Amidst the giving spirit of the holidays, some people choose to be Scrooges. Intel's Craig Barrett has made a statement calling the laptops offered by the One Laptop Per Child program "$100 gadgets" (as opposed to "$100 laptops"). To be fair, Intel, as well as Microsoft, among others, are active in many third-world ventures that aim to make computers and knowledge of their use more widely available. So why the recent attack on the $100 laptops? Perhaps Barrett feels intimated by the potential of the program? After all, several national governments have already signed contracts with the OLPC program to have the laptops shipped next year. The UN has also offered its backing of the initiave. For now all we can do is wonder about the reasons for the affront. For more on the statements made by the silver-haired curmudgeon from Intel, go here.
By the way, I'll be posting on the topic of public technology initiatives in Mexico, in due time. For now, you can read about the e-Mexico National System for yourself.
12 December, 2005
Intel Slams $100 Laptops
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4 comments:
The Dissident Frogman?
Hi Karim,
Thanks for the comment, though we weren't sure how to interpret it.
We just figured it out. Our sincerest apologies: we recently updated our blogroll and made a mistake in the HTML. It has been amended. Thanks for pointing it out and thanks again for checking out our blog!
haha thanks guys. Took me while to find were the link was coming from but I’m honored you would stay up for me
btw pray4peace.org is looking into the possibility of raising money to buy a bloc of those $100 laptops for kids in Palestine. Still feasibility stage, actually not even, more like idea stage, but if anyone’s interested in helping let us know.
Karim
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