CTRL + ALT + DEL, The $100 Handcranked Computer
U.S. + computers + helping developing nations + big opportunity = No Microsoft. Now how could that equation possibly be? Try Negroponte who is in the news again with his One Laptop Per Child Non-Profit that is going to help decrease the Digital Divide between first and third world nations. He is the guy who co-founded the MIT Media Lab in 1985 with his well-practiced commentary on how the laboratory, spending $25 million a year (reaching $40 million by 2003), is engineering the merger of newspapers, television, entertainment, learning, and computers. (Wired 3.08 1995). Mr. Negroponte is the man touting a $100 computer for the masses. If his work over the last 10 years at MIT is to be reality and the world of consumerism is to continue to permeate every nook and cranny of even the poorest reaches of the earth then he better damn well be ready to get $100 computers in the hands of all those potential consumers, uh I mean children, in third world nations who wake up every morning with their first priority finding enough food to eat to survive just one more day.
Negroponte, not to be confused with his early 1980’s Nicaraguan Contra orchestrating, despot corrupt government backing, illegal arms for contras directing and international drug traffic ignoring brother John (though he crashes at his place from time to time), Nicholas, also the son of Dimitri, the Greek Shipping Magnate, has had a respectable academic career in technology. He has successfully leveraged his elite upbringing and spent nearly 4 decades at MIT where he founded and ran MIT Media Lab, a large technology department in one of America’s elite education institutions until 2000. His inside contacts have put him in the position of being able to capitalize on some very interesting start up companies including including Zagats, Wired Ambient Devices, and Skype (the latter having just been purchased for a cool $2.6 Billion in a deal worth potentially $4 Billion over time). He also has managed to form some very interesting alliances in his new quest to get the merging of newspapers, television, entertainment, learning & computers. His One Laptop Per Child partners include Google, Advanced Micro Devices, News Corp., Red Hat and Brightstar? Anyway, does this lineup look like anything familiar? Perhaps you could call it 21st Century Global Domination the Negroponte way. Or perhaps you could say, having developing world governments purchase $100 computers for their children who currently receive about $24 per year in health care or $45 per year in education is a good thing. Well for some reason the World Bank or UN don’t think this a top priority. The Bank puts Education, Health and Water on top.
Having illiterate people who’s only “economy” is producing, finding or slaving for enough food to stay alive each day get their hands on a $100 PC seems a bit more of an intellectual feel good story than any kind of useful benefit. I mean I don’t want to get in the way of some coffee induced self contained intellectual mental orgasm of what the future looks like in their techno centric view of the world but a more practical view would be presented by Sadruddin Aga Khan in his article in AL-AHRAM, Cairo, “The fact remains, however, that 80 countries now have per capita incomes lower than they were a decade ago, and the number of people living in poverty (those who earn less than $1 a day) is stuck stubbornly at 1.2 billion, while those earning less than $2 per day number almost 3 billion.” Did I say 3 billion? Isn’t that like
Tags: computer, hand cranked computer, Media Lab, Proctor, Shonika, Wired