"One Laptop per Child": A Realistic Imagination with Unimaginable Obstacles Along its Ways.

=================================================================

Yesterday evening, I got some free time to sit down with my family. I scrolled over TV channels and ran into the 60 minutes show....

It's about a project so called, "One Laptop per Child".

This idea was originated from an MIT graduate. He went to a remote area of Cambodia and realized that how children in the area desperately needed education and its tools. So he came up with a crazy idea of having these children to own laptop computers.

It sounded pretty much like a mission impossible to me... I saw many practical and possible obstacles in this mission.

But, the show continued and laid down how this person "materialized" his plan...

Pricing was the most challenging problem of all... Along that rugged line, there were also many other engineering problems of how to invent "those laptops" and the children could really use them for their education.

OK, I totally agreed that if a child got a laptop with an internet access, he or she could learn tremendous lessons within a short period of time--- no doubt about it...

Anyway, how could he build cheap laptops with many capabilities to overcome lacking of resources in such remote and financially poor areas of the world.

Let's think about those areas a bit.... no roads, no electricity, raining all the time, and so on... Those laptops would be able to overcome these hurdles to fulfill his crazy ideas, right?

A passionated person never allows any cannot-do attitude into his/her mind to undermine his determined goals....

The guy overcame all these potential problems and successfully invented 100-dollar laptops. These machines were equipped with wireless internet capabilities, a built-in VDO camera, a waterproof&dustproof capability, resistance to heat and humid conditions, a long-lasting battery, a cranker for boosting up a dying battery, and much more...

All of these were just 100ish dollars... This project became a worldwide project, aiming to distribute these machines to their customers, poor children in third world countries... for example, children in Cambodia, Brazil and many more....

By numbers, it's been calculated that there would be around 1 billion of children who need these mavelous machines altogether....

Combined altogether, this "poor" business looked suddenly lucrative, right?

Money is always smelling to greedy people like blood to sharks....

It has been turned from a humanitarian project which there was no one thinking about it (because it's potential in causing bankrupcy) to a project with competition from a giant in computer chip industry, Intel!!

The MIT guy who industriously worked his life for this passion are confronting a huge hurdle of all.... even more difficult than those engineering challenges he's won.

The fight between the two is still on-going.... Personally, I would like to see the owner of the original idea prevails.... on top of that I would like to see those under-preveleged children have their educational tools for themselves and their family.

By the way, if you're in the US and you would like to buy one, you have to pay for two: one for yourself and another for a child in the areas in need.

That's fair enough for me though.... :)

If someone told you that you'd a crazy idea which never been fulfilled, I would like you to think about this story... There is no such thing as an impossible if you put a true, passionate effort into it.

=================================================================

Create Date : 27 สิงหาคม 2550		2 comments
Last Update : 27 สิงหาคม 2550 23:52:17 น.
Counter : 738 Pageviews.
Share Tweet