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My good friend Bryan Andersen recently did an exclusive article with the Eugene Weekly on the $100 laptop computer that is slated to eventually connect the remotest areas of the earth with the “rest of us” (to steal the Apple computer tag line).

Bryan was kind enough to let me have some pictures that weren’t included in the original article. You can see them just below.
First thing, go here: http://www.eugeneweekly.com/2007/03/29/news2.html and read the article. It’s a great example of synergy, serendipity and being in the right place at the right time to help do something worthwhile.

To be honest, the last thing I’d heard about the $100 laptop was when the handle broke off during a demo at the United Nations. Since then the power method has been replaced by a pull string that anyone that has played with a talking doll will be familiar with. Hopefully that will be rugged enough for use in the field.

From what Bryan’s article says, these little laptops can communicate amongst themselves acting as relay stations ultimately connecting to a server at a school. Anybody who has been around computers long enough will remember UUCP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP) and the bucket brigade method of sending email back in the old days. Since the Internet was a long way away in the future at the time, email would go from server to server when they would dial up and pickup whatever email was waiting and then connect to the next server in the sequence and pass along what was destined for that server. It kept the calls local to the various servers while eventually moving the mail cross country.

Similarly HAM radio operators that connect remote areas with outside help relay important messages to those that need them the most — during times of horrible destruction they are sometimes the only way to get information to/from certain areas. (Hopefully Amateur Radio operators will always be around and won’t get lost in the new technology).

Anyway, maybe ingenious users of these little laptops will form volunteer networks to move messages and snippets of life from within remote areas to the mainstream Internet. Can you imagine the next Youtube video to go viral is a little kid’s take on the world from outer Mongolia or some other area?

Have you ever heard those little Green Tree Frogs? Some of them are the size of your thumbnail but you can hear them from a long way away! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyla_cinerea
These little computers remind me of those throaty tree frogs. If we are lucky, these little guys will croak their way to prominence revealing things about daily ways of life we can all learn from!

That’s it for the moment, in my next post we’ll discuss some more about these little laptops. Thanks for reading!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007 at 9:14 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.