The $100 laptop closer to reality

[Rich Braun]

I'm with the Luddites on this one, mainly because of the long failed past
history of silicon snake oil.

In 1978, I enrolled at a college which had just bought a brand-new computer
system.  I eagerly learned its programming language, called TUTOR, and
embraced the whole notion of Computer-Based Instruction.  Some professors even
took the time to migrate parts of their lessons onto the system (named after a
famous teacher, PLATO).  Our campus poured mind-boggling sums into facilities;
at that time the campus computing facilities available to undergrads exceeded
those of MIT and approached those of world leader Stanford.

This investment came at a huge price, though:  in my opinion, the money would
have been better spent on professors' salaries instead of soon-to-be-obsolete
computers.

Now fast-forward a full *27* years.  We have an academic pitching a low-cost
computer (with an already-obsolete name--who uses the term "laptop" in this
era of "notebooks"???) and proferring technology as the salvation for
low-income kids?

I've long since given up on the "highly paid" "profession" of computer systems
engineering--employment opportunities of the Wang/Digital era were more
appealing than those of the Java and Microsoft era.  At least it seems that
way to me.

So now I sit in a classroom as a career changer.  At the back are a pile of
obsolete PCs which *could* be running software as part of the course.  Guess
what?  The instructor has us bring in *pocket calculators* to crunch the
profusion of numbers that we have to deal with each day, instead of using the
PCs with spreadsheet software or customized courseware.  Why does he do this? 
So we have to go through them line by line, so we fully understand what we're
doing.  (I decided to use the same pocket calculator that I bought in the
summer of 1978 after getting a letter from the freshman-orientation people at
my college.  Still works great after all these years!)

One other tidbit from my past, circa 1993:  at that time I wrote up a business
plan that called for selling Internet email at $20/year.  It more or less
assumed that I wouldn't have to hire anyone.  But I quickly found out that if
you have to deal with 5,000 customers, you will have to hire people!

In sum, I think the whole $100 laptop concept is going nowhere fast:

* It's being proposed by an academic who may not have fully evaluated
  the business support costs, or even the true cost-of-goods for these.
* Computer-based instruction has long been a bankrupt idea, more likely
  to dumb-down the student body than provide clear understanding.
* Who will benefit from owning an obsolete piece of junk?  (Put yourself
  into the mind of a 12-year-old:  would you think it's "cool" to have
  one of these things, vs. a gamers'-special custom PC with all the
  bells & whistles?  Even the poor kids want $100 sneakers... *not*
  $100 laptops!)

The environmentalist in me shudders at the notion of finding an appropriate
waste-disposal site for the billions of these things that could be funded
with, say, the sums wasted on one single foolish presidential directive (or
failure to plan ahead) these days.

-rich