Manthan

Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Labs, has been outlining designs for a sub-$100 PC. The idea of having a cheap laptop for every kid sounds very good and there have been prior efforts in this direction. One such concept of cheap handheld computers called Simputer was launched in India; it was started as a cheap alternative to get over the digital divide. Eventually Simputer was costing upwards of $250, anything but a cheap alternative. It was a great idea that lacked proper execution and perhaps didn’t have the fundamental strengths to succeed, but surely was worth the effort. Now that brings the next question, do the people (so called third world poor) actually need a $100 laptop or are people like Nicholas trying to create solution for a problem that does not need any solving ?? The answer to this is very tricky, do we place a Laptop ahead of primary health care, ahead of proper sanitation and primary education?

Can people who are not educated in the first place derive any benefit out of getting access to these $100 laptops? If the government has funds to buy these laptops, perhaps they can be better off investing money in providing primary education. Well all I can say is that people should have access to knowledge, through whatever means and people have incredible capacity to make use of this knowledge to improve the quality of their life. Education provides the people with means to develop awareness that facilitates access to basic facilities that they lack like health care.A very interesting social experiment was done by NIIT in the slums of , where the company established Internet Kiosks for slum kids. The slum kids took to the computer like fish to water. The kids managed to educate themselves to browse the internet, understand the concept of hyperlink, concept of multiple windows and that hour glass means the computer is processing (thinking in their lingo). This experiment conclusively shows that irrespective (most of these kids were illiterates) of level of primary education, the kids were able to understand and use basic features of the computer. Perhaps this provides a means for these kids to overcome the lack of proper education and learn skills which can provide them new avenues for livelihood.

For more details read article Indian experiment shows how slum-kids speedily take to computers.

Coming back to the $100 laptop, can it be a success and can it solve the problems that it plans to tackle? Critical to the success of this initiative is how well the team building the laptop understands the ground realities, create partnership with the Government and people who are going to use it. Partnership with the local community, fair amount of training and ownership of the entire scheme are important for the success. A $100 computer is not a silver bullet that can solve all the problems, but it would be an important step in increasing the reach of technology. It’s critical that the team working on this stays true to its goal, “- $100 laptops”.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.