Hooray! Nice piece by Andrew Brown in today’s Guardian Technology supplement. Note engaging picture of Quentin in triplicate. Must clip it out and send it to his parents. The boy done good!
Category Archives: Digital Divide
Bone up on your Mandarin
This morning’s Observer column…
First, the numbers. China has 137 million users (compared with about 190 million in the US), but the online population is increasing at such a rate that in about two years there will be more Chinese than Americans on the net.
Within China, however, there’s a deep digital divide: Chinese users are overwhelmingly urban, young and male. A third are students, while a further third are business users. The deepest divide is the urban vs rural one; internet penetration among city dwellers is 20 per cent, compared with only 3 per cent for rural districts. (The comparable US figures are 70 per cent and 61 per cent respectively.)
Given that China’s rulers see the net as a critical enabler of development, a key policy issue for the regime is how to bridge the urban/rural gap. Fallows cites research suggesting that the two big obstacles are lack of connectivity and a huge skills deficiency…
So Intel has a shame gene after all?
Wow! Not sure I really believe this…
Chip-maker Intel has joined forces with the makers of the $100 laptop.
The agreement marks a huge turnaround for both the not-for-profit One Laptop per Child (OLPC) foundation and Intel.
In May this year, Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of OLPC, said the silicon giant “should be ashamed of itself” for efforts to undermine his initiative.
He accused Intel of selling its own cut-price laptop – the Classmate PC – below cost to drive him out of markets in the developing world…
My hunch is that the negative PR that resulted from Craig Barrett’s aggression proved too much for the Intel Board. Wonder who brokered the peace deal?
Microsoft, AMD promote a $500 PC for students in India
What, one wonders, have the unfortunate Indians done to deserve this?
Another perspective on development aid
Interesting interview from Der Spiegel with a Kenyan economist, James Shikwati, who argues that aid to Africa does more harm than good.
Intel steals a march on OLPC
Cute, isn’t it? Wonder if Bill Gates put them up to it. (He’s been very rude about the One Laptop Per Child project in the past.) Anyway, Intel claims to be shipping this gizmo to the developing world. According to the blurb:
Classmate PCs are rugged and include features that are commonly found in today’s mainstream PCs (such as storage and built-in wireless), and are capable of running mainstream applications including video and educational software. These PCs are equipped with unique functions such as a water-resistant keyboard, an integrated educational feature set that allows teacher-student and teacher-parent collaboration, and an advanced theft-control feature using a network-issued digital certification. Intel works in each market with local software, hardware and communications companies that manufacture, distribute, service and support these Intel-powered classmate PCs.
Translation: these devices run Windows and are designed to (a) wean poor people onto Microsoft software and (b) make piracy difficult.
Over at OLPC, Nick Negroponte is not amused.
There are various differences in both the hardware and software, but Professor Negroponte believes the main problem is that his machine uses a processor designed by Intel’s main competitor, AMD.
“Intel and AMD fight viciously,” he told CBS. “We’re just sort of caught in the middle.”
Professor Negroponte says Intel has distributed marketing literature to governments with titles such as “the shortcomings of the One Laptop per Child approach”, which outline the supposedly stronger points of the Classmate.
Mr Barrett [Intel’s CEO, Craig Barrett] told CBS: “Someone at Intel was comparing the Classmate PC with another device being offered in the marketplace. That’s the way our business works.”
He dismissed claims that Intel was trying to put OLPC out of business as “crazy”.
“There are lots of opportunities for us to work together,” he said.
According to the BBC report, “Intel says it already has orders for ‘thousands’ of Classmates, which currently cost over $200 (£100).”
Inside the Digital Dump
Foreign Policy has published a sobering photo-essay on what happens to our digital junk after it’s been dumped on the developing world.
Thanks to Nick Carr for the pointer.
A day in the life of IM
Michael Dales picked up on the Meebo IM map that I blogged and created a nice stop-frame video from the Meebo maps. Strange to see how some parts of the world never light up. The digital divide in lights, as it were. Michael’s added some thoughtful comments of his own.
OLPC machine won’t run Windows after all
Phew! Contrary to those rumours last week, Ars Technica is is reporting that Nicholas Negroponte hasn’t done a deal to run Windows on his ‘$100’* laptop…
Late last week the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project had a media event in Cambridge, and while I couldn’t make the event, I did tape a video interview for the BBC on the project. During my preparation I kept coming across these claims that Microsoft and OLPC had partnered to put Windows XP Starter Edition on the OLPC, and according to one report, this was being done to get the XO laptop into US schools. None of this jibed with what I had been hearing from sources, so I decided to look into it further. As it turns out, a number of news outlets, including the AP, mischaracterized the situation.
According to Walter Bender, president of Software and Content at OLPC, there is no agreement in place between OLPC and Microsoft to offer XO laptops with any version of Windows. Bender also indicated that Microsoft has not contacted OLPC regarding its $3 software bundling program, nor have any governments requested that the XO be outfitted with Windows. In short, there is no existing collaboration between Microsoft and OLPC aimed at outfitting the XO laptop with Windows.
“We are a free and open-source shop. We have no one from OLPC working with Microsoft on developing a Windows platform for the XO. MS doesn’t get any special treatment from OLPC,” Bender told Ars.
*$175 as of last week.
‘$100 laptop’ now costs $175 & will run Windows
Hmmm… GMSV report…
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The founder of the ambitious “$100 laptop” project, which plans to give inexpensive computers to schoolchildren in developing countries, revealed Thursday that the machine for now costs $175, and it will be able to run Windows in addition to its homegrown, open-source interface.
Apparently, Microsoft is planning to dump XP on the world’s poor for $3 a copy. And the OLPC folks are in discussion with Redmond.
Windows XP eh? Haven’t the poor kids at which the laptop is aimed suffered enough? Or, as GMSV puts it, “that’s $176 for the laptop, $3 for Windows and $500 for the remote tech support”. And who’s going to pay for the anti-virus subscription?