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“The target has been $100… And we’ll get there before the end of 2009,” Negroponte said. “(The price) will get down to $50 in 2011.” – Just incredible!
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“Last night I took part in a panel that was organised by Rachel Slattery under the title of “IT’s a mad men’s world.â€.” – Great blog post by Silvia Pfeiffer. Rock on Silvia! 🙂
Bill Gates hits the issue exactly on the head of the nail
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/business/soa/Bill-Gates-Cheap-PCs-won-t-help-the-poor/0,139023166,339286422,00.htm
Bill Gates: Cheap PCs won’t help the poor
Eric Benderoff , AAP
29 February 2008 05:58 PM
Tags: bill gates, disease, charity, computers, hardware, microsoft, pc, poor
The world’s poorest two billion people do not need cheap computers — they need drugs and electricity, according to the world’s richest man.
Speaking at the University of Chicago this week, Bill Gates said that helping the world’s poor is not about giving them cheap PCs.
“That is of no value at all to the poorest two billion people in the world. They don’t have electricity, they don’t have a teacher, they don’t have textbooks, they don’t have a network connection,” said Gates.
“Certainly computing is great,” he said, adding that cheaper computers do help … but “when you’re looking at the poorest … a computer is not their most urgent need,” he said.
Computers, according to Gates, are not “even in their top five. You need a schoolroom, you need a teacher who shows up, you need electricity, and then once you get past that, that’s where a direct use of shared technology comes in.”
The software visionary, who shaped the modern software industry, will end his full-time employment this year at the company he co-founded. He will remain Microsoft’s chairman but he will devote his time to philanthropy.
Since its inception in 1994, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has granted more than US$16 billion. It has a current endowment of US$38.7 billion. It spreads grants domestically and internationally to help education, primarily for fighting disease among the world’s poorest countries.
“Vaccination,” according to Gates, is the best technology for the poor. “Small pox killed millions, and now it was the first disease that was completely eliminated. We continue to add new vaccines. That’s a huge area of funding for the foundation. Looking for an AIDS vaccine, a tuberculosis vaccine, a malaria vaccine … That would make a dramatic difference.”
Gates believes that people need to adjust their priorities: “Malaria kills one million people a year; baldness hasn’t killed anyone yet … less than 10 percent of the money spent on curing baldness is spent on fighting malaria.”
“The foundation work is more at the beginning. But we have ambitious goals. In some ways, the way I get to work with brilliant people at Microsoft or the way I get to work with brilliant people who work on malaria or tuberculosis or micro-finance, it’s very similar.”
Gates’ current title at Microsoft is chief software architect and he remains interested in improving the operating system.
Asked if he could start over and develop an operating system from scratch, what would he do?
Nothing.
Rather, as computers get faster and storage more expansive, “the operating system gets richer,” he said, noting that it’s better to build upon what’s already in place.
“So things like adding touch, speech, Ink (a notes program for tablet PCs) … those will be part of Windows running in a personal computer, Windows running in a phone, Windows running in a car, Windows running in your set-top box connected to the TV set,” he said.
“The operating system is taking on new things. The fact that it continues to run the applications that you’re familiar with and that you’ve bought in the past, that’s a real value for users,” said Gates. “People are going to keep using the keyboard and the mouse.”
Later this year, commercial applications for one of Gates’ top projects, a technology called Microsoft Surface, will start showing up “in hotel lobbies, restaurant and stores,” he said.
Think of a Surface as a giant touchscreen iPhone. Users will be able to open several applications at once and move them around atop a giant surface — from photos to spreadsheets — as needed.
Over the next two years, he sees surface tables in conference rooms and living rooms.
“Even your mirror,” Gates said. “You can look at yourself and see what you’d look like in different wardrobes.”
He called this a “natural interface technology,” and it’s the type of application Gates feels will drive the next generation of software.
Other examples include a live search program — what Gates calls Tell Me — that runs on some Windows Mobile-operated phones and the Ink software for tablet PCs, which is gaining traction in health care and some schools.
Gates may be better-known for his work in philanthropy this century, but be certain his imprint on what’s next in software will still be felt.
@AlphaG
Thanks for your input, however this perspective that you and Bill share is majorly flawed. The kids need access to education. The OLPC project isn’t about getting laptops to kids who have no food, it is about the largel proportion of the worlds poorest who do have enough to eat, but can’t jump the next hurdle due to as Bill said “They don’t have electricity, they don’t have a teacher, they don’t have textbooks, they don’t have a network connection”. OLPC provides a way to get hundreds of textbooks to kids cheaply, without electricity, without phone lines, and without a schoolhouse. It also provides them a way to create their own content and stories to share, their own music and videos. It is both a tool and a platform for education that enables these communities to leapfrog current circumstances and improve their opportunities in life through education.
I was quite disgusted with the article you posted. It reads as “what is being done is crap, now let me give you our completely unrelated product spiel”. I’m so sick of people using well intentioned projects as a platform for FUD and marketing. Gates’ will no doubt continue to talk down this project, which is unfortunate and demonstrates that he prefers philanthropy when it is done his way, and done with his company.
of course he wants it done his way, so do you!
So you both seem very much the same but maybe from different ends of the spectrum.
@AlphaG
No, I do not want it done my way and my way only. I see OLPC as one of many great opportunities out there. I am not talking down the competition because I don’t think that is the right way to do things.
One last Question.
How does providing a new method of delivering great content help when a young person who cannot read as they have never been to school, parents cannot read to teach them use a device where reading and comprehension is required to use any features of the device to gain access to the content to enable great learning and sharing.
I am very much for sharing and enabling growth in all people of the world. Having been to some of the poorest places in the world I am just not convinced this is the first levels of priority some of these people have when dirt and bark can often be part of the diet when fighting hunger and death
@AlphaG: The educational devices have been designed for children 5 and up, covering three stages of primary education including literacy — this is keenly obvious from the user interaction design of the Sugar inteface. So, you are ill-informed about the design of the devices. 🙂
And please, don’t be fatuous: The XOs are not going to children without food. This is not an aid project which would compete with local production (such as replacing farming and fishing with free food), it’s an education project, providing these communities an incredible force multiplier toward the education of their next generation (and in most cases, national ownership of the laptops — they’re not free).
They need to spend money on education. Why spend $200 on books for a child when those countries can spend $200 on a device that provides that content and so much more?
You’re focused on the electronics, not the education.
Hey finally an answer that makes sense.
What dialects and languages will be out of the box?