PCs for the poor: Which design will win?

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Computer mystique

In a TV documentary, an anthropologist was complaining that a people he admired for their adaptation to life in the rainforest had almost disappeared into urban life as soon as a settlement became available.

Objectively, as he demonstrated, the members of the tribe were worse off where they were. But they had no intention of returning. They wanted more and better, and other people had found the way.
Looking at the settlement the anthropologist showed, it was easy to agree that the place was not a demonstration of the benefits of modernity.

(The same anthropologist visited another community living in woven huts on stilts. The people living there greeted him with broad grins. They told him some weird stories of their activities, which he reported very seriously.
I like to think those people had a sense of humor like my own, and spent comfortable evenings inventing the stories that would establish the anthropologist's credentials as the discoverer of an exciting new form of society.)

Why are you hearing about this gullible anthropologist who romanticizes what I believe to be an ... uncomfortable life?

Because he made the significant point that people fervently want something better than what they have. For many people in many places, the computer is the symbol of better.

Think about where these computers are going to be installed. People expect something good to come from these devices.

By the odds, those spreading the idea of the computer probably had Windows. Proably knew it was the same software used elsewhere in the world. Part of an advanced civilization.

You wrote:

How can a country let alone a region expect Windows when most of them don't even have windows in their homes. Let along a clue as to what a computer is.

I suspect that you'd be surprised at how many people care about computers, even if they've seen only a specimen passing through.


And worth noting another TV report.
A school on a very poor area of the US received a donation of computers, not from Microsoft.

A woman was interviewed, and she was joyous that her son would have future employment because he was learning about computers.

That's naive, unfortunately, but it shows the attitude computers elicit, even in a country where computers can be considered an everyday device.

So when you write:

No, people want what meets the following criteria:
1. Affordable
2. Reliable
3. Accessible
4. Works for the task needed

I disagree. That's not always true. What many people who cannot affors computers now want is something that will make their lives better.

Deservedly or not, Windows benefits from that feeling.

Many people don't know what code is, let alone want to write it. And their expectations may not be very specific. But they do have hope.

Posted by: Anton Philidor   Posted on: 02/15/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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