100 Dollar Laptop Giveaway is Dumb Idea
A bunch of do-gooders have put their heads together to create a useless computer for 100 dollars. What would you do with such a piece of junk? Why give it to the poorest kids in the world, or course! Somehow, pens, papers, crayons and a school environment that is disease and violence-free is not a higher priority for this cabal of crusading technophiles- they believe that they can provide a piece of shit laptop that barely works and it will somehow improve the impovershed children of developing countries.
Bill Gates thinks its a dumb idea too. From CNET:
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Wednesday mocked a $100 laptop computer for developing countries being developed with the backing of rival Google at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The $100 laptop project seeks to provide inexpensive computers to people in developing countries. The computers lack many features found on a typical personal computer, such as a hard disk and software.
“The last thing you want to do for a shared use computer is have it be something without a disk…and with a tiny little screen,” Gates said at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum in suburban Washington, D.C.
“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,” Gates said.
Gates described the computers as being for shared use, but the project goes under the name “One Laptop per Child.”
Earlier this year, Google founder Larry Page said his company is backing MIT’s project. He showed a model of the machine that does use a crank as one source of power.
This article is clearly intended to make Bill Gates look greedy, but face it, this is a very stupid idea. The project site is located here: Lets take a look at the FAQ page to identify some of the stupidest bits of this hair-brained scheme.
- The laptops will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data. So, I suppose if you need to wind up your laptop, how fast do you need to crank it to power your wireless connection?
- In one Cambodian village where we have been working, there is no electricity, thus the laptop is, among other things, the brightest light source in the home. So instead of a laptop, wouldnt a wind-up flashlight be better? That would cost about a dollar I think.
- To keep costs low, 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. What??!! Fat laptops? Im not sure which is worse, the bad comparison to system overhead or the over-simplistic understanding of how a computer works.
- The laptops will be sold to governments and issued to children by schools on a basis of one laptop per child. Initial discussions have been held with China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria, and Thailand. I am fairly certain that the above mentioned countries, with the exception of Nigeria, should have plenty of national wealth to be able to provide computers to their own citizens.
- The biggest hurdle will be manufacturing 100 million of anything. Okay, so obviously, the goal is to make 100 million devices at a cost of about 100 dollars be unit. Check my math. Isn’t that a BILLION dollars?
Let’s think for a minute about the goals of this project- OLPC wants to give away 100 dollar devices to children that apparantly do not have school supplies or lights in their homes? This is supposed to improve their education over traditional reading books and writing materials? I doubt this seriously.
A billion dollars would be much better suited for sanitation engineering for the impoverished communities.
Hell, a billion dollars could buy enough moving vans to get the poorest families relocated to urban centers where they can find work and security.
A billion dollars would go a long way toward the cure for HIV which continues to wipe out the continent of Africa.
A billion dollars could buy traditional school supplies for every child in the program, along with flashlights, cooking equipment, medical supplies and other needed items for impoverished families.
The stupid crank laptop looks like a freaking Speak ‘N Spell. A billion dollars could even provide one of those for each child.
But of course, from a liberal, leftist, redistribution of wealth perspective, the whole project is actually designed to make the project’s supporters feel better about themselves in that they are doing something noble. Forget whether or not the devices will work, or whether or not they will be confiscated or sold for food by village elders. Its the thought that counts.
This program will be a spectacular failure and a huge waste of a Billion Dollars.
Better do-good than throw stones. Yes, many great initiatives have failed miserably. When you consider the UN Millennium Development Goals. The support this MIT project is having. The fact it will go ahead whether we like it or not. It being introduced with strong pedagogical support (Critical Pedagogy comes to mind) and the support of the countries they are being introduced and hopefully related to microfinance initiatives. Providing $100 laptops that will compliment other educational initiatives will bring much fruit. I guess our biggest concern should be trying to stay ahead of a population of highly motivated and educated people…
Critical,
Thanks for the comments. I hope you dont mind, but I will link to your website where you have provided much analysis on this topic. Critical’s website is http://criticaltechnology.blogspot.com
The whole basis on this program is to make people feel better about some families living in abject poverty. But giving laptops, even as part of the basis of “microfinancing” as you call it, will not solve the problem, and unfortunately, will not provide the necessary education either.
You said “I guess our biggest concern should be trying to stay ahead of a population of highly motivated and educated people.” Nice sentiments. Its touching, it really is. Unfortunately, giving away stupid laptops is not going to create highly motivated and educated people.
It may create slightly educated people under the best of circumstances, but motivation is something that cannot come from a microchip.
I will certainly keep my eye on the project and its outcome. It would be nice if there were some published expectations of the program so people can measure its success- other than the amount of “good feeling” one can get from supporting the effort.
