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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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 Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 7:07 pm Post subject: M.I.T.'s $100 laptops for kids |
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No Child left behind?
Time to see if Bush will put his money where is mouth is- make sure every kid has a laptop.
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Design of $100 Laptop for Kids Unveiled
By BRIAN BERGSTEIN, AP Technology Writer Wed Sep 28, 3:24 PM ET
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The $100 laptop computers that Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers want to get into the hands of the world's children would be durable, flexible and self-reliant.
The machines' AC adapter would double as a carrying strap, and a hand crank would power them when there's no electricity. They'd be foldable into more positions than traditional notebook PCs, and carried like slim lunchboxes.
For outdoor reading, their display would be able to shift from full color to glare-resistant black and white.
And surrounding it all, the laptops would have a rubber casing that closes tightly, because "they have to be absolutely indestructible," said Nicholas Negroponte, the MIT Media Lab leader who offered an update on the project Wednesday.
Negroponte hatched the $100 laptop idea after seeing children in a Cambodian village benefit from having notebook computers at school that they could also tote home to use on their own.
Those computers had been donated by a foundation run by Negroponte and his wife. He decided that for kids everywhere to benefit from the educational and communications powers of the Internet, someone would have to make laptops inexpensive enough for officials in developing countries to purchase en masse. At least that's Negroponte's plan.
Within a year, Negroponte expects his nonprofit One Laptop Per Child to get 5 million to 15 million of the machines in production, when children in Brazil, China, Egypt, Thailand, South Africa are due to begin getting them.
In the second year — when Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney hopes to start buying them for all 500,000 middle and high-school students in this state — Negroponte envisions 100 million to 150 million being made. (He boasts that these humble $100 notebooks would surpass the world's existing annual production of laptops, which is about 50 million.)
While a prototype isn't expected to be shown off until November, Negroponte unveiled blueprints at Technology Review magazine's Emerging Technologies conference at MIT.
Among the key specs: A 500-megahertz processor (that was fast in the 1990s but slow by today's standards) by Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and flash memory instead of a hard drive with moving parts. To save on software costs, the laptops would run the freely available
Linux operating system instead of Windows.
The computers would be able to connect to Wi-Fi wireless networks and be part of "mesh" networks in which each laptop would relay data to and from other devices, reducing the need for expensive base stations. Plans call for the machines to have four USB ports for multimedia and data storage.
Perhaps the defining difference is the hand crank, though first-generation users would get no more than 10 minutes of juice from one minute of winding.
This certainly wouldn't be the first effort to bridge the world's so-called digital divide with inexpensive versions of fancy machinery. Other attempts have had a mixed record.
With those in mind, Negroponte says his team is addressing ways this project could be undermined.
For example, to keep the $100 laptops from being widely stolen or sold off in poor countries, he expects to make them so pervasive in schools and so distinctive in design that it would be "socially a stigma to be carrying one if you are not a student or a teacher." He compared it to filching a mail truck or taking something from a church: Everyone would know where it came from.
As a result, he expects to keep no more than 2 percent of the machines from falling into a murky "gray market."
And unlike the classic computing model in which successive generations of devices get more gadgetry at the same price, Negroponte said his group expects to do the reverse. With such tweaks as "electronic ink" displays that will require virtually no power, the MIT team expects to constantly lower the cost.
After all, in much of the world, Negroponte said, even $100 "is still too expensive."
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On the Net:
http://laptop.media.mit.edu |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 9:05 pm Post subject: |
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The laptop was actually "invented" by PARC (Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center) back in the early '70s specifically for children. A PARC researcher Alan Kay came up with the idea for the "dynabook", a portable computer children could use. Since computers were still the size of a fridge and the tech to make a laptop was still in the future, Kay worked on the other stuff. Children couldn't remember computer commands so he invented Windows. Children couldn't use keyboards well so he invented the mouse. Kay eventually took all his ideas to Apple and created the Powerbook laptop (Dynabook ... Powerbook). Of course it wasn't for children.
Apple did eventually release a laptop for kids based on the Apple Newton called the Emate. It ended up being very popular with the Newton crowd and the Cult of the Mac. Oddly enough, Apple's biggest customer base wasn't allowed to buy the Emate. You could only buy one if you were a student. In terms of design, the Emate was the first Apple computer to use the translucent plastic shell that would later change industrial design when Apple released its first iMac/iBook. |
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Demonicat
Joined: 18 Nov 2004
Location: Suwon
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| Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 11:27 pm Post subject: |
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| Sorry, but....POOR COUNTRIES DON'T NEED MICROSOFT WORD OR STARCRAFT, THEY NEED FOOD, CLEAN WATER, AND MEDICANE. Its a cool idea and all- for the developed world, but in Africa, southeast Asia, and South America, I can't see it playing off well. Besides, where would they take the computers to be serviced or repaired? hell, even a basic literary program would be better. |
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Swiss James
Joined: 26 Nov 2003
Location: Shanghai
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| Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 11:39 pm Post subject: |
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I think the idea is that teaching kids how to read and write isn't enough, for people to genuinely pull themselves out of poverty they need to have modern skills- and right now computer skills fit the bill.
These guys are running similar programs already
http://www.geekcorps.org/ |
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Demonicat
Joined: 18 Nov 2004
Location: Suwon
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| Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 11:44 pm Post subject: |
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| Met a few geek corps guys in Mali. Most of the work that they did was involving the radio. Developing a national way for people to transmit information is an important task. Yes, people will need modern skills eventually, but I just don't see it. A $100 laptop isn't going to teach the kids enough to compete on an international scale. Hell, all that will do is teach the kids how to type. Admittedly, the lucky few who make it to the bid city or even into an industrialized nation won't have to be janitors anymore...but is being a secretary much better. For S--ts and giggles, imagine a Cambodian coming to Korea to look for a job in tech....yeah... |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 2:54 am Post subject: |
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| Demonicat wrote: |
| Sorry, but....POOR COUNTRIES DON'T NEED MICROSOFT WORD OR STARCRAFT, THEY NEED FOOD, CLEAN WATER, AND MEDICANE. Its a cool idea and all- for the developed world, but in Africa, southeast Asia, and South America, I can't see it playing off well. Besides, where would they take the computers to be serviced or repaired? hell, even a basic literary program would be better. |
Sure but there are also some brilliant young minds that if they had access to a cheap computer could become the next Bill Gates... or at least the next H1B tech worker who moves to the USA for 3 years, learns a lot of skills, gets kicked out, and then opens up a company in his backwater nation to compete, providing jobs for hundreds...
For example, think of Indian math prodigy Srinivasa Ramanujan. The guy was dirt poor, couldn't afford paper, would work out all his mathematical proofs on a slate. Of course he'd have to erase his work to work on the next bit. He would just kind of prove a theorem to himself and then state it as fact, requiring other mathematicians to go back and duplicate his work... |
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Demonicat
Joined: 18 Nov 2004
Location: Suwon
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 4:09 am Post subject: |
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| I guess what I'm trying to say is that instead of sending these laptops to the jungles and deserts, they should give them to the underprivallaged kids int he US, Canada, UK, Mexico, etc. Kids who have a greater chance of being able to prosper due to this opportunity. |
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ulsanchris
Joined: 19 Jun 2003
Location: take a wild guess
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 4:21 am Post subject: |
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| developing countries need cell phones and telecommunication networks more than laptops. but then they need all the help they can get so i don't htink it is that bad of an idea. |
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cheem
Joined: 18 Apr 2003
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| Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 5:24 am Post subject: |
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Isn't this forum hosted on one of those things?
"Uh oh, MySQL connection errors. Time to crank up the server again." |
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