![[FSF
Associate Member]](http://www.modspil.dk/images/fsfMembergetButton.png){kind=small}
100$ bærbar med håndsving - én til hvert barn!
En bærbar computer til hvert barn i hele verden.
Det er visionen med MITs Laptop-projekt.
Indtil videre har de fået præsenteret en demo af en prototype med prisen presset ned til 110 dollars på topmødet om informationssamfundet i Tunesien.
Som man ser på billedet, er den nye computer på størrelse med en skolebog og udstyret med trådløst netkort og et håndsving, så den også kan virke i områder, hvor der ikke er elektricitet.
Wired skriver om den nye bærbare, som den ser ud i dag:
With its cheery green coloring and Tonka-tough shell, the laptop certainly looks cool. It boasts a 7-inch screen that swivels like a tablet PC, and an electricity-generating crank that provides 40 minutes of power from a minute of grinding. Built-in Wi-Fi with mesh networking support, combined with a microphone, speaker and headset jack, even means the box can serve as a node in an ersatz VOIP phone system.Den nye bærbare er (naturligvis) baseret på Linux, og interessant nok er tanken om fri software en del af selve projektets motivation, fremgår det af Wireds interview med projektets bagmand Nicholas Negroponte:
Under the hood, it's powered by a modest 500-MHz AMD processor, and uses a gig of flash memory for storage. But the key to building it cheaply enough to educate the world's children is an innovative, low-power LCD screen technology invented by Negroponte's CTO, Mary Lou Jepsen. "The manufacturers are the toughest audience, and they stopped laughing in September," says Jepsen. The machine is expected to start mass production late next year, and the governments of Thailand and Brazil have already said they're serious about placing $1 million orders for their school kids.
Is the goal literally to make computers available to every child that wants one in the world?Sådan én kunne jeg også godt tænke mig! Specielt det med håndsvinget har jeg selv ofte stået og manglet ...
It's every child in the world whether they want one or not. They may not know they want one.
Do you have any thoughts on what the long-term impact of giving all these kids a programming environment and an open-source ethic might be?
Those are two different questions. Giving the kids a programming environment of any sort, whether it's a tool like Squeak or Scratch or Logo to write programs in a childish way -- and I mean that in the most generous sense of the word, that is, playing with and building things -- is one of the best ways to learn. Particularly to learn about thinking and algorithms and problem solving and so forth.
And providing the tools for some people -- it's going to be a very limited subset (who will use them) -- to develop software that will be redistributed and versioned and so forth out into the world is also important. It's part of the whole open-source movement.
Imidlertid læser vi på projektets hjemmeside:
Please note that the $100 laptops - not yet in production - will not be available for sale. The laptops will only be distributed to schools directly through large government initiatives.Til gengæld er det så meningen, at der skal laves millioner og atter millioner af dem - så mon ikke der alligevel opstår et sort marked for dem en dag?