How incredibly shortsighted you are Pat… At least Bill Gates critism is motivated by something other than shortsightedness.
?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,? Gates said.
800×600 resolution is far from unreadable although most people in developed markets who have more than $100 to spend may find it to be undesireable. Imagine if about 10 years ago 800×600 was considered unuseable therefore computers weren’t built because you couldn’t read the text. To quote Gates… Geez! Gates problem with the project is that under developed nations first introduction to computers will be based on inexpensive linux systems designed to be low cost and need very little support. It won’t stop with handcranked computers and Bill knows/fears it.
As far as the display and power concerns for these systems, they are pioneering a brand new market. A new demand for low cost computer technology is being birthed by this project and while it may not be cutting edge by performance standards it is an engineering marvel that it can be done at all. With the new market opening up the technology for low cost, low power computer components will continue to develop. (Seems like I heard that they even open-sourced the display technology so it could grow faster to meet the expected demands.)
While the computers seem primitive now, they are far from useless and as the technologies develop the $100 PC will become less primitive and the technologies developed will be able to be utilized in many other projects. If everyone were as shortsighted as you seem to be none of this could occur.
As far as how this can help the people to whom they are distributed… I think we can reasonably assume that they PCs won’t be dropped into the jungles by little parachutes with no instructions where the primitive people will first try to eat them before deciding they are just colorful bricks. In a project alrady underway there are remote villages with no power save but the solar cells on the school roof where they don’t even have lightbulbs but they do have a computer that provides them with email and news capabilities delivered once a week by motorcyle courier who drives within range of the villages on his weekly route and exchanges information via wireless networking. Still primitive but a far cry better than what they had before.
See: http://www.offthekuff.com/mt/archives/003056.html
You ridicule the project as being stupid but the only stupidity I see here is the shortsightedness with which you judge its merits.
Point 1: The innovative power sources can and most likely will be replaced with something superior to a hand crank. Donations independent of the project could provide solar cells for charging stations inside schools where these could be utilized.
Point 2: $100 worth of wind up flashlights wouldn’t do a thing to help improve a poor villages situation they would only provide a minor convenience.
Point 3: I think the founders of the project at MIT understand full well how computers work and the low tech terminology they chose to use is industry standard. They are, of course refering, to the software more than the hardware when describing todays laptops as “obese”.
Point 4: Even if the countries have the resources to provide laptops to their own children they don’t have $100 laptops to do so. The governments could probably have provided some form of assistance to try to help these poorer communities better themselves but have little or shown no interest in doing so.
Point 5: Yeah that’s a billion dollars. So what?
You use the word “shortsighted” several times in your rebuttal. I guess you have a farther reaching vision than I do? Bah. You failed to persuade me that this is a stupid idea.
Breaking the 100$ laptop barrier is not the technological marvel that you pretend it to be. Its not like breaking the sound barrier or like inventing the lightbulb. If someone wants to break the 100$ barrier, fine. go for it. Knock yourself out. No one will buy it, and no one will want it. The market will not exist. Rather than simply enjoy the technological feat of breaking this barrier, large groups of people like you with “vision” whatever the hell you pretend it to be, want to cram these gizmos down the throats of people who need them the least- the World’s poorest people.
You can deliver this stupid piece of crap gizmo to all of the world’s poor, but it wont cure poverty, and it will not educate anyone. This is simply because the world’s poor do not need stupid laptops that will likely break within a week. They need food, sanitation and infrastructure.
That billion dollars could do some real good if it was spent wisely. Throwing it away on stupid crappy laptops will not be wise use of the funds. But it makes liberals like you happy, because it gives you a warm fuzzy inside that you have made a difference, even though you havent. And feelings are better than real action to liberals, and damn the cost.
Yes, it is obvious that I have farther reaching vision than you. A billion dollar industry has been formed calling for the development of low cost, low power computer components which will benefit the consumer market well beyond the “crappy” $100 dollar notebooks that will be given away.
As far as the value to the people to whom they will be distributed. Just in their capacity as e-books they will allow educators to bring educational materials to these people at far below the cost of printed media. You see it as a waste of a billion dollars when it would be more accurate to look at it as a savings of billions of dollars. $100 in textbooks doesn’t go very far in print and billions of dollars are already spent in this manner. Hell look at it also as good for the ecosystem. You say that they won’t educate anyone and will likely break within a week and that we’re trying to cram these notebooks down poor people’s throats… Do you have anything to back up your claims? No, you do not, you’re simply spouting off.
