3 ms·

>The free market and the march of technological progress did a better job than any moonshot project designed to solve digital literacy in poor countries. Yeaaa

>The free market and the march of technological progress did a better job than any moonshot project designed to solve digital literacy in poor countries. Yeaaaaah. You know that had nothing to do with actually increasing digital literacy, and was actually directed at tapping into previously unexploitable markets right? That mobile and telecom was realized before roads and secure ubiquitous access to potable water is not something that is impressive to someone whose sat through company meetings gushing over the value to be raked in by fee extracting developing markets. >Many sub-Saharan and Southeast Asian countries have better LTE rollout than rural America does. Population density does that. >Everyone has a smartphone or tablet, made possible by the fact that cheap Android devices are really cheap but still effective. And that's because the free market doesn't care about the opinions of a bunch of committee members who all want a say in how the device is designed. Android is also one of the most user-hostile computing platforms I've ever encountered, and I shudder to think of the people who have to tread their "first exposure to computers" being Android, then working their way back to a General Purpose computer. Android was never built as anything but a developer's portal to population of users. Nothing more. A general purpose computer, at least has utility as a springboard to conventions from which to bridge the gap to more special purpose computing regimes. Something, I might add, that that committee you disparage was more keenly interested in providing cheaply, robustly, and maintainable than any developer or architect of Android, or the handsets it runs on ever was. >Devices either fulfill needs and make money or they don't and company goes broke. Some problems don't lend themselves to profitable solutions. Free markets optimized around immediate profit potential essentially bury and write these problems out of the equation until there is simply no other choice, which is not guaranteed to be the optimal course of action in the long run. >Just because they don't do computing like _you_ do, using a laptop, doesn't mean they don't have access to the Internet for what they need. Correction: They can use the Internet for what someone deemed profitable to make available for them. The use cases that were not (General Purpose) remain out of reach. It irks me when people don't fully render the positive and negative aspects of an implementation.

e4e78a06 5y ago
> Yeaaaaah. You know that had nothing to do with actually increasing digital literacy, and was actually directed at tapping into previously unexploitable markets right? That's the point. The market trying to make money does a better job at getting tech access to people than specialized initiatives to promote digital literacy. > Population density does that. The point was that the standard wire-to-the-home plus WiFi router plus laptop model that we have in the developed world doesn't work if you're trying to build out infrastructure for a large number of people cheaply. > Something, I might add, that that committee you disparage was more keenly interested in providing cheaply, robustly, and maintainable than any developer or architect of Android, or the handsets it runs on ever was The first step to learning to access the internet is not learning how to code. Smartphones aren't exactly competing with laptops - you can first get a phone or tablet and when you go to university or into the workplace you have a proper PC. > Correction: They can use the Internet for what someone deemed profitable to make available for them. The use cases that were not (General Purpose) remain out of reach. Android devices are capable of running arbitrary code through sideloading, including JIT compiled apps like emulators. About the only thing you can't do is boot your own OS, which by the time you know enough to boot your own OS you definitely have your own laptop. You are referring to iOS.
zozbot234 5y ago
Back in the day, the "non-user-hostile" alternative to Android and iOS was OpenMoko. I think it's fair to say that Android has been significantly more successful. Meanwhile, work on non-hostile mobile computing platforms is ongoing, but the OLPC folks are playing no significant role there. In fact, much of the momentum over "computing in early education, w/ a loosely constructivist philosophy" has now shifted to the Raspberry Pi (also a commercially successful product!) which is more and more looking like the one true successor to the OLPC.

e4e78a06 5y ago

> Yeaaaaah. You know that had nothing to do with actually increasing digital literacy, and was actually directed at tapping into previously unexploitable markets right? That's the point. The market trying to make money does a better job at getting tech access to people than specialized initiatives to promote digital literacy. > Population density does that. The point was that the standard wire-to-the-home plus WiFi router plus laptop model that we have in the developed world doesn't work if you're trying to build out infrastructure for a large number of people cheaply. > Something, I might add, that that committee you disparage was more keenly interested in providing cheaply, robustly, and maintainable than any developer or architect of Android, or the handsets it runs on ever was The first step to learning to access the internet is not learning how to code. Smartphones aren't exactly competing with laptops - you can first get a phone or tablet and when you go to university or into the workplace you have a proper PC. > Correction: They can use the Internet for what someone deemed profitable to make available for them. The use cases that were not (General Purpose) remain out of reach. Android devices are capable of running arbitrary code through sideloading, including JIT compiled apps like emulators. About the only thing you can't do is boot your own OS, which by the time you know enough to boot your own OS you definitely have your own laptop. You are referring to iOS.

zozbot234 5y ago

Back in the day, the "non-user-hostile" alternative to Android and iOS was OpenMoko. I think it's fair to say that Android has been significantly more successful. Meanwhile, work on non-hostile mobile computing platforms is ongoing, but the OLPC folks are playing no significant role there. In fact, much of the momentum over "computing in early education, w/ a loosely constructivist philosophy" has now shifted to the Raspberry Pi (also a commercially successful product!) which is more and more looking like the one true successor to the OLPC.