At 12:00 PM 11/20/2005 -0500, you wrote:
I suppose by buying a US$100 laptop an illiterate becomes literate and
exploring the Internet fulfills the curriculum of all thirty plus students
in each class.!!
I am of course, not under- valuing the phenomenal wealth of knowledge
accessible by the same laptop but...
The whole concept of the Simputer is that it was developed within the
context of a 'developing' country and its design took account of the
inherent priorities and encouraging/utilizing local talent. We [including
the UN] should, I believe, be orienting all our energies -- and funds to
encouraging that area of development in developing countries.
A few thoughts:
- MIT is not asking the UN or others for donations, that I heard, for the
laptops themselves. Countries would buy them at the $100 figure in large
quantities.
- The MIT design will be mainly sold as a TEXTBOOK. It has 1 Gb Flash and
will have localized
language texts and resources preloaded. The Internet expands the
offerings. The mesh network provides local collaboration between students
and teachers at the village level.
- Simputer has some good ideas, but only 32M of Flash. No room for
textbooks... No Keyboard.
I ran a browser and word processor on the Beta.. they were pretty darn fast
on the 1/2 Ghz processor..
Regards, Terry King ...On The Mediterranean in Carthage, Tunisia
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