential people like Pakistan's Islamic clerics make for the education of children are "wrong," but they are not ones I endorse, nor, I think, based on what I've read, do those in the Media Lab, including Negroponte.

Indoctrination is not education, no matter how well intentioned.
posted by paulsc at 2:56 PM on September 30, 2005

Rothko and snoktruix- check out the stuff at the end of my last post. A lot of the more valid research at the Media Lab is simply not shiny enough to make it into Wired, which means no one's heard of it... they do more than their fair share of bullshit projects, it's true, though even the bullshit projects aren't much like what snoktruix implies. Odds are you don't read the sort of scientific publications where their non-bullshit projects get covered. [Which is to say, you won't see the better research in Wired.] Note also that this project really won't end up with that African building scenario that you mention. If the Media Lab can't manage to make the project happen, nothing's wasted but their time. If they "only", as paulsc says, get a more modest number of early units out, and only a few thousand [or hundred thousand] poor kids and their families get laptops... I'd call that a win. A building sitting in the middle of nowhere without power is useless, but a bunch of self-powered laptops helping impoverished kids learn and also helping impoverished families do business - maybe that's a loss to you, but it sure doesn't look like one to me.
posted by ubersturm at 4:27 PM on September 30, 2005

Well, the MIT media lab is full of people who study things generally related to electronics, comp sci, and the way people interact with those electronic systems. Of course there should be people working on increasing access to potable water, but that's waaay outside of the area of expertise of the researchers at the Media Lab. Say "this project is dumb," if you want, but stating "well, shouldn't they be working on [project utterly unrelated to their field of expertise" is dumber yet - particularly when, at a large research institute, there probably are other groups looking into just that sort of issue.

I don't think it's dumb at all! I think it has tons of potential, especially the adhoc networking aspect of it. But it's not about 'giving kids access to the net.' It's about putting a dirt-cheap learning/training tool out there that ALSO gives entire villages and people-groups better infrastructure. We forget how much of the US' ability to succeed is based on things like roads, telephones, power, and OC9s running criss-cross all over the nation.

That said, I still cring sometimes that things like the potable water issue don't get more 'sexy' coverage. It's sad -- not that MIT isn't doing that, but that they likely wouldn't be covered if they did.
posted by verb at 4:43 PM on September 30, 2005

like the technology, but the assertion that the distribution and management should be non-profit couldn't be more wrong.

Sing: We're making the world safe for capitaliiiism!

I'm sure it makes you feel great about yourself spewing up this crap, but it's not true.

FACT: A US anti-maleria campaign went to an African region, offering mosquito nets, at a discount price, for the villagers to buy. They sold 40. To a population of several thousand.
THEN: A few weeks later, a charity came and just gave the frigging nets away in their thousands. Every home got one.

Which of the above forms of "aid" do you think resulted in a significant and large drop in maleria in the region? I'll give you a guess. Don't look to your old friend Adam Smith for help, though.
posted by Jimbob at 4:45 PM on September 30, 2005

like the technology, but the assertion that the distribution and management should be non-profit couldn't be more wrong.

Sing: We're making the world safe for capitaliiiism!

I'm sure it makes you feel great about yourself spewing up this crap, but it's not true.

FACT: Last year, a US anti-maleria campaign went to an African region, offering mosquito nets, at a discount price, for the villagers to buy. They sold 40. To a population of several thousand.
THEN: A few weeks later, a charity came and just gave the frigging nets away in their thousands. Every home got one.

Which of the above forms of "aid" do you think resulted in a significant and large drop in maleria in the region? Which do you think actually saved lives? I'll give you a guess. Don't look to your old friend Ayn for help, though.
posted by Jimbob at 4:48 PM on September 30, 2005

A bunch of miserable bastards on a website have decided that it is the height of folly.

See. We DO make a difference. Man. It feels good!
posted by tkchrist at 5:24 PM on September 30, 2005

verb, didn't mean to imply you thought it was dumb - your other comments attest to the fact that you don't. I'm in total agreement about what the purpose of the thing is as well. In case you're curious, there are people at MIT doing research involving water and developing countries - Dr. Jennifer Davis, for example, or people over in the Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering and probably other people that I'm too lazy to find. There's actually a lot of research going on at MIT regarding resources, agriculture, and urbanization in developing countries - heck, I know people who've participated in some of it. Problem is, as you say, that efforts like those rarely get press.
posted by ubersturm at 5:34 PM on September 30, 2005

tkchrist: I was not entirely serious about the fear of competition from developing countries, hence that ";)"

But I still don't understand what your point is. Exploitment, competition between between people offering the same goods or services at different prices is happening all over the world, not just in India. I don't really see how that is a criticism of the initiative to distribute laptops for education? Or wasn't it meant as criticism?

I mean it almost sounds like the implication here is that because with development can come a lot of things that are the nasty side of capitalism then development is bad. Correct me if I misunderstand...

paulsc: What I was trying to say was that people all over the world have complicated agendas for their children's education, and sometimes these agendas seem more important than developing the minds of the children.

Yes, I understood what you meant, I just didn't understand why you brought that up. I thought you were saying that could be another obstacle to such educational initiatives and I just think that is putting the cart before the horse.

The Media Lab project seems to me in part an effort to disintermediate such agendas, putting children pretty directly in touch with the larger world, in hopes they'll get a less propagandized education.

Seems to me the main effort here is for children who get little education at all or not enough because of poverty, not indoctrination. They are two very different things.

Propagandised education can be an issue in any country, and in any economic and social class. Islamic fundamentalists, Christian fundamentalists, they also have expensive private schools in rich western countries. The rest of the world is not all one big madrassa.

That issue is a separate one that comes after the first level of providing basic education. You cannot have a debate on how free from religious indoctrination education should be if you don't have accessible education in the first place. I don't know how far this MIT programme will go to help provide that in areas where it's needed, but to me it sounds like a good step in the right direction. If any cultural issues arise in any specific areas, let them arise and be dealt with later.
posted by funambulist at 5:50 AM on October 1, 2005

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