Stacking Fault

Quantity has a quality all its own

Somewhere I heard the quote, "Quantity has a quality all its own." I can't remember who said it; a Google search implies it was a quote by Comrade Stalin. But the iron dictator was talking about large numbers, not small numbers. I've recently been thinking about small numbers... specifically how cheap can you make a decent computer?

And I'm not alone. The guys at the MIT media lab are working on the problem as well. Their $100 Laptop Project aims to high-quality devices in the hands of children world-wide. Take a look at some of the project principals: Negroponte, Jacobson and Papert. You probably know about Negroponte... grand ol' man of the Media Lab. Jacobson is a serial entrepreneur; the most interesting connection being his affiliation with eInk. Haven't heard of eInk? Don't worry, you will. If you have any contact with the educational technology community, then you probably know who Seymour Papert is. I got to hear him speak at a "Technology in Education" conference at North Texas State University (now University of North Texas) in the early 80's. His book "Mindstorms : Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas" was perhaps the early reference for the community. He later worked with Lego to produce the Lego Mindstorms Robotic Invention System.

Over the last several years I've studied a lot of business startups, and a major predictor of a startup's success is the experience of their founders. Not surprisingly, more experienced founders have a much better track-record... From this perspective, I hope to see some very good things come from the Media Lab.

Another effort to put inexpensive computers in the hands of those on the wrong end of the digital divide is Simputer effort. The Simputer is a small, Linux-based device with a simple interface, digital telephony capabilities and a smart card reader. The idea is that in poor, rural villages the computer could be shared by a number of families. The simputer was originally conceived by Dr.'s Manohar and Vinay, then at the Indian Institute of Science. The current incarnation of the Simputer, marketed by Amida Simputer is apparently available now at Amida's showroom in Bangalore or via electronic purchase (though I've heard people complain that it's difficult to actually buy a simputer.)

The simputer and the $100 laptop remind me a lot of the Dynabook concept from PARC alumnus and Smalltalk godfather Alan Kay. Designed to be an electronic textbook for kids of all ages, the Dynabook featured Smalltalk as an educational computer programming language. Lest you think the Dynabook is just a concept, click over to the the Squeak Foundation page for a quick note about what's going with the technology.

And we're starting to see this kind of technology go mainstream. Tablet PCs have been around for a while, but for the most part they're PCs with pen based input. The Dynabook is intended to simultaneously be "less" than a PC and "more" than the recently announced eInk-based Sony Reader.

Now that the Simputer and the $100 Media Lab laptop are looking less and less like vaporware every day, how long before we start seeing a real Dynabook style system? An instant-on device (like Jef Raskin's Swyft,) with a high-contrast display (like the iRex illiad) and the educational potential of Squeak or Logo?

posted by Matthew S. Hamrick @ 5:00 PM