Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer is Key to India's Technology Fortunes
Mark, Great post. I'd add some related comments: - In developing areas with little or no communications infrastructure, voice is the most important 'application'. - For voice, cell phones are ideal. - Cell phones are very, very nice for their small size and great battery performance. - Cell phones are not lower-tech, internally, than computers. - Computers will come down in price the same way as cell phones. - Cell phones can do data/text/email/web, but I wouldn't call them ideal for these activities (how many of us on this list that have web/email capable phones use them for this list rather than a computer?) - Cell phones are a quite closed system, including both the phones themselves and the required infrastructure. - Computers are quite open; lots of ways to make them, lots of organizations can make new ones. Inveneo Jhai are two that I know about but many others as well; maybe someday we'll see millions of $100 computers from MIT :-) - The communications infrastructure needed for computers is quite flexible and quite amendable to organic growth at the edges, which can be readily built by the users -- schools, NGO's, ISPs, SMEs, using local wires (CAT5), wireless, or sometimes even GigE on fiber. - Edge/last mile infrastructure built and operated by the users has very, very low costs and very good performance. So while reaching the rest of the Internet may still be slow and expensive, reaching others in your same town or area is very fast and cheap. -- Jim On Jul 28, 2005, Mark Summer wrote: I think cell phones have their space and useful applications and computers have their specific space and other useful applications. Thinking of using cell phones in class rooms for curriculum delivery seems to be quite a bit far fetched - with a small screen you can do only so much in my opinion. With a decent sized keyboard and a mouse with software that supports these types of input devices, you will always be way better off when working, say on spreadsheets, text documents or drawings. And these skills do provide a lot of benefit to people looking for jobs. There is, as well, the whole concept of a larger display, where multiple people can read information from it at the same time and such. Using a cell phone to check email and surf the web may appeal to some more then others. I do believe on the other hand that SMS / Text messaging is a very powerful tool and very cost effective as well. I was recently in Uganda and there you can get access to market prices for crops in various towns via SMS - this may be of value for many people. And there are many more very good uses out there. Thinking of computers as a thing of the past is, in my opinion, something to discuss 15 to 20 years from now, but certainly not in the next 5 years. ..snip... ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer is Key to India's Technology Fortunes
Tom and others: I think cell phones have their space and useful applications and computers have their specific space and other useful applications. Thinking of using cell phones in class rooms for curriculum delivery seems to be quite a bit far fetched - with a small screen you can do only so much in my opinion. With a decent sized keyboard and a mouse with software that supports these types of input devices, you will always be way better off when working, say on spreadsheets, text documents or drawings. And these skills do provide a lot of benefit to people looking for jobs. There is, as well, the whole concept of a larger display, where multiple people can read information from it at the same time and such. Using a cell phone to check email and surf the web may appeal to some more then others. I do believe on the other hand that SMS / Text messaging is a very powerful tool and very cost effective as well. I was recently in Uganda and there you can get access to market prices for crops in various towns via SMS - this may be of value for many people. And there are many more very good uses out there. Thinking of computers as a thing of the past is, in my opinion, something to discuss 15 to 20 years from now, but certainly not in the next 5 years. When thinking about costs there are a few other things to keep in mind as well: How long will the device be relevant? When does it need to be replaced? Currently cell phones still have very fast innovation cycles compared to computers, where the innovation cycle has slowed down dramatically over the past few years. I can still use my computer from 3 years ago very well for day to day word processing and so on, whereas if I require a sophisticated cell phone I need to replace it about once a year. Purchasing costs: The cost of a computer that will work fine for office type applications and internet access is approaching $200 to $300 already now. While a cell phone that can access the internet, and provides the user with a decent text entry capability still costs at least $200 if not much more (keep in mind many cell phones in the US and Europe are subsidized through contract term commitments, which doesn't apply to they way cell phones are marketed in developing nations). Ongoing costs: Cell phones still operate mainly on a per minute model, not only for voice, but for data traffic as well. This limits the free access of information, because it's not clear what the cost will be exactly, while many types of data access for computers are already priced at a flat-rate. Flat-rate data access makes it much easier to find sustainable business models in the communities. And of course the use of office applications has no other ongoing costs associated with it other than power and the use of printing materials (if required). It's much easier to budget for this then for metered services. Many PC manufacturers are now recognizing the value of building low-power-consuming computers and so the power requirements are decreasing as well. It's already pretty easy to build computers from off-the-shelf components that consume less then 20 Watts, and at prices below $400, including keyboard, mouse and display. I think each device has its place and for certain uses a cell phone is by far superior to a computer under certain circumstances and vice versa. It's misleading to assume that cell phones will replace computers in the economies of Europe and the US anytime soon and we should not expect that this will be different in other places around the world. What do you think? Mark Mark Summer co-founder, Inveneo web: http://www.inveneo.org phone: +1-415-901-1969 x 1200 FWD: 603303 cell: +1-415-867-9751 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Thursday, July 21, 2005, Tom Abeles wrote: I think that it is nice to think about the $100 computer. But one needs to remember that cell phones are ubiquitous and relatively low cost. One post secondary education institution is developing curricula using the cell phone as the device of choice for their students. Cells that are both WiFi and work on the cellular bands are on the market, and some are predicting the $2 cell phone which is printed, realizing that these can be built up with the proper inks, which are even being used to make mechanical devices. Also, think about iPods and where the next generation is going to be, rather than trying to make the past cheaper. ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer is Key to India's Technology Fortunes
Dear GKD Members, Tom Abeles is absolutely right, and I do like his slogan about not trying to make the past cheaper. To this I would add that this is an area where market forces do work to our benefit, the large volumes of potential sales in phones and music players and the strong competition means that the technology gets both cheaper and better. Let us ride that wave. By contrast any purpose developed solution like these proliferating $100 computers don't have a market, unless you view wealthy but possibly gullible donor agencies as a market, and are using old technologies that will be left ever further behind. The only thing that leaves me uncomfortable in this is that we are relying on a trickle down effect - market forces in the west may be creating benefits that can be picked in emerging economies. Pat Hall On 7/21/2005, Tom Abeles wrote: I think that it is nice to think about the $100 computer. But one needs to remember that cell phones are ubiquitous and relatively low cost. One post secondary education institution is developing curricula using the cell phone as the device of choice for their students. Cells that are both WiFi and work on the cellular bands are on the market, and some are predicting the $2 cell phone which is printed, realizing that these can be built up with the proper inks, which are even being used to make mechanical devices. Also, think about iPods and where the next generation is going to be, rather than trying to make the past cheaper. ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer is Key to India's Technology Fortunes
On Thursday, July 21, 2005, Tom Abeles wrote: I think that it is nice to think about the $100 computer. But one needs to remember that cell phones are ubiquitous and relatively low cost. One post secondary education institution is developing curricula using the cell phone as the device of choice for their students. Cells that are both WiFi and work on the cellular bands are on the market, and some are predicting the $2 cell phone which is printed, realizing that these can be built up with the proper inks, which are even being used to make mechanical devices. Tom, Hwell, in my experience we ain't there yet when it comes to the relatively low cost of cellphones in developing countries. In fact, handset cost is one of the main reasons why they aren't even more available to the poor. Add other features like WiFi and they will probably be even more out of reach except for the richest of the poor and we're back where we started. $2 cell phones? Isn't that akin to all the promises we used to hear that telecommunications costs would fall to near zero? (Because they haven't; even those poor who can afford the handsets frequently opt for the very low rates that allow them to receive calls, but not make them.) (Just curious though if you are talking about desktop factories or fab labs to manufacture such phones at such costs. Who is doing it?) Best, Gary Gary Garriott Innovation Program Officer, ICT for Rural Development Winrock International Voice: +703 525 9430, ext. 614 www.winrock.org ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer is Key to India's Technology Fortunes
