Tuesday, May 23, 2006
supply and demand
Boing Boing is showing a photo of the first working prototype of the $100 laptop that the One Laptop Per Child program is putting together, with the hope of distributing to the developing world. A question whose answer I'll be curious to see: If these do end up being widely distributed in some region, what will be the subsequent clearing price be on e-Bay for their re-sale to geek-chic-collectors in the US/Europe?
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Beginning graduate school corresponded with living on my own for the first time and paying for all of my bills. Thus, when I called the phone company to turn on my phone service, the operator asked, "Would you like to donate a dollar to our program that offers low-cost phone service to low-income people?" I responded, "I'm low income! Do I get cheaper service?" "No, ma'am," she responded and so I kept my dollar. Now, as my several year-old desktop lurches at me each time I ask it to run two programs at once, I wonder why MIT has foregone the program titled "One Functioning Laptop for Every Grad Student"? If I think about it long enough, I might be able to argue why using a $100 laptop to write a several-hundred page thesis that only a handful of people will read is far better than using a $100 laptop to write essays on otters...
I hope that the technology will spread into the open market and drive down costs for us all.
All I know is, I wouldn't mind have a backup crank to power my laptop, although I'd prefer if it could be detachable. Does such a thing exist?
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