> > The primary appeal of the scheme, to me, is the idea of dropping
> > billions of easily concealable ringtop computers onto oppressed
> > countries, as Marc Stiegler proposed in _Earthweb_.
>
> I can understand that, but I'm a little skeptical about it. Most of the
> people in the most urgent need of help can't read, let alone use a
> computer - and they don't speak English, Japanese or any European language,
> either, so there isn't a lot of content they could use anyway.
>
> I could see it as a way to destabilize an oppressive government in a
> half-developed country like Malaysia or Pakistan, but I'm not sure it would
> do much to improve the local economy.
The recipients of the machines wouldn't necessarily be the only
beneficiaries of their distribution: just the existence of a large
number of networkable machines in remote parts of the globe would make
things like the Freenet project more robust and government-proof.
(see http://freenet.sourceforge.net).
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:04:23 MDT