Mediating Poverty, How So?
15 Aug 2005 09:40 AM / Filed in: Misc
In his From the Editor's column in the August 2005 issue of MIT's Technology Review, Jason Pontin covers Mr. Negroponte's Hundred-Dollar Laptop or HDL. Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of MIT's Media Lab, told U.S. IT industry leaders his hope to build many HDLs starting from 2006 in order to get an HDL in every child's hand since he believes that education is paramount to solve many problems.
Jason Pontin tells us this:
The HDL has a number of other, intriguing features. Since many villages in the poor world do not have electricity, the machines may be powered by either a crank or "parasitic power"--that is, typing. Once turned on, HDLs will automatically connect to one another using a "mesh network" initially developed at MIT and the Media Lab. In the mesh network each laptop serves as an information-relaying node. Households that have HDLs will be able to communicate with each other by e-mail or voice calls [...]
Jason Pontin ends up his column by asking if the readers think the HDL (which has its own website now) could be built. I answered him by stating the obvious: the HDL has already been built. Here is my answer:
Hi there Jason,
I've read with great interest your "From the editor" column on the Aug. 05 issue of Technology Review. As such, I would like to answer your question about whether the HDL could be built or not. The answer is pretty obvious: The HDL has already been built and for much less than a hundred dollars. I'd rather call it the LTHDM (Less-Than-Hundred-Dollar-Machine).
There are millions of LTHDM units waiting for people to use them but very few actually think of doing so. Instead they are sent to China and other countries to be dismantled and to contribute to more pollution of the environment. Yes, I'm speaking about your 3/4 years old desktop machine. And the machines of your coworkers, neighbours, friends, family etc etc etc. Just get a look at eBay. There are thousands if not millions of PCs that cannot satisfy the dominant desktop operating system and some of its bloated applications due to lack of RAM, hard drive, processor speed or some other hardware feature. And given the proper structure (local associations, negotating shipment contracts, volunteers to set up the machines and so on), we can really get LTHDM units for a very interesting price.
So instead of offering poor children machines that have not been field-tested, let's ship them our old machines loaded with a *BSD or GNU/Linux free operating system that will run like a charm on them. Instead of concentrating on new technology, let's focus on the real needs of those peoples and in the process, we may spare the environment some troubles.
Instead of reinventing the wheel, Mr. Negroponte should start thinking about how to get the proper infrastructure to buy LTHDM units, test and prepare them (by stripping too-demanding components for his "parasitic power" technology for example) then ship them to the peoples in need. I just don't get it why we have to built new machines while we already have millions of them that will handle the task at hand very well. We can also mesh them in a way that will allow us to have one or two "big iron" LTHDM units in a meshed network while the other are pretty much "dumb" terminals. And we have almost (all?) the technology today to do so and more.
As a final note, we should drop once and for all this "western" view of the World and go ask these peoples whether should we spend a hundred dollars in a computer
and Internet access or in healthcare and nutrition.
What do you think? Let me know at saad@docisland.org.
Jason Pontin tells us this:
The HDL has a number of other, intriguing features. Since many villages in the poor world do not have electricity, the machines may be powered by either a crank or "parasitic power"--that is, typing. Once turned on, HDLs will automatically connect to one another using a "mesh network" initially developed at MIT and the Media Lab. In the mesh network each laptop serves as an information-relaying node. Households that have HDLs will be able to communicate with each other by e-mail or voice calls [...]
Jason Pontin ends up his column by asking if the readers think the HDL (which has its own website now) could be built. I answered him by stating the obvious: the HDL has already been built. Here is my answer:
Hi there Jason,
I've read with great interest your "From the editor" column on the Aug. 05 issue of Technology Review. As such, I would like to answer your question about whether the HDL could be built or not. The answer is pretty obvious: The HDL has already been built and for much less than a hundred dollars. I'd rather call it the LTHDM (Less-Than-Hundred-Dollar-Machine).
There are millions of LTHDM units waiting for people to use them but very few actually think of doing so. Instead they are sent to China and other countries to be dismantled and to contribute to more pollution of the environment. Yes, I'm speaking about your 3/4 years old desktop machine. And the machines of your coworkers, neighbours, friends, family etc etc etc. Just get a look at eBay. There are thousands if not millions of PCs that cannot satisfy the dominant desktop operating system and some of its bloated applications due to lack of RAM, hard drive, processor speed or some other hardware feature. And given the proper structure (local associations, negotating shipment contracts, volunteers to set up the machines and so on), we can really get LTHDM units for a very interesting price.
So instead of offering poor children machines that have not been field-tested, let's ship them our old machines loaded with a *BSD or GNU/Linux free operating system that will run like a charm on them. Instead of concentrating on new technology, let's focus on the real needs of those peoples and in the process, we may spare the environment some troubles.
Instead of reinventing the wheel, Mr. Negroponte should start thinking about how to get the proper infrastructure to buy LTHDM units, test and prepare them (by stripping too-demanding components for his "parasitic power" technology for example) then ship them to the peoples in need. I just don't get it why we have to built new machines while we already have millions of them that will handle the task at hand very well. We can also mesh them in a way that will allow us to have one or two "big iron" LTHDM units in a meshed network while the other are pretty much "dumb" terminals. And we have almost (all?) the technology today to do so and more.
As a final note, we should drop once and for all this "western" view of the World and go ask these peoples whether should we spend a hundred dollars in a computer
and Internet access or in healthcare and nutrition.
What do you think? Let me know at saad@docisland.org.