Dear GKD Members, I think that it is nice to think about the $100 computer. But one needs to remember that cell phones are ubiquitous and relatively low cost. One post secondary education institution is developing curricula using the cell phone as the device of choice for their students. Cells that are both WiFi and work on the cellular bands are on the market, and some are predicting the $2 cell phone which is printed, realizing that these can be built up with the proper inks, which are even being used to make mechanical devices. Also, think about iPods and where the next generation is going to be, rather than trying to make the past cheaper. thoughts? tom abeles ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
[GKD] The $100 Computer is Key to India's Technology Fortunes
GKD members may be interested in the following article detailing recent progress towards the design of a $100 computer in India. -FN ** http://news.com.com/Indias+renaissance+The+100+computer/2009-1041_3-575205 4.html India's Tech Renaissance The $100 computer is key to India's tech fortunes By Michael Kanellos Staff Writer, CNET News.com June 29, 2005 MUMBAI, India--One of the critical ingredients for the $100 computer is probably in your garage. In about three months, a little-known company called Novatium plans to offer a stripped-down home computer for about $70 or $75. That is about half the price of the standard thin clients of this kind now sold in India, made possible in part by some novel engineering choices. Adding a monitor doubles the price to $150, but the company will offer used displays to keep the cost down. If you want to reach the $100 to $120 price point, you need to use old monitors, said Novatium founder and board member Rajesh Jain, a local entrepreneur who sold the IndiaWorld portal for $115 million in cash in 2000 and has started a host of companies since. Monitors have a lifetime of seven to eight years. It is this kind of entrepreneurial thinking that has made Jain the latest visionary to seek out today's Holy Grail of home computing: a desktop that will start to bring the Internet to the more than 5 billion people around the world who aren't on it yet. The first $100 computer is a fitting icon for a country undergoing major changes in the development of its technology, economy and society. As Indian companies increasingly break away from the limitations of handling outsourced services for Western corporations, innovations are likely to multiply and inspire the rising number of independently minded engineers and executives who are leading the country's technology industry to new frontiers. Because of thriving exports and low PC penetration, India has become the epicenter for projects on the cutting edge of computing hardware. Advanced Micro Devices has started to sell its Personal Internet Communicator for $235, including monitor, through a broadband partner here. It says a fully equipped $100 personal computer in three years isn't out of the question. The innovative spirit that pervades the industry is producing a variety of new approaches toward affordable computing. Tata Consultancy Services is tinkering with domain computers that reduce costs by just handling fixed functions such as bill payment or word processing, said Nagaraj Ijari, a senior executive in the company's operations in Bangalore. About 200 miles away in high-tech center Chennai, formerly known as Madras, Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala of the Indian Institute of Technology has developed a $1,000 automatic teller machine that can also serve as an Internet kiosk for villages. He has also built a wireless data system that has been exported to Brazil, Iran, Fiji and Nigeria. Creating a product that cuts costs without reducing functions isn't easy, as exemplified by the Simputer, a handheld computer designed for the masses. And many products face formidable logistical and infrastructural obstacles. Professor Jitendra Shah, from the Centre for the Development of Advanced Computing, is examining ways to reduce electricity usage by setting up solar-powered computing terminals that tap into battery-powered PCs acting as servers. We are looking at ways to take advantage of unconventional sources of power. Practically in every village you will find a truck or car battery that you can use when the regular power grid fails you, said Ketan Sampat, president of Intel India. You also want to design something that is more tolerant of dust. Living in a material world The key to success for the $100 computer lies in the sum of its parts. Even though the industry has seen continuous price declines for components--including metal, plastic and other raw materials--many executives believe that manufacturing a full-fledged PC for even less than $200 is probably still impractical. We are not able to fix the monitor and hard-drive problem, said P.R. Lakshamanan, senior vice president of Zenith Computers, one of India's largest local PC makers. With these realities in mind, some companies are adjusting their price goals. Xenitis, for example, has come out with PCs that cost just under $250, equipped with an older 1GHz processor from Via Technologies, 128MB of memory, a 40GB hard drive, Linux software and a 15-inch screen. Via will join in with its own Terra PC in the fall. The Terra comes with the same basic configuration as its Xenitis competitor, but the operating system and the basic applications are loaded on a flash memory chip, not the drive--making the computer less susceptible to viruses and other problems. Via, however, admits that it will need to select battle-hardened software. There is no way I am going to take care of all of the problems, said Ravi
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer
Dear Colleagues, On Monday, 14 March 2005, Michel J. Menou wrote: [...] What will we do with waste resulting from 2 billion obsolete 10$ Xputers that might pile up in 2025? Good point (and noted that you are a follow European-based writer). The European Waste Directive forbids us to dump old PC's in land-fill sites... and especially because of the lead and tantalum which will eventually leach out into the water table and contaminate it. The 3% (approx) levy on the sale of new PC's will permit their components to be recycled safely when they come to the end of their life in 3-5 years. But there remains the problem of what to do with the PC's that are being thrown out _now_ for which no levy was made. My investigations suggest that these are being offered to charities and NGOs who are taking them out to Dev-World countries, particularly into Central Africa. Because of the higher temperatures, the air-based cooling system is inadequate, causing memory, processor and hard-disc failures after about 3 months. (What do you expect, when they've been designed to be cooled by using air at the temperature of a European office!?) So the African school or clinic that received the gift of these free computers then digs a pit behind their buildings and throws in the broken PC's. After all, there'll be another container-load offered to them in a few days time, anyway! So what happens about the lead and tantalum? My guess is that it will pollute the water supplies used by the children at those schools but no one will notice because it'll take years to gradually build up, and the African Governments either don't have such laws, or else can't afford to police them. By the time the African children are getting their brains poisoned by our lead, the Western-based charities which bequethed this legacy to them will have long since disappeared, having won many accolades for their selfless giving. :-( Actually there was a report a few days ago that MS was going to sell its OS and Office suite in China at much reduced prices. Of course. M$oft products only work on energy-hungry PC architecture. So they're desperate to lock in users to this technology. I disagree with Don Slater that what is required is a very cheap XP. This would still run on the PC platform which is the 'wrong' technology for the Dev-World. PC architecture has many drawbacks: - high Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) - short lifetime - power hungry (needs mains electricity and power stations which cause pollution and go against the Kyoto Agreement) As Edward Cherlin points out, Linux runs on many other processors, some of which can be designed into low-energy computers. And to return to the Subject line on this thread, I also disagree that the Initial Purchase Price of the computer is the most relevant issue. This is tiny compared with the running costs and upgrades required over the lifetime of the hardware. The answer is to design a different technology which is appropriate for use in the Dev-World. Since this won't be a PC, it can't run M$oft code. So whatever level of benevolence is expressed by Bill Gates, it is irrelevant to meet the needs of the massive rural Dev-World areas. We don't need a $100 computer. We need a computer that costs $100 per year to keep running over a massively-greater timescale, and uses tiny amounts of renewable energy. and it'll run Linux. -- Paul - __/_Paul Richardson | / ExpLAN Computers Ltd. +44 (0)1822 613868 |-- Computer and Software Development |/___ PO Box 32, Tavistock, Devon PL19 8YU Gt.Britain /[EMAIL PROTECTED] - ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer
