Triphop's Universe

When I heard the plan of MIT's Media Lab to produce the $100 dollars laptops for Third World nations, I thought it was a great plan to get computers into the hands of children the world over. With the new plan to launch the program in Thailand, it brings the project a bit closer to home.

Having been born in Thailand, and as someone who visits there on a regular basis, there is nothing more troublesome than seeing the divide within the proliferations of new technologies into the hand of the Thai population. While computers permeate the business world, with the need to be conversant with these systems a fact, the vast majority of the populations simply cannot afford one. This includes many schools that should be in the forefront of computer education for new generations.

The commitment of the Thai government to purchase of 1 million units of the $100 laptops in the first year is welcome news. The project will, of course, expand to other nations as well. The puzzling element to this news is why the Indian government is not already jumping on as a participant of this testing phase. If there is a country that will need these laptops, it should be a country like India, who has a burgeoning hi-tech economy and a large population who will likely benefits from this project.

One final thing that I would like to comment on is how nice that these laptops will house the open source Linux operating system. There were rumors awhile back that the project might give in to Microsoft and use their proprietary Windows Mobile. Shameful on Microsoft for suggesting that a “real” computer needs to run their own operating system, and that their mobile computing devices are the right candidates for usable computers. These devices, of course, comes at a price several times higher, counter the very core idea of inexpensive machines that can be rolled out on massive scale.

With Linux in place as the OS of choice for this project, perhaps there will be a side-effect of having a whole new generation of kids who will not think that using something proprietary like Windows is the only way to run a computer. So perhaps the next time I visit Pantip Plaza in Bangkok, I will see less and less copies of pirated Windows for sale, and more and more computers installed with Linux available for general public consumption. At least it is my hopes that we will finally see the benefits of open source software after all, especially when it starts with the children of nations who will gain most from it.