[geeks] $100 One Laptop Per Child - grist for the mill

[Patrick Giagnocavo]

On Nov 18, 2006, at 7:12 PM, Phil Stracchino wrote:

> William Kirkland wrote
>> The difficulty here is that those people have more basic needs which
>> must be addressed before providing inexpensive laptops becomes useful.
>
> Yeah.  $100 laptops, let alone satellite MP3 servers, are putting the
> cart so far before the horse that the horse can't even see the cart.
> The server's no use without the laptops, and for the price of the 
> server
> and those laptops they could have treadmill-powered generators, water
> pumps, UV water sterilization systems to eliminate parasites and
> bacteria from their drinking water....
>

No offense, but you know, there are cities in Africa where there is a 
fledgling middle class and some entrepreneurs, and a smallish 
professional class too.

There are probably over 100 million cell phones in use in Africa, right 
now. (See http://news.mongabay.com/2005/0712-rhett_butler.html for 
numbers thru to 2004).

Not everybody is on the level of Kunta Kinte before he was picked up by 
Arab slave traders ...

--Patrick