I noticed that Ghana came up and I wanted to make a few comments since I am based there. On 3/14/05, Edward Cherlin wrote: On Tuesday, 8 March 2005, Don Slater wrote: If Windows XP were sold at the price it usually commands in pirate markets, it would be perfectly OK. Not really. There is no practical way to get Windows into local languages. The only way Microsoft allows this, apart from doing the development itself (Don't hold your breath) is for a government to take out a license, contract out the development work, and then hand the results back to Microsoft to sell. This is not realistic for more than a few major languages. There is not a huge demand for local language applications right now. I am not for example, aware of a local language newspaper, though from time to time, one sees local languages being quoted in the press, however, these are expressed in an English encoding, since the characters required are absent from most fonts. It could be that there is not a huge demand because the capability is not well integrated with the operating environment, but I would place more weight on what is seen in the press. Radio is an entirely different matter where the demand is very strong for local content. Local language usage here is usually an oral affair outside of the academic environment. So doesn't it make just as much sense to pressure M$ for the equivalent of educational licences, or simply donated software? The demand would be for a more appropriate pricing structure, and would be similar to demanding that drug companies allow or produce very cheap generic versions of drugs that are essential to lives in poor countries. There are two problems that I see with a more appropriate pricing structure: 1) The additional volume from dropping prices to affordable levels may well result in substantively lower revenue. This is not a situation that I would expect the companies to respond to unless they have to. Free software may provide the necessary motivation. 2) No one is interested in a stripped down or crippled version of standard software. People mostly want what works, what everyone else uses. Specialists or hobbyists may say otherwise but they don't make up the majority or even close to it. If a company could sell its product under an appropriate pricing structure and still make money, it may result in unwelcome pricing pressure. To add to that, I would say the issue of licensing is irrelevant. I think that people use the software and get it any way they can and I consider it a reasonable practice given the local cost of licensed software and local salaries/revenues. In return, they put up with inconveniences due to not being properly licensed (such as Windows Update access) and that's a decision that costs them less. The companies are able to sell their product at prices higher than what the majority of consumers could afford in order to maximize revenue. Those who use unlicensed software help to ensure that the market share of illegal proprietary software remains high. In this light, one can see unreasonably high prices as an inducement to ensure illegal copying is part of the culture of computer usage. Later on, technological measures can be used to prevent actual unlicensed use (such as encountered when installing Microsoft AntiSpyware) This is Microsoft's strategy in taking over Digital Partners and engineering a merger between Digital Partners and the Grameen Foundation USA. The Gates Foundation gives away hundreds of millions of dollars worth of software (if-sold value) to prime this market. The FOSS movement gives away far more software, but our if-sold value is $0. I tend to get worried (particularly as an ethnographer) when I So you should appreciate the value of local language support. See: Indigenous Knowledge is a Red Herring http://www.dgroups.org/groups/IS/index.cfm?op=dsp_showmsglistname=ISmsgid =71959cat_id=2777 for my alternate viewpoint on the issue of local language with respect to the situation in Ghana. see the word 'only' used in these discussions - there may seem to be only one solution *technologically*, but there are always multiple political and economic strategies, and Linux is 'only' one of these. Free Software/Open Source software is not a technology. It is an economic and political movement, away from The Tragedy of The Anti-Commons. Linux runs on almost every 16-bit or better computer architecture, including x86, M68000, PPC, Sparc, IBM 390, ARM, and many more, and FOSS more generally runs on every major operating system, including the many variants of Unix, Windows, Mac (native and BSD both), and a multitude of lesser products. The confluence between software as technology and software as movement has caused some mismatch in what values should be. Linux is excellent software but some of the evangelism behind it appears to be floating in the air instead of feet planted on ground. I find it worrying to
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer
I am afraid this discussion tends to be focalized around the dominant consumerist perspective of development. What will we do with waste resulting from 2 billion obsolete 10$ Xputers that might pile up in 2025? Don Slater's points are however well taken. Actually there was a report a few days ago that MS was going to sell its OS and Office suite in China at much reduced prices. One can only wonder, if the company is so much concerned with supporting development in poor communities, or else by piracy, why such practices are not generalized. As to a cheap Office there is already one, free, Openoffice, which runs on MS Windows as well. Addressing the OS issue in absolute terms is often excessive. Yet there are many instances such as education or large systems where Open Source solutions present a clear advantage in terms of TCO. Not to mention the dependency effect associated with initial learning. Options might need to be considered not on the basis of countries but on the basis of users' institutions or situations. Among the options is also the support of local Open Source developers and backstoppers capacities. Michel Menou On Tuesday, March 8, 2005, Don Slater wrote: This point might seem silly, but surely a very 'sensible' alternative OS would be a very *cheap* Windows XP, with very cheap Office or Works versions? If Windows XP were sold at the price it usually commands in pirate markets, it would be perfectly OK. So doesn't it make just as much sense to pressure M$ for the equivalent of educational licences, or simply donated software? The demand would be for a more appropriate pricing structure, and would be similar to demanding that drug companies allow or produce very cheap generic versions of drugs that are essential to lives in poor countries. I tend to get worried (particularly as an ethnographer) when I see the word 'only' used in these discussions - there may seem to be only one solution *technologically*, but there are always multiple political and economic strategies, and Linux is 'only' one of these. ..snip... === Dr. Michel J. Menou Consultant in Information and Knowledge Management B.P. 15 49350 Les Rosiers sur Loire, France Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +33 (0)2 41518165 Fax: +33 (0)2 41511043 http://ciber.soi.city.ac.uk/peoplemenou.php ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer
This point might seem silly, but surely a very 'sensible' alternative OS would be a very *cheap* Windows XP, with very cheap Office or Works versions? If Windows XP were sold at the price it usually commands in pirate markets, it would be perfectly OK. So doesn't it make just as much sense to pressure M$ for the equivalent of educational licences, or simply donated software? The demand would be for a more appropriate pricing structure, and would be similar to demanding that drug companies allow or produce very cheap generic versions of drugs that are essential to lives in poor countries. I tend to get worried (particularly as an ethnographer) when I see the word 'only' used in these discussions - there may seem to be only one solution *technologically*, but there are always multiple political and economic strategies, and Linux is 'only' one of these. Linux makes sense for example in India which has the resources (huge population, armies of software engineers, vast internal market, etc) to generate bespoke open source solutions; it makes bugger all sense in small countries like Ghana (where I am doing research at the moment), which do not have these resources and which - moreover - are most concerned to develop globally valued computer skills, which usually means MS skills. Their priority is not to take on MS and ditch it because it is a nasty and exploitative multinational but rather to develop appropriate ICT resources. The key demand is *cheap* OS and software; the preference would be cheap MS software. And let's not forget the very expensive overheads of developing the kind of northern hacker culture capable of supporting Linux in small countries like these - it simply does not exist there whereas MS skills are already abundant. I've got nothing against Linux, by the way, though I - like many other people - don't have the time or commitment to undergo the reskilling and retooling it would involve for me to use it. What I distrust is the presentation of any particular technology as a unique solution to any real world problem. We've been down that road far too many times before Don ___ Don Slater Reader in Sociology, London School of Economics Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE Tel: +44 (020) 7849 4653 Fax: +44 (020) 7955 7405 http://homepages.gold.ac.uk/slater __ On 3/2/05, Edward Cherlin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The only OS that actually makes sense for the poor is Linux. Free Software that can be adapted to any language and to any set of cultural and legal requirements without waiting for a vendor is essential. The Simputers use Linux. Microsoft has effectively taken over the Grameen Foundation USA's Village Computing Project. ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
[GKD] The $100 Computer - Another Approach
Dear Colleagues, Here is a very interesting and topical article discussing the use of Linux-based handheld computers as textbook replacements. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4304375.stm I suppose the question boils down to what we choose to define as a computer. As these devices already have wireless connectivity built in, it is only a matter of time before they also become a voice communications/VoIP device. I submit that these devices are the first sub-$100 computers that meet all the requirements as useful computers suitable for use in Developing Nations. Respectfully, Ken DiPietro New-ISP NextGenCommunications ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer: A Polite Scam
