December 6,
2006
Laptops So
Cheap, Maybe They Should Just Eat Them
Nicholas
Negroponte has a dream in which he is able to provide food to millions
of the world’s poor children – all for just $100 per child.
Oh wait.
Did I say food? Make that really cheap laptops. Negroponte spent 20
years running the Media Lab at MIT, so I suppose it should come as no
surprise that he is thinking in terms of megabytes as opposed to
megaburgers. And who am I to lampoon this idea if Mohmmar Khadafy is
behind it?
Khadafy,
America’s new friend if only because he doesn’t want to end up eating
Doritos in a jail cell like his old friend Saddam Hussein, has told
Negroponte he’s going to buy one for every child in Libya. Shimon Peres
says he’s going to buy one for the Palestinian children in the West
Bank. Count in the regimes of Argentina, Brazil, Nigeria and Thailand.
Oops. Coup in Thailand. Scratch Thailand. It’s so hard to keep track
these days.
Especially
if you’re trying to keep up with Negroponte’s various prototypes of the
World’s Cheapest Computer. How exactly do you make a computer designed
to sell for $100 without losing your MIT-financed shirt and labcoat?
Negroponte
has had many ideas. The first prototype had a screen that folded out
like a tent and was lit by a tiny lamp. He showed it to Apple’s Steve
Jobs, who told him it looked like a science project.
This was an
easily correctable problem . . .
Negroponte
figured out a way to make a better screen, but he didn’t want the laptop
to use up too much electricity, because apparently there are parts of
the Third World where that is a little hard to come by.
So
Prototype #2 contained a cranking mechanism that powered up the juice,
sort of like an old Victrola or a Model T. United Nations Secretary
General Kofi Annan proudly demonstrated the hand-cranking device at a
recent UN technology conference. Until it broke off in his hand.
This was an
easily correctable problem . . .
Prototype
#3 features a pull cord, sort of like your lawn mower. Of course, if you
don’t put in the right mixture of gas and oil, you will never get the
darn thing to start, and let’s not even talk about what happens when you
let clumped up grass built up around the motherboard.
But never
let it be said that Negroponte’s brainchild, branded the XO by its
manufacturer, Taiwan-based Quanta Computer, isn’t sleek and cool. When
you start it up, it plays a few bars of U2 music on its very tiny stereo
speakers. Then, if the resulting electrical surge hasn’t set off a panic
in the tribal village, the yunnun’s can enjoy content now being put
together by the Wikimedia Foundation. These are the people who produce
the famous online encyclopedia that is trusted by multitudes worldwide,
even though I can edit it any time I want to say that Bill Gates and Pee
Wee Herman are the same person.
Of course,
most of us who use laptops get our “content” through this thing called
the Internet. A few people have pointed out to Negroponte that reliable
Internet access in the Third World has been known to be a tad scarce.
Negroponte
has declared this an easily correctable problem . . .
Hey. I’m
all for providing food to the world’s poor children. Oh, sorry, cheap
laptops. But some dude somewhere said you get what you pay for, and then
a whole bunch of other people quoted him and didn’t pay him for the
privilege. And how much good are these contraptions really going to do
all these poor kids if Mohmmar Khadafy can’t wait to start distribution?
Supposedly,
50 million XOs are set to ship by 2008. Any number of third-world
potentates are ready to buy a million each and then play Santa Claus.
The kids need something to do while they’re waiting for Sally Struthers
to show up with their lunch. Let’s just hope that by the time they get
their XOs to start, Sally hasn’t gotten tired of waiting and scarfed it
herself. I saw on Wikipedia that she sometimes does that.
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