Empowering the Children

This is good stuff.

Researchers in Tunis have unveiled a $A137 hand-cranked laptop computer, saying they hoped to place them in the hands of millions of schoolchildren around the globe.

About the size of a textbook, the lime-green machines can set up their own wireless networks and operate in areas without a reliable electricity supply, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers said at a United Nations technology summit...

The goal is to provide the machines free of charge to children in poor countries who cannot afford computers of their own, said MIT Media Lab chairman Nicholas Negroponte.

Governments or charitable donors will pay for the machines but children will own them, he said. "Ownership of the laptops is absolutely critical," he said. "Have you ever washed a rented car?"

If you believe in the value of empowerment through education, in the necessity of bringing technology to children in developing countries, and in the importance of global networking, then this is really good stuff.

I worry a lot about our hopes of surviving the advent of molecular manufacturing -- war, chaos, and oppression seem all too likely -- but this initiative is a positive sign and a cause for some optimism about the future.

Obviously, it doesn't directly provide solutions for managing nanotech's awesome power, but it sure can't hurt to give many more young minds a tool for learning, communicating, and contributing.

UPDATE: Watch this 8-minute video documentary (kudos to Andy Carvin). Meet Mary Lou Jepsen, chief technology officer for MIT's One Laptop per Child project, who says, "We want to give a laptop to every child on earth, through their governments, a million units at a time. That’s our five-year goal."

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Comments

[matt]

This is great news, let's hope they can reach their ambitious goal. Even the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer may have started out small.

[Janessa Ravenwood]

Even better news from Tunis - US smackdown of efforts to wrest away control of the internet. Yay!

[Tom Craver]

Interesting - some very nice engineering decisions.

More info: http://laptop.media.mit.edu/

I'll project a few "issues":

- Theft and corrupt government mis-distribution to friends and the black market will be a major problem. Maybe half the units will get to kids.
- Of those units that get to kids, a lot will immediately be re-sold (at a deep discount) by the kids or their parents.
- Of those units that stay in kids hands, at least half will be dead or crippled in some fashion within 2 years due to misuse, abuse, overuse, environmental factors, or a design flaw.
- The surviving and useable units available to kids and their families will end up in community centers, because they're too valuable a resource not to share them.
- They'll run into some unanticipated network scaling problem. E.g. maybe their mesh network will slow way down in crowded urban areas as too many try to send data over too many hops in the mesh, or too few have direct internet access.

[jim moore]

You know what I really like about it?

It is powered by a hand crank.

Lights, radios, cell phones, and now computers all can be powered by a hand crank. You should be able to make hand powered cameras, video players, digital projectors, even some types of scientific and medical equipment. It is just amazing that you can power such sophisticated equipment with a simple hand crank.

[Mike Deering]

A hundred dollar laptop is a tremendous technical achievement, no doubt. And giving a laptop to a poor child is a worthy cause. But, I am more looking forward to using technology to provide clean drinking water to every child than a laptop, or preventing malaria for every child (go Bill go!), or protecting every child from the effects of war, abuse, and lack of family support. Still, the MIT Laptop for Every Child is very good.

[Mike Treder, CRN]

If the will is there, we can do all those things. What I like most about the laptop plan is that it could impel profound change. It's like teaching them to fish instead of feeding them fish.