Dear Colleagues, We have had many thoughtful and thought-provoking postings about the hardware end of that mythical $100 computer, so let's focus back at the software end without which the hardware is useless. We all seem to assume that Linux plus Gnome or KDE plus Open Office is the way forward, and maybe that is so, though I have some reservations that I will attempt to unpick some other time. For the moment I want to come back to the interface language, picked up by Lishan Adam and Edward Cherlin, and explain why I think this is not that simple. Lishan Adam says in his posting of 23rd February: It would be good if N. Negroponte sends a couple of the $100 computers to the universities in developing countries, especially in Africa where young people turn them around to speak local languages and talk to radios. Computers should be given to colleges and universities, and the young people there should be encouraged to make the translations and localisations necessary. Most African languages are written in the Roman script, or extensions of it, though there are important exceptions in the north and east. This means that the first step, that of representing the writing system in the computer, is unnecessary, or at most only necessary for some diacritics that can be worked around. But then to translate the interface text, help files, etc, requires agreement on translations for the technical terms, and an agreed orthography (spelling) for the language. In South Africa some languages have rival orthographic systems, one set up by Dutch missionaries, the other by English missionaries, each basing their spelling on the different phonetic use of the Roman system in their own European languages. Some agreement must be reached in the wider community long before these get further embedded in software. And later, it you want spell checkers, you need word lists and maybe some grammatical (morphological) understanding of the language. You cannot leave all this to a group of enthusiastic students; some community level process is essential. If you want to see the kind of chaos that can result you need look no further than South Asia, where during the age of True Type fonts all sorts of ad hoc solutions for rendering the local complex writing systems were arrived at, all mutually incompatible and incapable of exchanging information. Looking to the Simputer, as Edward Cherlin does in his posting of 23rd February, we see how grossly you can misrepresent what is necessary. India has in excess of 500 languages, some say more than 1500 languages (look on the CIIL or SIL websites), mostly unwritten. By contrast the Simputer is enabled for a few of the dominant languages of India in which there is a long established tradition of writing. This does not mean that what the Simputer is doing is not worthwhile, just that it is only scratching the surface of what is needed in India. Unwritten languages need to be given appropriate writing systems, there needs to be an agreed orthography, and so on. One thousand times over in South Asia, six thousand times over worldwide. However the underlying reasoning of Lishan is quite right, you cannot impose localisation from outside, and for most of the world's languages you cannot leave it to market forces either. The communities that use these languages are too poor and as was argued in so many postings, have other preoccupations about where to spend their money and time. The example of Irish, excavated by Edward from the LRC website, is an excellent example; there is no market for computers working in Irish so the only way Irish gets into computers is through enthusiasts and activists like Michael Everson. So if all these languages are to be supported by computers, then the effort must be found in the local communities where the interest is in doing so and the tacit expertise lies. But this needs some gentle coordination and knowledge sharing, like Localisation Dev is doing. And that is also where the Global Initiative for Local Computing (GILC) comes in. We want to help those critically important language and technology activists around the world help themselves. GILC will be formally launched at the LRC-X Conference: The Development Localisation Event in Limerick, Ireland, 13-14 September 2005. In recognition of the financial constraints that are placed upon many of the people that this conference would be relevant to, the LRC have decided to implement the following measures: * Free conference registration for a limited number (50) of delegates subject to individual financial constraints. Please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] should you feel that you might be eligible for a free registration. The LRC will also assist individual delegates with accommodation expenses, where needed. * The authors of the 10 best papers submitted will receive free conference registration and a cash re-imbursement to be put towards their travel expenses. A review board appointed by the LRC will select the
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer
On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, I wrote: 1. Yes, we can technically make an affordable Information Access Device (IOD). Looking at the cell phone prices and the success of the pay-as-you-go model for instance in Africa, I'd say we can provide a $100 'computer'. All the ingredients are there and most were mentioned: Open Source (Linux in particular), (Very) Thin Clients, systems on chips, cheap wireless networks, affordable flat screen technology, etc. This should have read 'I'd say we can provide a 0 $ computer' when combined with a locally relevant, income generating or income 'liberating' service. I wanted to correct this because it makes an essential difference to the argument. Some people where intrigued by the IOD acronym. I'm affraid that was a typo. It should have been IAD, although we can surely match something to IOD as well... regards - bas ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer: A Polite Scam
On 2/22/05, Edward Cherlin wrote: On Thursday, 10 February 2005, Sam Lanfranco wrote: Dear Colleagues, The $100 computer for those on the other side of the digital divide has once again surfaced in what are mainly self-promoting (occasionally well intended) pronouncements from various quarters. You might enjoy (well, that isn't the right word, but never mind) the recent novel Air by Geoff Ryman, which describes the consequences of dumping every villager in the world on the Net without warning. Of course, it would be a disaster. That's why we don't plan to do it that way. ..snip... Yes, that's where the comparison with Air comes in. Just giving people computers and going away would accomplish less than nothing. Compare, however, the Grameen Bank program for placing cell phones in villages. The villagers are first brought up to a functioning level of literacy, then taught the rudiments of business and banking, and then they get to take out a loan, buy a phone, and start selling minutes. The same, but more so, is an absolute requirement for placing computers in villages. That has always been the real stumbling block - whether it is through the useless unstaffed and unhoused village schools of India, or the political football schools in Pakistan, or elsewhere - there is little incentive to bring literacy/education to the disadvantaged. What sticks in the craw is the unstated assumption that *we* privileged IT-aware people can, on our own, bring blessings to the *stupid* untutored poor. This is why, at Radiophony, we advocate empowering poor people with their own low cost, low power FM stations, where the user devices cost under a dollar in real street prices, and the central dissemination device under $50. At those costs, putting in the extras (training, maintenance, economic wrappers) become feasible on a large scale. Networking those inputs creates synergy and serendipity - who better than the information users to tell *us* what the necessary information devices should be? Or better still, learn to join *us* in developing those devices. -- Vickram ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer
Thanks to Bas Kotterink for summing up some of the key points from the previous emails - it's sometimes hard to keep on top of these discussions. Bas raised as well a few key issues that I think have been only discussed briefly until now, but deserve some more exploration, especially for very low income communities: (1) A computer is only a tool, but never a solution in itself. It's only as relevant to the user as the impact it can make on the user's daily life. This is valid for all communities, in the US or any other country in the world (e.g. Uganda). But the needs of the users vary vastly from community to community around the world. So the question is who can define the needs of these communities in a realistic way that reflects the requirements, priorities and current capabilities of the communities. Only when this is done can the process to design or choose the appropriate technology (if technology is required) begin. If the goals are not crystal clear, ICT deployments turn into a can of worms because the computer is expected to be a magic bullet to solve many problems. Especially due to the fact that the users are less experienced in the use of this technology than say in the US and access to qualified support is much harder in the developing regions. From my experience there is less need for a general purpose computer, but rather for a specific solution (e.g. a clinic needs a health care database; a farmer wants access to prices for his crops in different market towns; a village needs a phone to participate in a local coop; families that take in AIDS orphans require support from the government). (2) While the support of a regular Windows or Linux desktop PC can be very complex, requiring considerable skills (how come I'm always asked by my friends to take a look at their PCs...) a PC that is configured to do only a few tasks is much easier to support. Cell phones demonstrate that very well; while being quite complex these days, they don't require much end-user support as long as the hardware is functioning. So on top of the actual hardware it is important that the software is designed to enable the user to complete the tasks needed to achieve the intended goal with the least amount of prerequisite knowledge and easy to use user-interfaces. This will cut the amount of training and support needed significantly and save money in the long term even if the initial cost of the device is slightly higher. Purse built appliances do require significant less training and ongoing support, while general use appliances do require the user to learn how to use and customize them for their needs as well as how to re-create this customization in case of failures. We work with NGOs that have long standing relations with the communities and can translate the needs of these communities into requirements. We take currently available technology and customize it in a way that is appropriate for these requirements (e.g., source consumer grade hardware and harden it by using no moving parts and create easy-to-use user interfaces). By doing this, we turn general-use appliances into purpose-built appliances. This allows our partner NGOs to focus on their mission and goals and us to focus on what we do best. They provide the training and support of the end users on the ground after the systems are deployed. One last point that Bas made and which I like to underline is that the need is so vast, that this can only be addressed through cooperation and open-source solutions. Mark Mark Summer co-founder, Inveneo web: http://www.inveneo.org phone: 415-867-9751 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer: A Polite Scam
