Negroponte plans tablet airdrops to teach kids to read Nicholas Negroponte, the brains behind the One Laptop Per Child initiative, is detailing a new plan to inspire the world’s poorest children to teach themselves to read using tablet computers. The design for the tablet is simple. At its heart is a solar powered battery, built into the back of the tablet which can be charged on …
He means market forces push companies to produce expensive and highly specified devices for the more profitable and rich western markets. Low cost/spec hardware can still be extremely useful and is much better than nothing. It just has to be available, designed for purpose and should not just be useless rubbish marketed as a "budget" option in order to extract a few £ from fools who don't know what they're buying.
This is how market forces let down the poor in many developing countries.... Give yourself an IgNobel. :-)
BTW I like the idea of these low cost machines, but I hope they don't drain other funding from teachers or textbooks etc...
OF COURSE market forces fail the poor, that's what I meant. Market forces are useless for those who are not IN the market, and that's the danger of leaving everything to "market forces". We live in an economy where steady profits are not good enough, you have to GROW. I find it incomprehensible.
I am, however, fed up with Negroponte's babble, even since he became Wired's pundit-at-large in the 1990's.
>America, on the other hand, has both the money and the skill to have a major impact in the area, but was choosing not to, in favor of massive military spending. He pointed out that the war in Afghanistan was costing the government $2bn a week, but the US is spending less than $2m a week on all educational programs within the country.<
This, so very much this - is why we have the X factor topping the charts.
>Nicholas Negroponte, the brains behind the One Laptop Per Child initiative, is detailing a new plan to inspire the world’s poorest children to teach themselves to read using tablet computers.<
Was gonna make a <bad> joke about how if every child already has a laptop doesn't that make tablets superfluous but thought a link to get involved might be a more positive thing to do.
http://one.laptop.org/about/people/negroponte
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