You also seem confused about the nature of liberalism verses conservatism. You accuse the supporters of this project of being liberals when their intent, well conceived or not, is to better these people’s lives through education so that they can work their way out of poverty. You call for spending the billion dollars on food, sanitation and infrastructure (with absolutely no explanation or plan for what that “infrastructure” will consist of). Since you have outlined no plan for the “infrastructure”, so far your plan is basically to spend a billion dollars on sanitation and food. So you propose we give them food and sanitation so they can increase in numbers and therefore, having little to go around as it is, they will have less and when the billion dollars is spent. They’ll be in worse shape than when we “helped” them unless we continue to help them until they are nothing but a dependent society who rely strictly on handouts where nothing is expected of them in return because heaven forbid somebody try to spend some of that money to educate them. Giving away something for nothing creating a perpetual dependency fits the defintion of liberalism much better than attempting to educate people so they can become independent and earn for themselves does.
Yes, there are some projects out there, which are FOR PROFIT, that are emerging as a real alternative to books in the classroom. But even when there are paying customers that demand this service, the market is small.
You cannot say that there is a billion dollar industry built on this, because there is no demand. The only demand is that of the do-gooders that want to foist this soon-to-be failure of a program on the world’s poor. Don’t try to get into it with me over the ecosystem either. Books are made from renewable resources. Computers are not.
As far as the infrastructure is concerned, any upgrade to the community that will make shit flow downhill and bring in fresh water is a great start. You are seriously delusional if you believe in your heart of hearts that giving a laptop to a child who is surrounded by squalor, filfth, disease and parents who are uneducated will cure poverty.
It wont.
Yes poverty is bad, and there are solutions to the problem. Piece of crap laptops are not among the solutions.
You said “Giving away something for nothing creating a perpetual dependency fits the defintion of liberalism much better than attempting to educate people so they can become independent and earn for themselves does.
I agree. Giving away a laptop for nothing will create a dependency, if the laptop works at all, for a constant need of spare parts. Educate the children, but with books, in a solid building in a community that is disease-free and violence free.
100-Dollar Laptop: UN Secretary General?s Office shouldn?t be used for exploiting the poor
…..? Lotsa history how this guy invented key technology that eventually leads to OLPC….? -pat?
On the question of 100-Dollar Laptop?s technical achievement as opined by the UN Secretary General, I became tired and was unable to find any such thing. The Linux operating system, the flash memory instead of hard disks/CD-Rom drives, the LCD displays (the dual-mode display as claimed by the project was not operational in the WSIS prototype. The prototypes were shown with conventional transmission TFT LCD displays)etc. are pretty old technologies. Cheap components have been used in the 100-Dollar Laptop. But one who knows about the definition of ?invention?, should understand that merely using cheap things to reduce the price does not constitute an invention. Use of “parasitic power” of typing, although not a totally new idea, could however be considered an achievement if it could be economically and reliably utilized. But I am afraid, this seems not to be the case so far. Using of low-cost, low-power and high-resolution eInk displays will be a good idea, but the project?s undisclosed technology appears to be not a novel one either and understandtably the project has no plans to patent their display innovations(!). As far I understand, the project authorities are not confident enough to bring such display innovations(!) in the market before the hardy Chinese (without any UN backing or multimillion pound cash boost from GEC,USA).
? There was a section here about marketing under the guise of non profit…
Even at a hundred dollars, as the well dressed Africans were pointing out last night, these things are absolutely not a bargain for an African child. Schooling for a year would make more sense. Better food would be nice. If it ever does make sense for Africa’s children all to have laptops, this will surely not be until the price of them goes down to something nearer to ten dollars than a hundred. My guess is they will all have mobiles long before. And we don’t need to give this one away. If somebody puts in the research to design the thing and really, really optimizes for cost, I’m sure there’s a Chinese factory somewhere you can build it for?. Mr. Bill Gates in his criticism said “The world’s poorest two billion people desperately need healthcare, not laptops”.
Unfortunately, my ?free-play? technology has been hijacked and incorporated in the 100-Dollar Laptop to reach a vast population of electricity-less poor people (without incorporating free-play technology this wouldn?t have been possible). Even a profit margin of barely USD 25 in the cleverly designed marketing plan of ?one laptop per chid(OLPC)?suggests a profit of only(!) USD 50 billion, from the world?s poorest two billion people.What a Nobel-prize winning maketing plan indeed!
…? Long rant was here about the unfairness of the west being wealthy, mostly because they have weapons….?