Dear Colleagues, I read Sam Lanfranco's message and subsequent postings a bit late but with great interest. I share his suggestion for a reality check. We have heard of experiments similar to the $100 computer before: computer in a hole, simputer for the masses, recycled computers for African schools, cheap laptops for farmers selling coffee, but the context of those for whom the $100 computer is intended seems to win over these interesting technology-driven attempts. No doubt that these experiments as well as PDAs will play a key role in development, but poor people have always reminded us that cheap computers are not on top of their priority lists. Bottom line is that the majority of people who need information and communication the most do not have the skills, reason or money to buy one. (Maybe a few new toy lovers, shop owners or some high-end civil servants would buy and use a $100 computer, but their children will continue using PCs/Macs in the schools.) What about a $10 or less cell phone with basic features, or a $1 radio receiver with trained nurses and teachers in community programming and community journalists trained in how to find business opportunities for a community? I was in a remote African village recently, the farmer who invited us for lunch asked whether I knew if a price of a goat is equal to that of a cell phone. He was talking about a $25 cell phone! Price matters, the cheaper it gets the more one is tempted to buy a computer to take off the power supply and recharge her/his cell phone. But cost has little value without content and context - take for example sub-$200 Worldspace radio receivers that did not sell in mass quantities in Africa as we expected; a good reminder of the link between content, context and cost. It would be good if N. Negroponte sends a couple of the $100 computers to the universities in developing countries, especially in Africa where young people turn them around to speak local languages and talk to radios. The problem is that we have limited number of highly skilled young people. That is not a $100 problem. Thanks. Lishan === Lishan Adam, ICTD Consultant P.O.Box 2308 Addis Ababa [EMAIL PROTECTED] === ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer: A Polite Scam
On Tuesday, 15 February 2005, Pat Hall wrote: This is an interesting posting, and worth unpicking. Sam Lanfranco has just posted a wonderfully incisive analysis of these 'offers'. Even the much vaunted Simputer becomes questionable under this analysis. I don't think so. I posted about this earlier. I want to take Sam's analysis a little further. (1) If these computers are so great, why aren't they being sold this side of the digital divide? Can't people in the North/West also benefit from these cheap computers? The answer is that it is not in the interests of the hardware and software suppliers to sell us these, when we have been so willingly (reluctantly?) buying much more expensive equipment, forced upon us in a cycle of planned obsolescence of incompatible bloat-ware releases. So what do they do to prevent it? They supply software that we would not find useful, reduced Windows systems, limited software that will not communicate across the divide. And meanwhile they attack the potential open-sources that do deliver useful software. I yearn for those days when office software was sufficient for my purpose and did not fail from over-weight functionality. That's not They, that's only Microsoft. Hardware people love to sell Linux (Sun, HP, IBM) and BSD (Apple). The other PC vendors don't because Microsoft puts illegal pressure on them. Anyway, you can buy an Amida Simputer from their Web site, www.amidasimputer.com. There has been no mad rush to buy them, which is why no large corporation has picked them up. Sharp tried to sell its own Linux-based handheld, the Zaurus, at retail in the U.S. a few years ago, and gave up when nobody bought it. (2) The objective of such enterprises is to give voice to the poor and the marginalised, in precisely the same way that literacy programmes can, and local community radio stations can. Sam points this out, but lets emphasise this, enabling access to ICTs is not so much to enable the South to access the 'truths' from the West, Not 'truths', information and access to markets. it is to enable 'truths' to flow the other way. Truths, bah. Humbug!! Most people can't recognize truth when it knocks them over the head. Which it does, every day, and they wonder why it hurts. And to do that means we must recognise linguistic diversity and support and respect that, so that the ICTs so cavalierly being offered do work in other languages and scripts, and that there are translation paths between languages, and there is support for those many who are not literate. As the Simputer does, in fact, for languages of India and Bhutan. Are you aware of the number of projects to localize Linux into African and Asian languages? I'm working with some of them. Would you like me to send you a copy of the Unicode HOWTO that I just wrote? Have you seen my Unicode Conference papers on these issues? Obliterating the Digital Divide 24th Unicode Conference Proceedings, 2003. http://www.unicode.org/iuc/iuc24/a345.html Completing Unicode 3.2 Support in Free Software, 24th Unicode Conference Proceedings, 2003. http://www.unicode.org/iuc/iuc24/a304.html This is a big enterprise, not a matter for $100 handouts from the West, but an enterprise for us all on both sides of the digital divide to combine our expertises and make it happen. Handouts? What handouts? The deal is to sell these computers, and to train people to use them effectively. Pat Hall, Global Initiative for Local Computing Limerick University Ireland and Open University UK URL, please. Never mind. (Google is your friend.) http://www.localisation.ie/ Under the [Official Languages Act 2003], government information has to be made available in both English and Ireland but currently there's no software that runs in Irish. There's only a lightly localised version of Windows, [Reinhard Schuler, director of the LRC] noted. Inexcusable. Why aren't they using Linux? Your people can localise it themselves. UNDP is writing a Linux localisation HOWTO, and dozens of countries in Africa and Asia are doing it. Your people obviously haven't talked to Michael Everson of Evertype.com in Dublin. He can give you everything you need for creating documents in Irish. He wrote the proposals for getting the necessary extra letters supported in Unicode/ISO 10646, including creating fonts with those letters in them. He maintains the Roadmap for future inclusion of writing systems in Unicode/10646, in addition to his paid work creating writing systems and fonts for minority languages around the world. You should hire him. Him and me, both. Please check your facts before posting nonsense to Usenet. I always do.--Beable van Polasm, alt.religion.kibology Edward Cherlin, Simputer Evangelist Encore Technologies (S) Pte. Ltd. The Village Information Society http://cherlin.blogspot.com -- Edward Cherlin Generalist activist--Linux, languages, literacy and more A knot! Oh, do let me help to undo it! --Alice in
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer: A Polite Scam
On Thursday, 10 February 2005, Sam Lanfranco wrote: Dear Colleagues, The $100 computer for those on the other side of the digital divide has once again surfaced in what are mainly self-promoting (occasionally well intended) pronouncements from various quarters. You might enjoy (well, that isn't the right word, but never mind) the recent novel Air by Geoff Ryman, which describes the consequences of dumping every villager in the world on the Net without warning. Of course, it would be a disaster. That's why we don't plan to do it that way. At best there is a polite scam here, one that involves self-promotion and personal/corporate agrandizement. At worst this involves misleading efforts by academic skim-scam artists, i.e., those who take ideas that have a nice ring to them, ignore evidence, relevence and context, and pronounce on them at priviliged venues such as the recently held World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos. I disagree, but I'm going to stick to the facts and not argue the politics. There have been dozens of efforts at the so-called $100 computer, most a scaled down version of what is generally accepted as a current state of the art computer. I would like to see your list. I know that Apple tried and failed once. The computers that I actually see used in villages other than conventional desktops are the ones Lee Felsenstein designed for the Jhai Foundation (Laos), the Encore and Picopeta Simputers (Bhutan, India, Sri Lanka), the Solo PC (Nigeria), and the Volkscomputer (Brazil). Of these, only the Simputer is available for $200 (complete, monochrome screen). The $100 computer is presently a PDA with proprietary software, not intended for the village market. As history would have it, the $100 computer is facing three obstacles (actually four). The first is the fact that the cost of a state of the art computer is closing in on the actual cost of these machines targeted at the other side of the digital divide. In many situations the cost/benefit analysis of a cheap but limited computer vs. a slightly more expensive state of the art computer weighs in on the side of the state of the art computer. This is especially true when the total cost of a project or undertaking is considered, and not just the savings (and shortcomings) of a cheaper computer. The gap occurs in villages without electricity and telephones. There a low-cost handheld with built-in WiFi works better than a desktop. Wherever a desktop can be supported, a $300-$400 Linux system ($300 with CRT, $400 with low-power flat-panel display) is preferable. The second obstacle