the throwaway computer

I recently read that Intel was teaming up with the $100 laptop folks. This is great news for them and I'm sure it will help them to spread their message of techno-accessibility throughout the world. I am guessing that it is only a matter of time before they bring the $100 laptop to the US market, in an effort to get laptops into the hands of children at an even younger age. After all, if it was only $100, we as parents won't feel as reluctant to let the kids use it. The frightening part is that this will also open up these younger children to a whole world of targeted marketing that they were only previously exposed to during commercials between shows like Sesame Street. This basically will result in them growing up even quicker...wanting to wear makeup sooner...feeling like they are "uncool" if they don't have their own cellphone at the age of six.

Although many experts say that these types of things move in circles, and that there is a shift back towards "old fashioned" childhood, I just don't see it happening. The "fellowship" youth aren't convincing enough with their abstinence plans and the retail stores don't support it. In fact, the clothing for children is looking more and more "adult" if you ask me...crop tops and hip-huggers for eight year olds...what a sick society we live in.

Although many see the $100 laptop crusade as a way of reaching out to third world communities and offering them a convenient "in" to technology and education, we also have to see this for what it is. A bunch of technology firms introducing an alien product to a virgin market in the hopes that they will embrace it and act American in their spending habits once they have fully assimilated it (or it has assimilated them).

Another complaint is that with such a low price tag, computers have become disposable. This means more computers for the trash heap. More production waste. No longer will we hunt for upgrades and repair bad hard-drives. No longer will we swap out last year's high tech Ricoh CD burner with this years high tech lightscribe burner. No longer will we search high and low on eBay for things like power supplies and IDE cables. No longer will we spend several hours scouring the net for coupon codes so that we can get the best deal on our factory replacement IBM memory. And no longer will we feel like hanging onto that laptop when things go wrong - a virus hits, we get hijacked, we can't get the disk defragmenter to finish its run and we're feeling "fragged". So we scrap it. Heck, it was only $100.

While there are definite perks to making laptops that can be picked up for only $100, there are also questions that need to be asked. Technology with higher pricetags keeps a cap on its footprint, but it also prevents it from entering markets in which it has the potential to do more harm than good. While it is great that there are third world children who are going to receive an education that they've never even dreamed of, did they really want to be "educated" in this way? Are we in effect turning them away from their own culture by enlightening them in our own? Is it fair to intrude? Some might argue that their "culture" has gotten them to where they are today - poor, struggling to survive, uneducated. But is it fair to try and impose our standards of education and affluence on these societies? Although we can all agree that nobody likes to go hungry, we could argue on what truly makes someone "poor".

As usual, we Americans don't ask these questions. We just assume that everyone wants to be like us, and we do our best to offer them this opportunity and turn a profit at the same time. The $100 laptop isn't necessarily a turnkey profitable venture, but the ensuing technological thirst surely will be.