1. Close all the arms manufacturing plants in the world.
2. Make ?intellectual property? as an ?intellectual property? in reality and not ?rich people?s property? effectively : (a) Make arrangements so that an individual scientist of the Third World can get a patent for the whole world with a maximum expenditure of USD 100. He should be allowed to plead his case himself and perform all the necessary formalities from his own residence through correspondence with his own equivalent currency. (b) Fully assist in fighting the ?hijacking of inventions? cases, including my one in the International Court of Justice. (c) Make arrangements to evaluate a WIPO published patent paper with a favorable search report.
3. Monitor the ill-motivated so-called assistance programs through IMF, World Bank, loyal to their masters the NGOs and similar tools of the West.
4. Do not be a party to the huge profit-making programs of the West by exploiting the poor in disguise of humanity, child care, education and God knows what not.
5. Do not allow the West to escape competition from hardy nations under the umbrella of the UN by marketing any product forcibly (invisible) in huge numbers through corrupt governments, so-called donors, loyal NGOs and similar agencies. ???????????????????????????????????????…….
Written by: Nazmul Huda , 38/10 Siddheswari Road, Dhaka-1217, Bangladesh. E-mail : nazinvbd@yahoo.com
Copy forwarded for your information and necessary action by : NAZMUL HUDA
Nazmul,
I can see that you are very passionate about this issue, and also bitter at the theft of your intellectual property. But your post was way too long and tended to stray from the topic.
I think we are in agreement that this is not the best use of money for the world’s poor. However, your faith in the United Nations to do anything effective is misplaced. The United Nations is very corrupt and plans such as this will ultimately be mismanaged and will fail to achieve any meaningful goals other than making some people “feel good” because they thought they achieved something noble.
The West having weapons and wealth has very little to do with any of this. Dont let envy influence your arguements.
And if you have a real legal complaint about the theft of your intellectual property, get a lawyer. Show your proof and sue them in court. Most lawyers will work for you for free if they think you have a case and they think they can get a significant chunk of your settlement.
To me there is a very obvious hitch in the 100$ laptop by the One Laptop Per Child Initiative (OLPC).
A laptop of 100$ can’t obviously be sold in least developed countries, where average incomes are well below this amount. Poverty is roughly defined by a daily income less than 1$. You would have to distribute these laptops for free.
Say, the 100$ laptop is nearly as useful and versatile as OLPC says *). Why shouldn’t the child, or her parents, sell the laptop? Perhaps not for the 100$ catalog price, but for 10$, just for buying food for the family in a hard week? This is a very likely outcome. Think of donated clothes ending up on African and Latin American markets.
OLPC errs horridly on the aspect of ownership, I cite from http://www.laptop.org/faq.en_US.html :
“Why is it important for each child to have a computer? What’s wrong with community-access centers?
(…) Furthermore, there are many reasons it is important for a child to own something?like a football, doll, or book?not the least of which being that these belongings will be well-maintained through love and care.”
Benefit not ownership is the reason for taking care of something. The 100$ laptop won’t reach the poorest. It definitely makes sense to deploy modern Internet and communication technologies to fight poverty **) but distributing 100$ laptops will probably only feed one poor kid for a week per laptop.
–Alex
——-
*) http://www.laptop.org/faq.en_US.html :
“What can a $1000 laptop do that the $100 version can’t?
Not much. The plan is for the $100 Laptop to do almost everything. What it will not do is store a massive amount of data.”
**) e. g. http://globalknowledge.org/gkps_portal/index.cfm?menuid=201&parentid=179
On comments of Alexander and Pat
Thanks for your comments. Yes, I expect justice. I have all the documents in support of my write-up. I would appreciate if somebody helps me in finding a lawyer willing to work for me free. I am ready to send the necessary papers to examine the possibility of getting a significant chunk of the settlement, as mentioned by Pat. I also appreciate the comment ?hair raising? of Alexander through a personal e-mail sent to me. However the title of my article could have been ?100-Dollar Laptop, UN Secretary general and the crocodile tears for the third world? or simply ? why should one be a scientist in the third world country in this hypocritical world?? Nevertheless, I preferred the journalistic title and I am happy to find my write-up in about 439 searched sites (as of today) and I am getting sympathetic comments even through personal e-mails. I really envy them who supported and support the cause of justice and try to work for the welfare of the mankind. I had the idea that bitter truth is hard to digest and sometimes truth appears to be stranger than the fiction. On the other hand, the people working against the humanity and justice are not worth envying.
Nazmul Huda e-mail :nazinvbd@yahoo.com
very good noble idea, so was building low income housing and food stamps in the 1960s, 70s,80s,90, to present. it goes from one generation to the next. another thought, is what is the market for mined computer plastics and componients, or would they end up in the dump, if the country even had one. i say, allow the world markets call the shots on investments and returns. fairness to established industries who rely on revenue from the sale of computers and components. i could see, donating used equipment to poor countries, or old technology
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