is the cost and functionality of a state of the art phone. The wireless device (cell phone, etc.) is closing in on the desirability of a cheap computer and -as the other side of the digital divide has demonstrated millions of times- the cell phone's benefit/cost ratio weights heavily on the side of the consumer spending personal income to secure ICT access. Since wireless is included in the cost of a Simputer, this comparison does not apply. Also, a wireless connection is far less expensive than a cell phone tower. The third obstacle is, of course, that computers for the other side of the digital divide require lots of other inputs and skills, especially compared to their competition. Technical support (including the ability to fend off virus spams from this side of the digital divide) and power are but two of those required inputs. Yes, that's where the comparison with Air comes in. Just giving people computers and going away would accomplish less than nothing. Compare, however, the Grameen Bank program for placing cell phones in villages. The villagers are first brought up to a functioning level of literacy, then taught the rudiments of business and banking, and then they get to take out a loan, buy a phone, and start selling minutes. The same, but more so, is an absolute requirement for placing computers in villages. The fourth obstacle is the really big obstacle, and that is the twin problems of the common sense of those for whom the devices are intended, Do not insult the poor. They are poor and ignorant, but not stupid. I am aware that almost every society takes poverty and not-Us-ness as an excuse for ridicule. Every country that has at one time or another led world civilization and then fallen on hard times, including India, China, Egypt, Iraq, Arabia, Persia (Iran), Mongolia, Greece, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Bohemia (Czechoslovakia), Austria, England, Ireland, and others, has received this treatment. The British tell jokes about frog-eating Frenchmen, and the French ridicule the Belgians. Belgians and others have jokes about Dutchmen and the Dutch can tell you all about the Germans. As in America, Polish jokes are popular in Germany, and Poles have endless stories about perfectly idiotic Russian Communists. A few years ago Armenian radio jokes were all the rage in Russia, and Armenians have
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer
Dear Colleagues, Reading the emails on the $100 computer it occurred to me that together you have painted the picture: 1. Yes, we can technically make an affordable Information Access Device (IOD). Looking at the cell phone prices and the success of the pay-as-you-go model for instance in Africa, I'd say we can provide a $100 'computer'. All the ingredients are there and most were mentioned: Open Source (Linux in particular), (Very) Thin Clients, systems on chips, cheap wireless networks, affordable flat screen technology, etc. 2. No, this won't solve anything because in Very Low Income Communities (VLIC) people have little incentive to use it. The device itself does not address real, often very short term needs of VLICs (who are using a 3G phone). 3. Yes, Refurbished computer schemes, and there are many, already solve the $100 computer issue on a small scale ... but no, you can not easily source, prepare and deliver a million refurbished devices. Logistics will rapidly drive up the price of any large scale refurbishment scheme near to the cost of massively produced new 'computers'. The earlier reference to a small UK charity preparing delivery of the refurbs, underlines this point. There is also the issue of ... 4. Technical support Technical support in outlying areas may be the number one enemy of sustainable ICT access. Many people have mentioned this in conjunction with skills development, another costly affair. The IOD mentioned under point (1) will have to deal with both, e.g. by developing very robust, remotely servicable devices with little or no moving parts and by incentivising the growth of voluntary based support communities and support centres. Using Free and/or Open Source inspired communities seem to lead the way here. The success of a newly developed IOD will depend, in my view, on two things: 1. Address the issue of relevance head on. Computers in schools are nice but we have a crisis on our hands where people have no income, compromised well-being (health etc) and social disruption (child headed families, child soldiers etc). Any new IOD can only sell itself on the basis of relevant user-centric services that deal with this more or less directly. Of course these services can only be articulated by the target benificiaries in non technical terms and will differ completely from place to place, audience to audience. 2. Community. At all levels. Just as the end-to-end Internet community fused with Open Source to create the little miracle called Linux, we need to marry a IOD+service effort with a strong sense of community. Given there is already a plethora of low cost access initiatives, we can start by working together on this. Simputer, Freeplay, Worldspace and others have discovered how difficult it is to succeed in emerging markets like Africa. Only by working together (open standards, open frameworks) could we hope to cover all the angles. The challenge and potential is big enough for all. Bas Kotterink Programme Manager OpenSea.nl Minister Loudonlaan 82 Enschede, NL [EMAIL PROTECTED] (after 1 Mar 05) ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer: A Polite Scam
On 2/15/05, Robert Spear wrote: In an ongoing project in Rwanda, my college has been involved in a very cost-effective partnership with the National University of Rwanda, to deliver computer literacy training to 65 secondary schools. Basically, we have trained a master teacher-trainer from each school, then outfitted that teacher with sufficient materials and incentives to train the other teachers in his/her secondary school. Participating schools have received computer equipment from various donor sources (not part of our project). We would like to replicate this model for every secondary school in the country, currently 413 schools, but the price of computers is a stumbling block. Not the only stumbling block, of course, but one of them. The $100 computer would go a long way toward removing that stumbling block. Hi Bob, The $100 computer problem has already been solved in Rwanda using refurbished computers. E-ICT Training Center, in Kigali, Rwanda provides for around $120 refurbished computers by the thousands. They go to Schools, Administrations and NGOs. We currently get these refurbished computers from London, UK, from a non-profit organization called Computer Aid. Very shortly we will be getting another source of these computers: Computers for Peace from Sonoma, California, will start shipping pre-owned computers in April. For the last 4 months, we provided about 2,000 refurbished computers mainly to schools and NGOs. Please, contact the teachers you trained, if they have not acquired yet their 100-dollar computer, they should get in touch with E-ICT's Liliane Umurerwa, [EMAIL PROTECTED], tel: 08539601. When Negroponte's $100 new computers are released by the MIT spin-off in 18 months, we hope they allow ordering less than 1 million computers as Rwanda does not need that many. Antoine Bigirimana CEO, E-ICT [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer: A Polite Scam
Dear Colleagues, At times I feel that this idea falls prey to the typical techie approach, as if attempting to switch off too many problems with one magic circuit design! It seems we jump to developing entire systems based on latest technology (StrongArm processor et al), which is itself derived through layers of observing market trends in developed markets and dovetailing those needs with progressively advanced features, adapting the latest applied and basic research available, then assume some kind of watered down version of those computing needs for first-time-computer-user markets and produce some kind of a one-size-fits-all mini wizard...Pardon me, but this is what I have observed from the Simputer and Lindows program onwards. Instead, would it not be a better idea to make cheap microprocessor trainer-developer kits and overcome all barriers in marketing these to institutions, community bodies, ICT organisations, etc? The 8085, it seems, survives only for these purposes. Local beneficiaries can then develop and standardise their own systems, with a little help from local institutes. Maybe they would be better able to specify and order more advanced devices and materials too. BW TV technology was passed on to small-scale industries in India during the 1970s via the Central Electronic Engineering Research Institute (CEERI) by readapting a circuit and standardising local sources of components, materials, testing, assembly and QC procedures. This got the local industry going and later this need for CEERI involvement was obviated on this front. What we have, as I see in India is the ingenuity of (akin to the Scandinavian Google promoter whose name I forget, who built a printer from junk parts) re-conditioning and servicing entire machines including electronic plain-paper copiers and electric typewriters, wherein local machinists and moulders have been tapped, by ingenious local repairers, into re-fabricating parts and sub-assemblies of imported machines, whose manufacturers have shut shop, realigned their Indian collaborations, or phased out production. Even if this practice is questioned by big manufacturers and their network, it saved the large amounts of capital invested in the many thousands of photocopy and typing shops all over India. It also saved the reputation of the big names who no doubt hid behind their fine print to leave thousands of customers in the lurch. As the old adage goes, feeding a hungry person with a fish relieves hunger for few hours; teaching the person to fish relieves hunger forever. regards udit chaudhuri http://micropower.blogspot.com ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer
