GBurch1@aol.com wrote:
> This set me to thinking about my favorite pie-eyed dream, setting as a
> philanthropic goal for Silicon Valley's billionaires the creation of a
truly
> CHEAP electronic infrastructure for the Third World. As I've described
here
> before, I envision the design of a super-simple sat-phone-PC-net terminal
> with solar and wind-up power.
Why do you think it is possible to make such a thing cheaply? I ask,
because you're talking about a setup that would normally cost several
thousand dollars to build (and making it cheap is already a major design
goal in the electronics industry).
> Make hundreds of millions of them and
> distribute them free throughout the Third World. Back it up with a
> distributed volunteer network to run distance-learning programs (basic
> literacy, public hygiene, agriculture, first aid) through the sat-net
system.
> The cell comm system would be smart enough to plug into
> land-based wireless
> as/when available. My private name for this project: "Brain Seeds"
Why should we expect this to work better than simply giving them the money
we would have spent on the gadgets? I think the appeal hinges entirely on
the assumption that you can make the system for far less than normal market
cost, and then pass on the savings.
Billy Brown
bbrown@transcient.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:04:18 MDT