Net Results: Intel chairman Craig Barrett last week uncharitably took a shot at the proposed €100 hand-cranked laptop from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, writes Karlin Lillington
The laptop, which is to go into production in the new year, has been welcomed by UN general secretary Kofi Annan - although there have been rumours about whether it actually works yet. Some do not believe the hand-crank mechanism is adequate for powering a laptop, but production deadlines will tell.
All of that is neither here nor there in relation to Barrett's comments. He told journalists in Sri Lanka: "I think a more realistic title should be 'the $100 gadget'. The problem is that gadgets have not been successful."
I'm sure he knows this is being disingenuous in the extreme. Plenty of "gadgets" that offer limited access to the internet and e-mail have been extremely successful - even addictive - from Blackberries to handheld computers to smartphones to basic mobiles.
"Successful" in the context in which Barrett uses the word is not relevant to the raison d'etre of the wind-up laptop. These are not intended to lure the road warrior, the wired teen or the general home PC buyer. They are intended for the developing world, where access to electricity is sporadic at best, and where a whole world would open to people through the ability to use the internet.
For an example of how this has been done with "gadgets", one has only to look to India, Pakistan or Africa, where mobile phones are being used creatively as community tools. Not everyone might own a mobile but small entrepreneurs make them available to individuals for personal calls. Entire communities check weather reports, prices for farm goods, and more using this basic device.
One can only guess that Barrett's grumpiness demonstrates that such a device may not just serve the developing world but ultimately find a niche with a more mainstream, developed world market too, where the lime green laptops will be marketed at $200 (€166). At those low prices, no chip company will be making much of a profit by supplying microprocessors. Therefore, Intel undoubtedly would prefer you to go for the full-featured, larger-ticket model from your PC provider of choice.
Assuming the lean green machines work as promised, the first batch of laptops is destined for children in Brazil, Thailand, Egypt, and Nigeria next year. Personally, I'd love to get my hands on such a device - just the thing for roving journalists who don't want to carry a bulky laptop but need to file stories and access e-mails. I am betting the developed world will embrace them too.
As Christmas approaches, one of the hot gifts of the season will be digital cameras and PCs that can edit and store the pictures they produce. I'm a big fan of digital photography myself. I love being able to e-mail photographs at will, and upload for public or family viewing to free storage sites like Photobucket.com and Flickr.com.
And yet, last September I spent some time with my 96-year-old grandmother, and I really enjoyed was going through some of her beautiful family photo albums. Not only are the albums themselves works of art in their formal, start of the 20th century way, but the carefully staged family photos along with her own snapshots are a delight.
Long dead, sepia print relatives with their strong Germanic immigrant features gaze serenely out from fussy pictures filled with painted backdrops and potted palms. The embossed names of vanished professional photo studios on the prints indicate my distant kin made long trips from their farms to Chicago or Milwaukee for these events. The prints were lovingly saved in elaborate albums where they remain in pristine form.
I especially love my grandmother's modest album she began as a teenager. There are many pictures of her with co-workers from a chicken restaurant. There she is too with her best friend Florence (still alive at 104 - they still talk by phone regularly), visiting a lake and joking about in a rowboat. Since then, I have mused whether digital storage will ever prove as robust, user-friendly and accessible as those prints in those albums.
How many will lose all family memories when they accidentally hit "delete"? What about corrupt files, ever-changing file formats, standards and storage media? Which of us will be able to sit with a grandchild in 60 years, looking at the digital memories recorded this Christmas? I wonder.
klillington@irish-times.ie weblog: http://weblog.techno-culture.com
