Moving at the Speed of Creativity - Gates dogs the $100 laptop

Gates dogs the $100 laptop

Published by Wesley Fryer in 1:1 on March 17th, 2006

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Well, this is an interesting headline from CNN Money yesterday: “Gates mocks poor man’s laptop: Criticizes the manual power supply on MIT and Google’s $100 computer intended for developing countries.” I guess this should not come as a surprise, since from what I’ve read and heard Microsoft wanted to work with the OLPC organization, but was turned down… “skinny Linux” is their OS gameplan rather than RAM hungry and security-problem-ridden Windows. The following is the longest quotation from Gates included in the article:

“If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you’re not sitting there cranking the thing while you’re trying to type,” Gates said.

No surprise that Microsoft wants people to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for computer technology I suppose, rather than getting workable technology for one hundred bucks. But I think that view is shortsighted and narrow.

Isn’t it amazing to realize the computers NASA used to send men to the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s had the power of today’s $5 (or less) calculators? This point was driven home to me again this week at the Kansas Cosmosphere in Hutchison, when I saw (again) the remarkable iMAX film, “Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon.” When I saw the film for the first time in Vancouver last October, I saw it in 3D, this time it was just 2D but still AMAZING.

Palm handheld computers that my neighbors are literally throwing away after they upgrade have amazing computing power. Today’s $100 laptop was yesterday’s $5000 laptop. The world is a changin. Personally, I am thrilled MIT is working with many partners to develop a laptop that runs on electricity or rechargeable batteries that can be regenerated with a hand crank. Rather than making fun of the $100 laptop, Gates and other technology leaders should be championing this. I agree with his observation that broadband Internet access is vital, along with help for users– but come on, does he really think people need floppy disks? (He didn’t use the word “floppy,” but that is what it sounded like to me.) The thin client computing model is certainly viable, but very anti-thetical to the desktop OS and software model that has made Microsoft so wealthy.

I read a few months ago that Steve Jobs had offered to give the Macintosh operating system away to OLPC for free, but the offer was turned down. I will bet large sums of virtual dollars you WON’T see a headline about Steve Jobs making fun of the handcrank of the soon-to-be released $100 laptops.

The digital divide is real, and it is an access issue. True, the issue is not just about hardware. That’s why I think legislatures should force telcos to lay fiber optic connections to every school in the United States, and local communities should provide broadband Internet access to residents as utilities like electricity, gas and water. Andy Carvin blogged earlier this month about the drive to bring fiber Internet connections to East Africa. The $100 laptop is a HUGE deal. As educators as well as citizens, I think we all should support the goals of the project. OLPC is a non-profit, and has a very different agenda than a corporation like Microsoft. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t be hearing anyone talk about a $100 laptop I’ll wager.