On Thursday, 17 February 2005, Kris Dev wrote: To my mind, what is required is 5 to 10 community computers available in every village at Indian Rs. 9,000 (USD 200) per computer that can be run on solar power with Wireless Local Loop (WLL) internet connection 24x7 at a very low cost. If this can be ensured, there can be lot of progress from learning to applications. Can this be possible? Yes, as soon as the microbanks figure out what software they need in what languages, and how to train the users and support people. Grameen has two such projects, and there is another by the Sarvodaya Movement in Sri Lanka. Bhutan is already experimenting with Simputers to deliver e-mail to villages over their recently-built national wireless network. -- Edward Cherlin Generalist activist--Linux, languages, literacy and more A knot! Oh, do let me help to undo it! --Alice in Wonderland http://cherlin.blogspot.com ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer
On 2/10/05, Parker Rossman wrote: I hope the major computer companies will in time consent for it to be manufactured in the developing world. I suppose Negroponte knows about developments in India, and hopes that mass production can make it cheaper. It isn't a question of permission. Simputers are being made in India and Singapore, and oneVillage Foundation is planning for eventual assembly in Africa, including training the technicians. -- Edward Cherlin Generalist activist--Linux, languages, literacy and more A knot! Oh, do let me help to undo it! --Alice in Wonderland http://cherlin.blogspot.com ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer: A Polite Scam
Dear Colleagues, As I started working in the Personal Computer field in 1981 (showing my age here) and have been involved non-stop in this field since then, I feel as though I might be able to provide some insight. Is the $100 computer a scam, as has been suggested? I guess we need to clearly define what is a computer. If we are to include what is known as handheld computers in this class I believe we can safely say there already is a sub-$100 computer. Conversely, if we choose to define a computer as either the standard desktop model we are all too familiar with or the off-the-shelf notebook, suggesting that there will never be a sub-$100 computer is at best naive. I recall the first calculator I purchased many years ago for far too much money. They are now available as free promotional items. The same holds true for digital watches. I believe computers will also follow that path but we probably have several more years to wait until this comes to pass. With respect to the actual use of a computer, my question is what would be useful in many of these situations? Certainly a Linux or Windows based system is all but useless to someone who is illiterate. As someone who still consults in this computer and networking field, I can say with all certainty that the key is to match the user's needs with a system that will provide for those needs, yet still have enough capacity to grow with the user for the next couple of years. This is a delicate balance, as recommending a computer that is too limited will frustrate the customer as they quickly outgrow the system and it needs to be replaced, while recommending a much better computer than the customer needs will saddle them with something far more expensive than can be honestly justified. Perhaps we need to look at who we are trying to help with these devices and what their needs are. Supplying a third grade student with a computer that has the capability to manipulate huge spreadsheets is certainly a waste if all we are looking to do is provide a simple device that can have this week's lessons loaded on to it. Even the simplest handheld devices could well be reworked to handle this task. However, if we are talking about someone trying to run a small to medium business, a handheld might be an inappropriate recommendation if accounting, communications and a number of other complex tasks need to be assigned to the device. Respectfully, Ken DiPietro New-ISP NextGenCommunications ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer: A Polite Scam
Dear GKD Members, All posts on this subject are interesting. Obviously, cheaper computers are a good thing. Just as obviously, even if they were free, that would not make them a silver bullet. Why does this remind me of close personal observation in Taiwan related to a young salesman, 30 years ago, who, ultimately, made fortunes in the chicken business? I am not sure; but let me tell you the story. The salesman, Y.C. Chang, started off peddling American poultry pharmaceuticals, a rough tough business because not one farmer in a hundred could afford the goodies offered. Because of the cash and is it worth it? questions, Y.C. developed this funny idea - at least funny at the time. What YC did was loan chicken farmers the money they needed for the drugs and equipment -- but only to farmers who would follow rigorous procedures which required sweat and diligence, but very little cash. (Mostly this involved keeping the coops and surroundings hospital clean. This alone increased productivity sufficient to allow payment for the more exotic stuff Y.C. sold.) Unsatisfied to simply grow fatter chickens cheaper, Y.C. also helped his customers improve the marketing - bringing along the idea of a safe to eat frozen chicken. The rest is history. In a couple decades, Y.C. became one of the richest men in Taiwan. How does this relate to cheap computers? Perhaps all that technology investment inside schools is not where the resources should be devoted? Perhaps some hard decisions should be made as to which users can have the quickest benefit? How many farmers could use a computer? How many small business operators? How many trade schools with the ability to get data processing work (from abroad) for their graduates? How many professors for their own use? How many teachers to improve their deliveries? What kind of rationing makes the most sense? If the computers have real value, why should they go, automatically, into schools open short hours only four or five days a week? And closed in the summer? Why not in telecenters? post offices? the basement of the biggest bank? Places where one can calculate a return on investment which might well show that the price of the computer is hardly a factor at all. Does this mean children should have computers? Learn computer skills? Of course not. But can those children go to where the computers are -- as vs. taking cheap computers to where they go to school? I don't have any good answers to these questions. And most of this field has been ploughed many times by people a whole lot smarter and more experienced than I. But the story of Y.C. Chang in Taiwan and how he improved chicken productivity is worthy of contemplationat least methinks so. John Hibbs http://www.bfranklin.edu ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer
To my mind, what is required is 5 to 10 community computers available in every village at Indian Rs. 9,000 (USD 200) per computer that can be run on solar power with Wireless Local Loop (WLL) internet connection 24x7 at a very low cost. If this can be ensured, there can be lot of progress from learning to applications. Can this be possible? Kris Dev, Tr-Ac-Net, Chennai, India, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://ll2b.blogspot.com and Peter Burgess, Tr-Ac-Net, New York, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://Tr-Ac-Net.blogspot.com ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
[GKD] The $100 Computer and the Jhai PC
Dear Colleagues, I hope this finds you well. I have been following all the various threads on GKD with interest and wish to comment on this one. Thanks to all of you. The Jhai PC and communication system is prominently mentioned as are the MIT and Via projects in the EE Times: http://www.eet.com/issue/fp/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=59301178 Our project is different from the others in seven ways: (1) Our process includes a consumer-designed, well thought-out business model for village implementers to use for their own self-realized and customized development. This business model was developed by villagers and with a local internet cafe owner and Stanford business and engineering students. It is for villages without electricity or telephones of any kind. 2. It was developed in response to well expressed community needs of remote Lao villagers. 3. We have built, tested, and installed briefly our system already in Laos, but we had to bring the system back to the US due to a political glitch. This glitch was not related to regulatory or technical issues. I own the glitch. 4. We are preparing for thorough proof of concept (POC) and betas using prototypes. 5. Ours is an open source, ***open design*** project. 6. We, too, expect the price of production versions of the Jhai PC and communication system to drop hugely, but we will not project that cost until we have finished preliminary research. The next version of the PC will have no moving parts. Our computers are designed for very harsh conditions. 7. We project being in the consulting business, not the hardware or software business. Projections are just projections. No one knows the future. We are preparing for a Proof of Concept (POC) on the Navajo reservation in accord with the desires and vision of a school district there. If everything continues to go well, we expect to be up in mid-to-late March. Lee Felsenstein is Jhai Foundation's chief volunteer designer and engineer and is still deeply involved in our project. He and I have been helped by nearly 100 volunteer engineers, IT managers, programmers, and marketing people over 2 1/2 years. During the last two months, thanks to Cisco Foundation's help via Teachers without Borders, and in cooperation with Intel on the social side, we have employed four people at non-profit rates to: 1. finish the software, 2. wrap up the hardware (under Lee Felsenstein's leadership), 3. assemble, 4. document, 5. develop training materials for, 6. and test our equipment prior to the POC. Our hard-working, very experienced staffers, Jim Stockford, Alex Rudis, Gerard Cerchio, and Jon Toler, join Lee Felsenstein and Stan Osborne and other volunteers. You can follow our progress at http://69.17.55.171 I am going to China, Laos and India next week for discussions preliminary to memorandi of understanding with prominent non-governmental organizations in each country. ***I will bring a Jhai PC with me on my Asian trip.