[geeks] Socialized medicine [was Re: nVidia 8800GT for Apple Mac Pro]

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 11:18:20AM -0700, Nadine Miller wrote:

> My very first IT boss referred to this as "dirt-diving".  His other 
> favorite criticism was, "Why are you trying to use technology to solve a 
> social problem?"

Because sometimes it is easier. For example, the perceived improvement
in children's lives if you give them a laptop. I think it is a wonderful
idea, but children who have no access to electricity (at all), and no
roof over their head have much greater needs than windup laptops with
sun-proof screens and WiFi.

Other things could be easily fixed. If you can come up with a cheap
source of transportation that did not depend upon countries like Iraq
and Saudi Arabia, their social ills would not be exported to the west.

Or if you could come up with a cheap way of desalinating water or even
just purifying drinking water, you would solve a lot of political
problems here and famine in Africa, India and so on.

At one time I was looking into a way of turning hospital waste (the
uncontaminated "mechanical" items thrown in the trash) into hydroponic
farms, but shelved the project for lack of funds and energy.

One of the things I found was a treasure trove of information that was
available on a CD-ROM, but it cost $30 and shipping and required a PC to
read it. This gave me an idea of a one-laptop-per-village library
concept, but my attempts to infiltrate the world of NGO funding went
nowhere.

If you could come up with a package of a computerized library, a cheap
source of electricity to run it and pumps, a way of cleaning water and
making hydroponic gardens, you would have IMHO a winner of a way to use
technology to cure the social problems of famine and lack of education.

I even blogged the idea, but due to illness did not patent or market it,
of a central site for downloading information via a satellite feed and
providing it to an entire village. Give everyone what would now be a $10
MP3 player and a $1000 base station.

For $2,000 you could educate an entire village of 100 people for a year,
with relatively small recurring costs. At the time I was looking at 300
cycle NiMH batteries (one charge per day lasts a year), but now there
are 1000 cycle ones (one charge a day for 3 years).

I also wrote a provisional patent application, but did not submit it,
for a cheap ebook reader, which would extend the access of the village
library.

You can cure (or cause) a lot of social ills by giving everyone free
access to education, news. etc. With audio programs the computing,
storage and battery needs are cheap, and your target audience does not
need to be able to read.

People with enough drinking water, enough food, etc are happy people,
and that can often be provided with technology.

Geoff.


-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM