$100 Laptop Not So Much Useful As Useless

The $100 laptop project created by Nicholas Negroponte, has recently come under fire for not being quite the breathtaking, important technology it’s supposed to be, as most of the countries the laptop is geared toward would rather have things like food, shelter, and not dying. Various critics of the project have suggested that the laptops, lacking an internet connection or anything really that worthwhile, are much less important than the need for a basic communications and education infrastructure in the developing countries first.

The laptop runs on a Linux-based operating system, includes a dual-mode display, a 500MHZ processor, 128MB of DRAM and 500MB of Flash memory. There is no hard disk, but there are four USB ports and wireless broadband that can mesh network. And for those of you wondering what that big yellow crank is — it’s a big yellow crank, and it makes it so your laptop doesn’t need to be plugged in.

At first, the laptop was greeted with nods of approval — after all, the cheap technology brings with it knowledge, and knowledge, as we are often told, brings power. However, murmurs of dissent soon began to arise — how is a wind-up laptop going to help without a communication infrastructure? How will giving equipment to children who neither know how to use it nor have the teachers to show them help in their education? Finally, while it’s a good thought, the project tends to patronize the countries that it caters too, assuming that their own businesses can’t create the same type of machines that the United States can, and even making the laptops look a little bit like something Blue would find, using his Clues.

India has already canceled plans to order a million of the devices, saying the country needs classrooms and teachers more urgently than it needs “fancy tools” — a problem that can easily be solved by buying teachers that come with a bright yellow crank.

The laptop in itself is a good idea. A $100 dollar piece of technology that can potentially connect the downtrodden to their counterparts and to the rest of the world could be an eye-opening, breaktaking, revolutionary-causing experience. But not only does the laptop itself needs work before that happens — but the countries that purchase it do as well.

And yet — we don’t think it’s a bad idea. If the creators find a way to give the laptop an internet connection — it would prove an invaluable piece of information, as a site like Wikipedia could potentially do more for a child than an underpaid, overworked teacher teaching an overcrowded class who is more concerned with finding a way to survive than the square root of 45.

For more information, crank your laptop and go here.