Tom Franklin : Activity

Truly wireless computing?

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 17:05:51 GMT

According to Nature we are getting nearer to truly wireless computing. What no tangle on or under the desk. Doesnt sound too good to be true, but take a look... http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070423/full/070423-11.html

Laptops

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 11:11:15 GMT

There is new recommendation out that children dont work with wireless laptops on their knees.

If this is genuinely a problem then we should be very worried about mobile
phones which actually use much higher power for their transmission (phone
masts are further away).

see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=RFJKG4CU1PV4
and no doubt a million other places for details.

One Laptop per child

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:20:40 GMT

The first One Lap Top Per Child school has received its computers, and I am sure that the teachers and children and community are very pleased with them. You can see more pictures at http://news.com.com/2300-1041_3-6175025-2.html?tag=ne.gall.
including children smiling with their shiny new computers.

While there is something to be said for Negreponte's One Laptop Per Child programme, and the computers cost $100 each and are wind up I do wonder if this is the most useful use of resources in a country that has huge class sizes, considerable poverty and easily curable diseases.

It seems to me to be part of the furore over the "digital divide" from a few years ago, which wasn't a digital divide at all, it was, and is, a wealth divide. Poor people have less access to technology because they are poor. The solution is not to give them bits of technology but to address the underlying causes. But that is more expensive, more difficult and if really done would affect the life styles of the rich: