A Digital Divide within a Divide?
Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT’s Media Lab, has unveiled the design for a $100 laptop for the Third World. As noted in Technology Review, the machine “will at a minimum feature a full-color screen, Wi-Fi connectivity, a processor that runs at approximately 500 MHz, and 1 GB of Flash memory. It will also have a hand crank for generating power in areas of the world without electricity.” That’s all cool and good. At the same time, however, could a Digital Divide happen even within the Third World? Imagine a future when some rural people enjoy highly functional laptops but others must make do with mobile phones.
(Thanks to Brian at MobileRead.)
September 29th, 2005 at 12:35 pm
where can those of us in the “first world”
get one of these nifty $100 machines?
-bowerbird
September 29th, 2005 at 2:50 pm
You know that device is gonna run Linux. No way Microsoft will ever let a device like that have their OS on it.
It looks neat though.
September 29th, 2005 at 3:27 pm
It does run Linux.
AMD, Brightstar, Google, News Corporation, and Red Hat are corporate partners in the $100 Laptop Project, which raises some interesting possibilities. Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has proposed that the Commonwealth buy the $100 laptops for the 500,000 students in the state.
If you take a look at the product images, the laptop converts into an e-book tablet, and the display also has a high contrast black and white mode perfect for e-book reading even in bright sunlight.
September 29th, 2005 at 7:19 pm
brian said:
> Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has proposed
> that the Commonwealth buy the $100 laptops
> for the 500,000 students in the state.
you know some will be on ebay the very next day,
with a minimum bid of $200, don’t you? :+)
heck, at $100 a pop, i’d buy three of ‘em.
even if the only power was via that crank…
-bowerbird
January 23rd, 2006 at 8:19 am
I just don’t get how such a highly cost effective laptop is such a highly cost effective laptop. I mean, this is probably the cheapest device you can run the internet on(After decade-old P2s)