I think differently to this, and here's why.
- It's not just for the "third world".
- It will produce a generation of free software users.
- Development of software for resource-constrained devices is good for everyone.
Even in the affluent societies of the "first world" there are plenty of poor people. Most people who have thought about social equity and justice have come to the conclusion that the way to help people who are blighted by generational low income is through education. The problem with this is that education costs money. Access to information is expensive. The OLPC project, combined with the power of the Internet, drastically reduces this cost.
If OLPC machines are widespread in society, in five or ten years, a significant proportion of the people entering the workforce will be used to Free Software, and the whole ethos of cooperation and sharing in the software world. Using proprietary, closed software will seem, simply, weird to these people.
I work at a university in New Zealand. I own my own house and car. I have a big TV and stereo, I eat out a lot, ... in short: I am not poor. But I can't see the value in buying a new computer every year (or every three years). Neither can I see the value in investing in ASDL for $50 a month when I can have dial-up for $7 a month. So my home computer is old and slow (2.4GHz Athlon with 1GB Ram) and my Internet connection is slow. I can tell you that using GNOME software is a pain in the ass with such a setup. (Compared to using a one-year-old laptop at work with a high-speed connection.)
I am looking forward to the technologies that have been developed to slow, low memory, slow-and-intermittent network connected devices filtering down to the main GNU/Linux and GNOME stack. I think that this would help a significant proportion of GNOME users, i.e. those who don't have the luxury of modern setups.
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4 comments:
Your system isn't bad my friend.
Except the connection!
BTW: buy yourself a new laptop for christmas :P
Hey John,
I agree 100% with your comments on this. I'm in a similar position regarding my economic standing. I do have a couple of PC's that I've accumulated. My wife is using my old 650MHz Vaio laptop with 256MB of ram and it's quit a painfull experience. So much so, that I ended up putting Windows 2000 back on there as it was simply more responsive than current linux DE's that would be considered easy for a non tech user to use.
I fully intend on getting an OLPC for my kids. As a project, I think it'll be a great educational asset and certainly something that developed nations should take an interest in. It's the kind of tool that can help bridge that digitial divide that seems to popup in the media every so often.
A 2.4GHz CPU and 1GB RAM is a "pain in the ass" with GNOME? Something must be horribly wrong with your setup...
Running a P3-600 with 192 MB RAM right here and nearly choked on my coffee* when you wrote a 2+ Ghz Athlon with 1 GB RAM was underpowered!! Mind you, I'm running Enlightenment dr17, which although getting more user-friendly still requires some config file hackery.
Ah, but you're used to my voice in the wilderness, asking why we can't have features *and* speed without upgrading our hardware every 12 months or so!
* well, would have if I was drinking some.
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