Comments on: Freedom To Tinker, Freedom to Learn

By: Emergent Chaos

Emergent Chaos — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 21:52:49 +0000

More on “Freedom To Tinker, Freedom to Learn”

In “Freedom To Tinker, Freedom to Learn,” I made some assumptions about the user interface for the $100 laptop. In “Alan Kay at WSIS,” Ethan Zukerman explains that Alan Kay will be doing much of the user interface design work:…

By: Iang

Iang — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 14:19:50 +0000

It’s not clear to me that the west is very good at shipping clean water, food and medical care to poor people. We have been trying since forever and have failed miserably.
Why not try something we are good at – spreading the net?

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 00:07:13 +0000

Internet access can help with clean water (by sharing knowledge about water purification and testing), medical care (by making expensive texts available online), and nutrition (by education). Is it a panacea? No.

By: arthur

arthur — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 14:12:05 +0000

From looking through From looking through Apple's Darwin site, it looks like all of the underlying bits of OS X are in Darwin. It appears (e.g. Cocoa and Aqua) that it's pretty much the yummy looking front end that's not been opensourced.

By: Alice Marshall

Alice Marshall — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 13:36:59 +0000

Have to disagree with this. As an Apple user I have no more desire to fiddle around with OS software anymore than I want to change the oil in my car. However, I would like the ability to have experts I trust look into my computer to fix and maintain it. With an open system it is easier to obtain competitive bids.
I think sending open source computers to poor countries is spectacular, it is just a question of time before the Ghanaian version of Steve Jobs figures out how to provide a solid user interface in a well designed box and sells that sucker for $50. Then the Ghanaians, or whoever, will do to Microsoft what Honda did to GM.

By: beri

beri — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 12:45:24 +0000

While I enjoy the benefits of the Internet myself, I think that clean water, medical care and adequate nutrition would be more “world changing” than a computer for the poor children of the world. Abraham Maslow pointed out a long time ago that only after the necessities of life have been satisfied can one think about anything but survival.