*** In China we are in discussions with the Amity Foundation. In India we are in preliminary discussions with Datamation Foundation Trust, which we hope will lead to an MOU. In Laos we continue discussions with the government and other potential partners. We expect to be lead implementers in Laos, if that works. We are looking at various kinds of beta tests in each of these locations. We are also in earlier stage discussions in South Africa, Congo, Namibia, Mozambique, and several other countries. We have plans for a consulting firm allied to or within our non-governmental organization to facilitate the roll-out of our project. What we project is: 1. to give away our plans and software 2. and pass on our growing knowledge base on a professional basis. We would like to have a well-established, very grounded NGO partner in the Southern part of the Americas. Other than that, we can only open discussions with others, now. We cannot commit to any more activity until we believe our research substantiates our process and open source, open design products. I am not a techie. I am lucky to work with caring people with great technical expertise. I started this work because I was involved in the American bombing of Laos many years ago and I wanted to help people there, who actually were helping me heal by their compassion and ability to be present. Some of these villagers decided they could use IT and communication devices as a way to increase their income ***without losing their culture***. We are helping poor people with similar ideas and we are helping people like us who understand this situation, either first-hand or from deep and continuing direct discussions with poor people themselves. We need partners who can help us fund this development and scheme. We have a business plan. I hope our gift helps poor people in exactly the way they choose. We are not selling to poor people. We are partnering with poor people. Our ultimate gift is our process. The medium is the message. The article follows
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer: A Polite Scam
Dear Colleagues, The questions are certainly justified to be posed, but it is likely that the major computer manufacturers would have looked at the market feasibility, which demands huge resource investments. The Simputer in India costs $200 which many Indian families still cannot afford. So the poor will certainly not buy them. It has been used in villages as a community device customized for specific jobs, such as e-trading for farmers. Such a specialized use requires customization by the company that promotes it, and this customization necessitates a working partnership with various organizations and government agencies, active at the grassroots level. A mass promotion would work when the Simputer is as trendy and classy as handheld devices, if it has to be pitched with the existing PDAs from the mobile/computer manufacturers. The market price of all these models is the same. Simputer is a good but expensive option to bridge the digital divide. It will certainly be the most preferred option in the future with active and mutually beneficial partnerships. Regards, Sachin * Sachin Joshi Researcher Centre for Social Markets website: www.csmworld.org INDIA OFFICE: 39 Hindusthan Park Kolkata 700 029, India Tel: +91-33-2465 5898/ 2465 5711/2/3 Fax: +91-33-2465 5650 Delhi Mobile: +91-98911 08738 UK OFFICE: 1, Trafalgar Avenue London SE15 6NP United Kingdom Tel/Fax: +44-20-7231 3457 *** ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer
On 2/10/05, Parker Rossman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I hope the major computer companies will in time consent for it to be manufactured in the developing world. I suppose Negroponte knows about developments in India, and hopes that mass production can make it cheaper. I don't think it will be a problem with manufacturing these devices or their evolutionary descendents in developing countries. Check where your cell phone and its components were made. The point of the post was not to herald the arrival of a device which was to finally get ICT's to the masses but to point out that technology goes through a well understood process of development and I suspect that we will find smart technologies which far exceed today's computers printed on a piece of material that can be folded up and tossed when we are through with it. I think Sam's post hits the nail on the head when he points out that part of the problem lies in the NGO community and its alphabet variances and, I might add, also, with the pundits, many in the academic community, and policy analysts, who default to technology such as computers as if these would close both the digital and economic divides rather than just adding another consumer product to a neoclassical model of economic development and social change. thoughts? tom abeles ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer: A Polite Scam
Dear GKD Colleagues, This is an interesting posting, and worth unpicking. Sam Lanfranco has just posted a wonderfully incisive analysis of these 'offers'. Even the much vaunted Simputer becomes questionable under this analysis. I want to take Sam's analysis a little further. (1) If these computers are so great, why aren't they being sold this side of the digital divide? Can't people in the North/West also benefit from these cheap computers? The answer is that it is not in the interests of the hardware and software suppliers to sell us these, when we have been so willingly (reluctantly?) buying much more expensive equipment, forced upon us in a cycle of planned obsolescence of incompatible bloat-ware releases. So what do they do to prevent it? They supply software that we would not find useful, reduced Windows systems, limited software that will not communicate across the divide. And meanwhile they attack the potential open-sources that do deliver useful software. I yearn for those days when office software was sufficient for my purpose and did not fail from over-weight functionality. (2) The objective of such enterprises is to give voice to the poor and the marginalised, in precisely the same way that literacy programmes can, and local community radio stations can. Sam points this out, but lets emphasise this, enabling access to ICTs is not so much to enable the South to access the 'truths' from the West, it is to enable 'truths' to flow the other way. And to do that means we must recognise linguistic diversity and support and respect that, so that the ICTs so cavalierly being offered do work in other languages and scripts, and that there are translation paths between languages, and there is support for those many who are not literate. This is a big enterprise, not a matter for $100 handouts from the West, but an enterprise for us all on both sides of the digital divide to combine our expertises and make it happen. Pat Hall, Global Initiative for Local Computing Limerick University Ireland and Open University UK ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
Re: [GKD] The $100 Computer
Dear GKD Members, There was a very good segment on the BBC radio programme Go Digital this week on the $100 computer with an interview with Mr. Negroponte as well as input from several commentators. The BBC makes the programme available on its site for a week (in this case, I believe until this Sunday, 13 February) as a webcast. I would highly recommend that anyone who is interested in the topic go to listen to it. The web site address is: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/ and the link to the Go Digital webcast is in the lower right hand corner of the screen. The segment starts by saying that it is going to do bits on the Samaritan e-mail service and an auction of documents related to computing history - but the 10 minute section on the $100 computer follows immediately after. Some of the more interesting comments made on the BBC show were related to the difficulties of effectively using these computers on such a large scale in the developing world (Negroponte is talking about using them to replace textbooks in schools) and the issues related to reliable power sources (for charging batteries) and affordable, working Internet access (for downloading school material) - not to mention questions related to reading and computer literacy/user training. Best regards, Virginia Cram-Martos ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
[GKD] The $100 Computer
Dear GKD Members, This article appeared in Red Herring, a publication focusing on the capital markets. thoughts? tom abeles The Hundred-buck PC MIT's Nicholas Negroponte Pushes a Cheap PC for the Rest of the World January 29, 2005 The founder and chairman of the MIT Media Lab wants to create a $100 portable computer for the developing world. Nicholas Negroponte, author of Being Digital and the Wiesner Professor of Media Technology at MIT, says he has obtained promises of support from a number of major companies, including Advanced Micro Devices, Google, Motorola, Samsung, and News Corp. The low-cost computer will have a 14-inch color screen, AMD chips, and will run Linux software, Mr. Negroponte said during an interview Friday with Red Herring at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. AMD is separately working on a cheap desktop computer for emerging markets. It will be sold to governments for wide distribution. Mr. Negroponte and his supporters are planning to create a company that would manufacture and market the new portable PCs, with MIT as one of the stakeholders. It is unclear precisely what role the other four companies will play, although Mr. Negroponte hopes News Corp. will help with satellite capacity. An engineering prototype is nearly ready, with alpha units expected by year's end and real production around 18 months from now, he said. The portable PCs will be shipped directly to education ministries, with China first on the list. Only orders of 1 million or more units will be accepted. Mr. Negroponte's idea is to develop educational software and have the portable personal computer replace textbooks in schools in much the same way that France's Minitel videotext terminal, which was developed by France Telecom in the 1980s, became a substitute for phone books. Mr. Negroponte has been interested in developing computing in the developing world for some time. He and his wife have funded three schools in rural Cambodia, helping outfit them with regular laptops and broadband connections. Major companies from Hewlett-Packard to Microsoft to Dupont, facing saturated markets in the richest industrial countries, have shown an interest in developing less expensive products to sell in low-income countries in south Asia, Africa, and Latin America. ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/
