Third World PCs

Nicholas Negroponte is still trying to bring cheap wind-up laptops to third world children the only catch is now he says they will cost $175 instead of $100 and production may not start until October.

The former director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab who now heads the not-for-profit One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project said that project has been set pack from their original goals by the rising price of materials and changes in the design.

At least seven countries Uruguay, Nigeria, Pakistan, Argentina, Brazil, Thailand, and Libya have expressed interested in buying the Laptops that have a crank so they can be wound by hand.

Quanta Computer, the Taiwanese manufacturer which will assemble the machine has agreed to take a profit of about $3 per laptop and the laptops will work on a low cost version of Windows.

Mr. Negroponte also said that the project was considering shipping the machines to poor schools in the U.S.

While the U.S. is second in the world for personal computers per capita.

There is still a major gap in internet access between the rich and the poor according to the pew research center.

While 82 percent of those living in households with more than $75,000 in income now have internet access only 38 percent of households earning less than $30,000 have internet access.

Only 34 percent of Internet users have logged on using a wireless connection.

We need to close the income gap in internet access by making it cheaper and easy for people to get high speed Internet access at least school if they are unable to afford it at home. More teenagers are using the internet to learn more and research topics but they are also adding content and videos.

According to a recent study by Pew Internet and American Life Project, 57 percent of teenagers who are online, create content for the internet. Another study determines that more than 79% of U.S. broadband Internet users watched video in 2006.

The U.S. has a long way to go to provide the next generation with internet access so they can use the internet to its full potential.

According to a report in the Economists Intelligence Unit Asian and African nations are catching up to their European counterparts in affordable broadband.

The best way to truely connect the world is to increase the amount of broadband available so that people in third world countries can communicate and add content in the same ways at first world countries. AS the internet connects the world in brand new ways the media is looking at new ways to work with citizen journalists to cover world events. Citizen Journalists can cover events from the perspective of a witness who has lived in the area and knows the people rather then an outsider reporter who is throw into a war zone with little first hand knowledge of the conflict or the people involved.

MySpace is launching a new site for China last Friday. There are already 7.7 million blogs in China with 17.5 million active bloggers. MySpace China will face competition from similar sites like WangYou.com which has 11 million users.

Busing the internet to the poor

To give people in poor villages throughout India the company, United Villages, uses buses to provide Internet access to about 110,000 people in rural India and several other countries.

Each village that they serve has computer kiosks set up for villagers to compose emails, read the news and buy products from online stores. The only catch is that the web pages are not served in real time. Two WI-FI equipped buses visit the village four to six times a day to collect requests from the computers and transport the data to United Village hub in the city. The city hub then sends the messages out, processed searches and transfers any requested data back to the bus.

Seoul, Korea has had wireless internet Buses that allow people to access the internet while they are traveling in the city for about a year. Showing once again how they are miles ahead of the technology available in the U.S.



My Question is why oh why don't they do this in the rural parts of the U.S.?

According to Pew Internet.org in 2004 only 55 percent of all Internet users or 34 percent of adult Americans have high-speed Internet connections either at home or on the job. By the end of 2005 only 24 percent of rural American had high-speed Internet connections at Home compared to 40 percent in suburban areas. In rural areas 38 percent were listed as non Internet users. However the report called Rural Broadband Internet use from February 2006 said that Rural Internet users use the Internet for things like searching the news, checking blogs and participating in fantasy sports at about the same rate as urban users.

The easier and cheaper you make Internet access the more people will use it. Opening up access to the information highway so that nothing can stand in the way of person from becoming an expert in a variety of subjects if they are a little curious.

Another report called Wireless Internet access said that 34 percent of Internet users have logged onto the Internet using wireless connections either from their home or office.

The Internet gives people a choice in how they learn about the world and view the news. Instead of listening to the local radio, watching TV, or reading the local newspaper they can choose from thousands of newspapers. The number of choices on the Internet often overwhelm and overload us with rumor and inaccurate information. They also make it nearly impossible for the mainstream media or the government to control what the public knows.

They provide a sanctuary for citizen Journalism and unedited Journals through blogs. The education of the public through the Internet can slowly but surely spread democracy. This is why China is working with Google to control the Internet. They are fighting a losing battle over information. Its too easy to broadcast the truth and get it to the Chinese public you cannot fool the masses anymore.


Sky News report on discontent in China over development.

The truth is out there. Curious people just need the tools to find it and spread the word.