Forget the $100 PC?!?

Africa needs both, obviously.

The only people who will profit substantially from cellphone usage will be the telcos, not the people themselves.

Mobile data is all well and good, but try being an Ebay Powerseller or an Adwords power user on a cellphone. You can’t. You’ll cause yourself serious physical harm trying to do that sort of heavy data shunting on a cellphone.

China and India have already become powerhouses in selling goods online, whether physical or virtual – that’s the logical step that African people and businesses will take too. (Check Ted Fishman’s excellent China Inc. book for more on China’s use of Ebay etc).

Africa will leapfrog other continents with wireless infrastructure because it’s quicker to set up state of the art stuff rather than build all the fixed line infrastructure. So cellphone usage will continue to explode, but the business possibilities for entrepeneurs will be severely hampered until people get computers to do the heavy data crunching work and the backup to use them – not only infrastructure (e.g. regular electricity and decent housing that will protect the machines from the heat, theft etc) but also tuition in keyboard skills, literacy, business building etc etc.

It’s only when you give individual people the means to start creating their own business out of their own hard work and ideas that you kickstart economies. As far as I understand economics, anyway…

Can you build a new website on a mobile phone? Can you write software? Create content? Right now the anwer is no.

The $100 PC is about empowering the underclass – you don’t empower people by enabling their ability to consume. You empower them by enabling their ability to PRODUCE. The former will supplant their culture, the latter will enable them to express it in the way that makes sense to them.

I remain a firm supporter of the $100 PC.

Todd Blanchard wrote:
“The $100 PC is about empowering the underclass – you don’t empower people by enabling their ability to consume. You empower them by enabling their ability to PRODUCE.”

When people are threatened by hunger, disease and war, it’s about both. I’m not an opponent of the $100 PC, but as a mobile software developer I’ve seen how even the tiniest, cheapest computers that Africans already have access to can create leverage to help solve the big problems there. My over-dramatized tagline wasn’t really meant to criticize Negroponte’s plans, just to encourage people not to overlook opportunities that mobile devices offer. Surely, they are complementary technologies.

Thanks for helping get the discussion back on the original topic.

Look, Robert, as usual, I’m lost in the storm of what seem to me to be off-topic commenters ’cause you’re on the A-list and you get all the geek cred which means all the comment attention. And I think your original comment skewed things a bit. But isn’t this $100 PC about education? Didn’t you miss that entirely in your post? Should I stop trying to make sense of things here? So far it seems only one other comment has anything whatsoever to do with education.

???

Drew: I did. But, what kind of education?

Are you expecting someone in Africa to get one of these contraptions and hook it up to Google? Or be able to email me and trade stuff she’s making for enough money to bootstrap her family’s condition up?

Me? I think there’s more economic goodness by getting people into a place where they can communicate with the rest of the world. And that requires infrastructure. I think a cell phone based device is better for a third-world or emerging economy.

But, it’ll be interesting to see which theory proves correct.

I have no interest in reading blogs on a tiny cell screen. My iPod holds plenty of content to make it through my 2 hour commute each day. I used to drag my laptop home each evening thinking I needed to be available 24/7. But I’ve realized over time that I don’t need to be, and my relationship with my spouse and kids have improved greatly since I decided to leave my laptop at work. I can get away with that since I’m not a big exec like Scoble.

Brett: I read dozens of blogs every day on my cell phone screen. It actually is quite readable. It makes standing in line waiting for lunch (or airport security lines, etc) much more productive.

Hmmm, I should try that! Except I work with Maryam now.

The problem I have with blogging via cell, and really any net via cell is the fact that I am paying again for a service I have already paid for.

Pay the cell company a monthly fee for minutes and pay again for data transfer? Just doesn’t sit well with me.

I just saw this blog on this topic (he tells me off) and thought it added to the conversation here. http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=5190

Also see my comment there.

