Friday, September 30, 2005

negroponte: give me $100 million and hope for the best

sep 29

i lost faith in nicholas negroponte and MIT's media lab after their previous antics in india. they set up medialab asia in india at some huge cost to the indian government and then started acting like little imperialists. they didnt have that much to offer and they wanted to dictate terms.

i guess this is why india is not in the list of privileged nations which will get the new rubber laptop. also there is the small matter of $100 million that he wants up front.

negroponte, in my opinion, is a showman. i dont believe this initiative is really going anywhere, but gets lots of publicity.

the simputer is a lot better as an alternative. note that there is no talk of local languages in the negroponte blurb. but i do like the idea of the handcrank, although that is more of a gimmick than anything else. AA batteries are available all over the place. a low power consuming battery operated device would be just fine.

http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/09/29/mit/index.php

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Another masterpiece from the mouth of the Creator. Very well written.

Brahma's Article

Anonymous said...

Simputer is a joke. Why would an illiterate buy a $400 gizmo? As I see it, the only reason that the professors who built it brought in the illiterates into the picture did so because that is the only way government will pump money into it and people will support them.

$100 laptop is on the same path. Why is he talking of poor people here? It doesn't matter who uses these laptops, the focus should be on a cheap laptop. The urge to see illiterates and poor people use computers is a stupid one. Even the poor may not have that urge as their priorities will be to fill their bellies.

Anonymous said...

forget the poor. many low and middle class people in india would think twice about buying a $100 laptop.
why blame just Negroponte for the media labs asia issue. blame the BJP govt also.
if $100 million is a lot for indians, it is a chump change for americans. if india cant put in that much why would you get the product.
the issue here is that $100 million is a lot for indians because, indian currency is undervalued. and blame the left and the congress for that.
and why blame Negroponte for not having local language content in the laptops.?
Blame the 1 billion indians who are ready to work for 300 million americans and the other english speaking countries for making English(and LAtin script) to be the only fashionable language for computing .
why blame them , when the fault lies with us.?

Anonymous said...

$100 million is NOT chump change even for the rich Americans when you view it from the Venture Capitalist perspective. They are rich exactly because they know, how not to throw good money after bad, like backing this idiotic venture.