Posted on 03/16/2006 7:43:46 AM PST by ShadowAce
actually though, he *DID* have an original idea, the EULA is his baby I think... of course, it has almost nothing whatsoever to do with computers.
India produced a large cohort of tech-savvy workers in a nation with negligible telephony infrastructure, massive poverty, highly unsanitary conditions, high rates of infection from diseases rare in the West, a complete lack of software and resources written in the more than 200 native langauges and 1000+ dialects of the country, and a socialist government which made importation of technological resources almost prohibitively difficult.
Just as there was in Bombay, Delhi and Calcutta there is in Nairobi, Lagos and Capetown an upper middle class elite of locals who send their children to exclusive private schools both at home and abroad and who possess enough financial resources to start businesses. These children speak English, enjoy Western products and devices like iPods, etc.
This was the kind of core group that kickstarted India's tech boom, and Africa's will likely begin in the same way.
There is the added advantage, this time, of existing wireless infrastructure.
Yeah Bill, we'll get them all Origami devices--the ones with the tiny screen and the laughable battery life and no keyboard--at a price point that requires 6-10 students to share one computer.
What a tool.
Windows was an idea that Gates ripped off from Xerox. Too bad Xerox didn't patent its discovery.
This is the same idiot who said we don't need more than 1 GB of memory or something to that effect.
Get one of the old HP MS-DOS palmtops (HP200LX) and stick in a modern PCMCIA memory card. Lots of horsepower available.
Gates criticizes the olpc screen but recommends Origami?
They both have seven inch screens. LOL
He's just pissed because they won't run Microsoft Bob.
He famously said we'd never need more than 640k of memory.
You overlook the main, central, inseparable, ultimate reason for India's rise: IT IS A COUNTRY DEEPLY STEEPED IN THE WESTERN TRADITION.
The same cannot be said for many third world countries. Simply sending them computers and wishing them good luck does not remedy their problems. Only a cultural change of sweeping,and possibly violent, nature will fix the problems of world poverty. The issue is not disease, lack of resources or the "legacay of colonialism"; it is CULTURE. So long as many of the places were talking about still live in a world dominated by tribalism, religious repression, the rule of "might makes right" and 73 shades of really bad socialism/communism, they will continue to be festering cesspools that millions of $100 computers will not fix.
India didn't succeeds because it overcame it's problems (that it did is merely to be expected), but rather beacuse it has adopted western culture, deomocratic government and rational secularism. India succeeds BECAUSE of the Western tradition, not IN SPITE of it.
That's an EXCELLENT point about India. It becomes evident in the 1982 film hagiography "Gandhi."
Can they really put a ruggedized swivel hinge in a micro-laptop at a $100 price point? Color me skeptical.
As an aside, one idea I heard suggested (but not yet adopted) is the possibility of selling these things in the US at $200, with the understanding that half the money would go to buy one for some kid in the third world.
On those terms, I'd buy one.
No , I addressed it head-on. You were the one who gave us all that jazz about malaria and antelopes and Bantu dialects - which you are now apparently admitting is beside the point.
I reiterate: there is an elite in Africa, just as there is in India, which has adopted Western culture and internalized Western values.
90% of Indians are not Westernized or culturally Western. There are more than 150 million Indians who describe themselves as Maoists, there are more than 200 million who vote for anti-Western Hindu supremacist parties etc.
But the urban, moneyed elite - the decision making class - has largely embraced Western culture, democratic values and "rational secularism". They are the successful people in India and more and more Indians are beginning to follow their example.
The same thing is happening in African countries as well. It is at an earlier stage.
"The same thing is happening in African countries as well. It is at an earlier stage."
And will ultimately fail. Because while the intellectuals and upper classes may be westernized (after a fashion, and mostly because they've been educated in western schools) the great mass of the people ARE not. It is not enough to simply mimic western manners and methodology, you must be able to reproduce it natively, and innovate. In other words, it's not enough to merely appear western, because "western" involves a whole lot more than appearances. It is a mindset (Just ask the post-WWII Japanese).
I don't care how many Hindu's vote for Maoists or purple polka-dotted anteaters, the point is that they VOTE, and that the voter has access to all sorts of information via-a-vis voting, the candidates, political philosophies, media to track the candidates and issues, and ultimately, to help hold them to account. Voters are not intimidated by armed men telling them what to do. Voters are free to not exercise the franchise if they wish, because the President (or whatever) of India doesn't require a 99.8% margin of victory to maintain "legitimacy". Shifts in political power in India are not met with immediate civil war or massive riots; the transition of power is fluid, transparent and stable. Commerce is carried on and protected by law. Private property and individual rights are allowed and protected by law. Civil discourse involves debate and peaceful protest, not massacres and genocidal purges, and is free from reliious or political censorship. Courts are not for sale and operate upon the prinicple that the law applies to all and is the arbiter of rights. These are amongst the hallmarks of a civilized, Western society.
That "90% of Indians are not culturally western" of yours is a fallacy. You mistake the outward trappings (modes of dress, custom, etc) as the determining factor of "Western-ness", when it is not; Western-ness is a state of mind. Those "90% of Indians" are grasping capitalism, political rights and secular society with both hands, and begging for more. Again, western-ness is a mindset, not an easiy-to-quantify entity or commodity.
If it were not so, then ask yourself why all these Arabs, with all the oil money in the world, and amongst the biggest welfare states, produce nothing more than suicide bombers and psychotic clerics? There is no malaria epidemic in Saudi Arabia. People are not dying of AIDS in numbers large enough to be noticed in Jordan. Clean, running water and indoor plumbing are not rare commodities in Egypt. The answer is simple: they fail because they haven't made the great mental leap out of the 7th century.
And neither has the vast majority of the people of Africa and Asia. Chances are, they're too busy trying to survive to worry about things like market-based economics and political theory. Which is why bombarding them with cheap computers is like casting pearls before swine. The chasm is simply too wide to bridge without fundamental, cultural change.
Not everyone needs a free laptop. This project is the stupidest, money wasting boondoggle ever proposed. Kids in developing countries need shoes, food and pencils, not hand crank laptops.
Hand cranks?.........hmmm.........not a bad idea! No batteries, rechargers, etc..........
Mr. 'No home user will ever need more than 640K' ought to be a lot more careful when prognosticating.
His comments are merely meant to help sell the Origami. A small computer very similar to this one, but costing hundreds more.
This is a ch__ch. What's missing?
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