I’m a bit late to the party here but:

No, I don’t want streaming video on my phone. I don’t want to read blogs on my phone. I don’t want to surf the web on my phone. I don’t want to look silly holding a big ol’ brick to my head, and I don’t plan on attaching one of these bad star trek nightmare bluetooth headsets to my head and mumble to myself like some psycho.

Anything that I use to browse and watch video should have decent screen real estate. A phone cannot do that without breaking my ‘no brick holding’ rule.

I want my phone to make and receive calls. I also believe that the more functions you tack onto these phones will reduce the quality; you’ll end up with a device that instead of doing one thing well (having a conversation) does a lot of things badly.

I still know people who carry around numeric pagers.
A lot of people actually have to “work” for a living, so I doubt if there will be many iron workers surfing the web on their cell phones while they are constructing the next sky scraper.

A little reality check please.

Sure, cell phones and any extra features are great while you are out on the go, but once you are done with the work day, everyone has a place they call home. While at home, where the highest speed Internet connections are at, are the most capable machines running on some sweet A/C power.

Portable is fine, yes. There will always be the trade-off factor.

Prime example? Portable DVD players – yes, nice distractions while you travel about on an airliner – however, there is zero comparison to watching your favorite DVD at home on an 81″ plasma TV with full surround sound all while drinking an ice cold beer and sitting in your favorite leather chair.

SO, to me, taking it with you, or being able to access it from anywhere, isn’t really a big deal outside the scope of email or IM’s, since once you get it, the device which you got it on is inferior and always will be.

JMTC,

Michael B

Robert: Thanks for the link.

David B: I like your blog (nice WordPress job), but boy did that headline get to me. You’re on the mark when you acknowledge the good points of the laptop project. We need BOTH approaches. Meanwhile thanks for acknowledging that the “Forget” headline was “over-dramatized.”

Regards,
David Rothman
http://www.teleread.org/blog

Michael, I know a few construction workers and during breaks they DO check their cell phones. What, you think they don’t need news, or to check how their stocks are doing, or read a random blog just like you do?

I know my blog works on a mobile phone, because I tested it on a Treo at the Cingular store one day. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet figured out how to show my blogroll after the content, instead of before. One of these days I’ll clean it up…

I do some moblogging, but other than that…

Cell phone market is huge in Asia.

As I said, Scoble and Co. have no clue. A laptop (or a PC) that costs 100 USD, that can be used by a community (forget about a laptop per child) is a lot different and a lot more useful than a mobile phone which you can use to read/write blogs. Doesn’t matter if it’s hand-cranked or otherwise.

For a moment, think outside the box (the box being the United States and the other so called “DEVELOPED COUNTRIES”).

Internet is not just about blogging/vlogging.

Have a look at this project:
http://www.revdept-01.kar.nic.in/Bhoomi/Home.htm

BTW, Microsoft provided technology support for that project.

Robert,

When I hear the Bill Gates proposal that cell phones are better than a real computer, all I hear is elitist BS. The point is to allow children in less developed and privileged societies access to what we in the US and Europe take for granted.

When you take your son’s computers away and make him do his computing with a cell phone with a “keyboard” then I will take this opinion of yours seriously. If your son can’t do with just a cell phone, then why should children with less resources be any different?

James: can you please explain how you are gonna teach this woman how to use a computer? http://www.unitus.com/

All she wants is to sell me some baskets without having middlemen involved. She can do that using a cell phone, no computer needed.

This is the problem with this whole initiative. We are looking at it from OUR perspective, but you aren’t looking at what someone in an emerging market actually needs.

It’s why talking about this just isn’t going to result in anything like a decent conversation. You call me elitist and go off feeling good about yourself.

Meantime, did you actually help someone improve their lives?

Tell me again. How is someone who makes maybe $300 a month gonna be able to use a computer in a place that has no infrastructure?

At least with cell phones there’s a chance that there’ll be infrastructure (when I visited China everyone had cell phones).

