MIT: computer at $ 12 based on a clone of the NES in India
In a meeting organized by the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), a group of students and professionals planning to adapt a game console, sold a dozen of dollars in some countries in Asia, to make a basic computer for the populations of emerging countries to enjoy the joys of information directly on their televisions at low prices. The end of the digital divide?
Postulancy out: there are now game consoles, old fifteen to twenty years, which are sold between ten and thirty dollars in countries like India. These machines board components obsolete, but prove, however, sufficient to enable a family to connect to the Internet. Like any console for show, they connect to a TV, the electronic camera which tends to democratize the fastest in emerging countries.
Derek Lomas, a student at MIT, consider the case of Victor, a console Asian presenting himself as a clone of the NES "Famicom" Nintendo, and indeed accept cartridges of the latter. A console that has the particularity of bringing all the components needed for its proper functioning in a keyboard. Equipped with an 8-bit processor and 2 KB of video memory, Victor issue a display of 256 x 240 pixels, far enough to display a desktop software or a Web browser.
The idea, developed on a wiki, would therefore not try to replicate the model of the modern PC, as does the initiative One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), but rather to take advantage of these machines extremely affordable for that populations of developing countries can learn how to use computers, through games, or basic applications.
"We believe that this is a model that could improve opportunities for economic growth in the populations of emerging countries," said Derek Lomas at the Boston Herald. "The Taming of the typing can make the difference between one who earns a dollar per hour and whoever wins a dollar a day." An argument that does not leave indifferent governments. Thus India had recently launched it in developing a computer at $ 100, on the premise that the country's population will be far more likely to generate value if it is paid.
Others might be tempted to follow this model. In Western countries for example, where the TV is ubiquitous, and could quite serve as a gateway to the world of computing and the Web if he had backed a device to both economic and easy to use.
