Dear Mr Jha (and fellow DDN readers), On Thu, 2005-12-01 at 09:29 -0500, Satish Jha wrote:
> Most developing countries blow away a multiple of that amount in corrupt > practices.. In most developing countries that kind of money is stashed away > in the bedrooms of a few chieftains.. Is that the issue? Well, I don't see how money stashed away by the chieftains or stolen through corruption will be liberated to buy laptops, or anything else for that matter, unless they will get more money back. The fact that such large amounts are lost through corruption, does not mean that similar amounts should be wasted on poorly-conceived development initiatives of any kind. > The issue as I see is: Can we lower the cost of computing to a level > where we can extend its frontiers.. let many more to benefit from it.. > how to do it.. Yes, those are excellent questions, but I think that for a public sector initiative which seeks to use large amounts of public money, other question must be answered first: What, exactly, is computing supposed to do for us? What should the benefits be? How can we realistically achieve those benefits? Of course, these are questions from the very core of the ICT4D debate. And I think it would be unwise for any ICT4D initiative to ignore that debate and assume that computers (or any other ICT) have an inherent beneficial effect on society. > Simputer has sold less than 10,000 in 5 years and most of its is pushed on > to the government.. ordinary people do not buy it, cannot buy it.. This is part of the problem - it's simply too expensive. > and if it were that good in reality as it sounds on power point presentation, > won;t > the world have lapped it up by now.. Not necessarily, it depends whether we all define "good" in the same way. There are a huge number of potential reasons for using ICTs, depending on myriad contexts, and with many different potential costs and benefits to weigh. At least private sector, for-profit initiatives (of which I think the Simputer is one, although please correct me if I'm wrong), allow individuals in the market to decide on these issues for themselves, distributing the risk and decision making to the places where the best information on the subject is available - the buyers themselves. If the Simputer fails, who loses out? Has it taken development money from other projects that will never be recouped? Or did some private investors lose some money that they risked on the idea? I think the former situation is much worse than the latter. Also, what did the Simputer project cost? I'd be very surprised if it was even $100 million. Perhaps $10 million is closer to the mark. In that case it's impressive what they achieved with so little. But larger projects such as the one we're debating carry a much higher risk in case of failure, independent of who takes on that risk. > there are cheaper, better, more > convenient options available or must be available to the people for them not > to try simputer.. Perhaps they simply don't value the ICT services it provides? Maybe they don't need speech recognition, touch sensitive screens, portable devices, lots of memory and processing power, or even (heaven forbid) access to the Internet and e-mail? Perhaps they would rather feed their families today? I don't know, but I would love to find out. > If there is one idea that is embraced with passion without > facts backing it up, it is simputer.. a catchy name, a great idea, a good > prototype but NOT product enought to be in the hands of its own target > customers.. How can we compare a small, establish product, on the market for many years, not as successful as initially hoped but that still has had some success and some future life in it, with the concept (for it is still no more than that) of a $100 laptop for every child in the world? Surely these are apples and oranges. > We may choose to be frivolous.. How would you like to be judged.. That is > the basic question.. Sorry, I don't understand that question. I was frivolous (and rather too emotional) in my email because I like to make people laugh as well as think about the issues. I'm happy to be judged for what I am. But this debate should not be about me, but rather the benefits of ICTs for development. > I am not speaking for or on behalf of Negroponte.. I do not need to.. But to > trash an idea that has actually captured the imagination of those who can > make it possible is destroying value.. Sorry, how does skepticism destroy the value? I think that it can create value where none exists at the moment - by inspiring and challenging Negroponte and the development community to work together to maximise the potential benefits of this and other ICTs, rather than falling into the most obvious and widely understood pitfalls of such projects. I think that the $100 laptop as a general concept would be an amazingly useful and powerful platform for a huge number of applications. What I do not like is the religious zeal and conviction with which is is single-mindedly dragged, kicking and screaming, down an path that from this end appears to be a dark, dangerous, dead end back street alley, littered with the corpses of pilot projects that crashed or were forgotten, and unceremoniously dumped and left for dead. > If only for the fact that its been > debated like no other in the past six months, Negroponte has created enough > value for a life time of most people who are debating it.. He has certainly created enough hot air to last him for a lifetime and ensure his place in history. :-) And the amount of energy expended in debating this topic could probably power all the $100 laptops for a few years. If only we could harness hot air and flame wars. > Craig Smith and I tried talking about a $200 PC in 2002 and went to various > IT ministers of various Asian countries but while we had sympathetic years > we had little else.. I wonder if the $100 laptop will get a similar reception from the IT ministers of the countries whose presidents have been persuaded to implement it wholesale? Cheers, Chris. -- (aidworld) chris wilson | chief engineer ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