By the way, have you visited a modern American high school? Very few kids have computers but a very large percentage of kids have cell phones.

“Michael, I know a few construction workers and during breaks they DO check their cell phones. What, you think they don’t need news, or to check how their stocks are doing, or read a random blog just like you do?”

Well, a couple of things for that.
First, yes, it is a ‘few’ out of say tens or hundreds of thousands? Very small niche.

No, they don’t “need” news – it’s nothing but extra, and they probably have access to a radio on the job site. Heck, maybe even a xm satellite radio.

Stocks? I was referring to the guys/gals who are pulling in basic wages and trying to feed a family of four, pay for school clothes for the kids, misc expenses – you know, typical American family stuff.
Not corporate job site execs who are worried about their portfolio’s.

Do you not know about that part of America? If it were my money being spent, I’d focus on the $100 laptops and Internet via fiber to everyone’s house….ahhhh, but yes, there’s the rub – we’re not really here to help those people unless we can make a buck or two, are we?

Michael

@ MiniMage, Brian Sullivan…and anyone else wanting to test their site…

ms offers a downloadable windows mobile 5 emulator for free.

you can test ppc, smartphone, & even the new 320×240 display mode showing up on models like the moto q.

[shameless blog plug ahead]
did a series about how to download, install, & use the emulator over at the funcave, including how to get it talking to the web without having a gprs connection at all.

you can find the index to the series here: http://www.chrisrue.com/funcave/2006/06/wm5-device-emulator-index.html

enjoy!

To David Beers: I understand that nobody is asking anyone to shuck their full-sized PCs in favor of cell phones, but this isn’t what this post is about. It’s about providing the benefits of information processing to people who can not afford it in its current form. A phone is worthless if it’s not connected, and being connected has a cost. A PC lets you work whether you’re conected or not. Also, a phone is pretty much a consumer gadget. It’s a pain to produce anything significant on such a limited piece of hardware. A computer gives you the ability to produce tools and content.

I’m deliberately avoiding the debate about what the target audience *needs*, because neither of us really knows what they need. I don’t think that either of us can imagine what they might produce, given the opportunity. Yes, a cell phone is an improvement over what they have, but again, that’s not the discussion here. The discussion is which alternative is better for them, a cell phone or the OLPC PC.

This gets back to my point about Robert’s comments. I doubt that he would choose the cell phone over the PC, because it is a limited tool, useful mostly for consumption of information. The people for whom the $100 PC is intended deserve nothing less.

Thanks for the comment, though.

DGF

Daniel, I agree that a cell phone in and of itself isn’t great for producing “tools” or reams of “content” but to me the discussion isn’t about which is a more capable device: it’s about which is more likely in practice to change peoples’ lives.

I’m more optimistic about improving a successful technology that we know is highly prized and well utilized in the developing world than I am about airlifting in something that we, from our office overlooking the Charles River, imagine will bridge the digital divide.

As someone who makes a living developing software for mobile devices, I’m also pretty optimistic about the possibilities for a mobile phone to become the CPU and storage for a modular, thin client computer with a large screen and keyboard. This would be less costly to repair and upgrade than a monolithic laptop, enable costly screens and keyboards to be shared by multiple personal computing environments, and enable a lot of useful software or eBooks to be used even when the screen and keyboard are not at hand. Not everyone spends as much time at a desk as we do here and considerations of cultural and economic conditions should not be ignored because of a preoccupation with what people “deserve.”

This comes off harsh in my attempt to be brief–it’s not intended that way. Ultimately, I think the laptop initiative is worth a try if OLPC gets their priorities right: the biggest cost isn’t going to be the computers themselves, it’s going to be cultivating the local support for them in all the senses that that word implies. Not sure if they realize that but I hope they do.

Here’s the longer follow-up to my original post: http://www.pikesoft.com/blog/index.php?itemid=97

Thanks for your thoughts on this topic.