Nicholas Negroponte came out today and turned us upside down. Instead of follwing the theme, he flipped it and to great effect. He showed us the powernot of humanizing technology but of humanizing humans. Technology is only human if it is useful, if it is relevant. If it stimulates thinking about thinking, thinking about what it means to be human.
Negroponte and the MIT Media Lab have 'changed the game' with laptop.org and the One Laptop per Child movement. The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, with a dual-mode display—both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white reflective and sunlight-readable at 3× the resolution. The laptop will have a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have four USB ports. The laptops will have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network. The laptops will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data.
Cute huh? He's serious. And the question on everyone lips? How? From the most 'productive' country on the planet - How?
* First, by dramatically lowering the cost of the display. The first-generation machine will have a novel, dual-mode display that represents improvements to the LCD displays commonly found in inexpensive DVD players. These displays can be used in high-resolution black and white in bright sunlight—all at a cost of approximately $35.
* Second, we will get the fat out of the systems. Today's laptops have become obese. Two-thirds of their software is used to manage the other third, which mostly does the same functions nine different ways.
* Third, we will market the laptops in very large numbers (millions), directly to ministries of education, which can distribute them like textbooks.
Next question: Why can't we do this here? Which has been preemtively answered by Bill Gates when he poo-pooed the idea by saying,"If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type."
And for those who think cranking up a laptop (that incidentally requires 10 times less power than a windows machine) if the power goes out (or if you have no power to begin with) isn't a bad trade for a $100 machine built in collaboration with Google, AMD, Red Hat and Brightstar, he clarifies that, "Hardware is a small part of the cost" of providing a PC, he noted, adding that the biggest costs come from network connectivity, support, and, er, applications. Which in his world (our world) is absolutely correct.
However, if you have the temerity to not live in Bill's World, hardware is the expensive part. How can this be you ask when a stand-alone copy of XP rolls for $150 retail? Linux. Open Office. Firefox. Lightweight, reliable, modern and, wait for it, free.
These essential pieces of software were built collaboratively for the purpose of what? Making money? No, though you can make money with them. The purpose is to democratize the tools that connect humans. The tools that let humans continue to be human by freeing the means of connecting and collaborating. Of creating Identity and Audience. These means have been tightly controlled by a myopic productionist mentality.
Imagine you grow your own food. You and your family and perhaps your neighbors depend on you for some of the food essential to your lifestyle. A simple hoe is required to work and maintain this garden. You can buy one for very little from a hoe maker via a retailer in your area. The design of the hoe is open for all to see. Just look at it. And after using it for a while maybe you decide to sharpen it, to alter it with a file or grinding wheel so it performs better. Then ask yourself if you would expect to go to jail or have your livelihood threatened by legal action because you sharpened the hoe. Is that reasonable? In Bill's World you wouldn't even consider such a thing.
So to anwser the question of "Why can't we do this here?" Simply, because it's illegal. And for any one of the vendors who make parts for the unalterable hoe of Bill's World, don't even think about offering blades that can be sharpened or you will no longer be able to make a living supplying hoe parts.
