[Marxism] Brazil and the Digital Divide

[Suresh <borhyaenid@xxxxxxxxx>]

The latest issue of MIT?s Technology Review has an
interesting piece on the development of the
?Hundred-Dollar Laptop?, a stripped-down,
hard-driveless computer, running open source software
which could potentially provide basic information
technology and internet access to millions of youth
around the world. The plan is for the governments of
nations like Brazil and China to make large-scale
purchases and then to publicly distribute the laptops.

For Brazil, in particular, this is not an
unprecedented endeavor, since some years previous
researchers at the Federal University of Minas Gerais
were already working on an ultra-cheap PC, in order to
bridge the ?digital divide? in the country. This
effort and the establishment of telecenters providing
free (or nearly free) internet access in libraries,
schools, cultural centers, and hospitals has been
financed  through FUST, an acronym which translates to
the Fund for the Universalization of Telecommunication
Services. FUST was a measure first proposed by the
Worker?s Party (PT) before finally being passed in
2001 (that is, before Lula took office) ? it?s based
upon a 1% tax on the telecommunication industry which
has grown rapidly since deregulation commenced in the
mid 90?s.

In reality however, much of the ambitious goals that
were laid out for connecting rural villages and urban
favelas alike, have not been met or even approached.
The formula for spreading internet access has been
very much along the lines of Blairite public-private
partnerships, and has involved re-shoveling FUST
monies into costly and ill-conceived contracts for
telecommunications firms. Meanwhile half of the
countries 180,000 public schools don?t even have
telephones, let alone internet access.

When you think about it, initiatives like FUST and
Lula?s Zero Hunger program are on the one hand, on the
cutting edge of progressive policy making in today?s
politically constricted, neo-liberal world, and on the
other hand, precisely the sort of limited, targeted
social programs which the IMF and World Bank support,
even while demanding the rollback of fuel and
agricultural subsidies, privatization of SOEs, the
slashing of civil service rolls, introduction of
user-fees in public services, and so on.


Mediating Poverty
>From the Editor Jason Pontin

In May, at the Wall Street Journal?s D3 conference
outside San Diego (an event attended by technology
princes like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs), I saw the
elements of a computer that, if it were built, would
wonderfully improve the fortunes of poor children.

Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of MIT?s
Media Lab, showed attendees the screen of the
Hundred-Dollar Laptop, or HDL. Beginning in 2006, he
said, he would built 100 million to 200 million HDL?s
every year ? and distribute them to the children of
the poor world. Many attendees had read about
Negroponte?s ideas and dismissed it as quixotic.
Hearing how an HDL might be built, seeing a part of
it, and realizing the scale of the project produced a
rustle of delighted interest.

Negroponte recently wrote to me about what he hoped
the HDL would do: ?Education: one laptop per child.
Whatever big problem you can imagine, from world peace
to the environment to hunger to poverty, the solution
always includes education. We need to depend more on
peer-to-peer and self-driven learning. The laptop is
one important means of doing that.?

Can a $100 computer be built? Maybe. Negroponte does
not plan to use three expensive components of
conventional laptops: Microsoft Windows, a traditional
flat-panel screen, and a hard drive. Instead, the HDL
will be loaded with Linux and other open-source
software; its display will use either a
rear-projection screen or a type of electronic ink
invented at the MIT Media Lab; and it will store one
gigabyte?s worth of files in flash memory.

The HDL has a number of other, intriguing features.
Since many villages in the poor world do not have
electricity, the machines may be powered by either a
crank or ?parasite power? ? that is, typing. Once
turned on, HDLs will automatically connect to one
another using a ?mesh network? initially developed at
MIT and the Media Lab. In the mesh network each laptop
serves as an information-relaying node. Households
that have HDLs will be able to communicate with each
other by e-mail or voice calls?

The HDL will not be sold commercially; instead,
education ministries and other governmental agencies
will purchase it. Profits will be very limited: merely
$10 per machine for equipment manufacturers. Of
course, building a laptop for $1000 demands what
economists call ?economies of scale?. Negroponte?s
pilot project requires commitments for at least six
million orders. So far, China has expressed an
interest in buying two million machines, and Brazil
one million. At least at first, the machines would be
built in China, where Negroponte has been talking to
manufacturers?

Nothing much came of attempts in the late 1990s to
address inequities in the distribution of information
technologies; bridging the ?digital divide? is no
longer a fashionable cause. But the divide is real
enough for all that. According to the World Bank, the
number of Internet users per capita in the poor world
is 40% that of the rest of the world. The rich world
has three times as many computers than the poor. For
more than five billion people, the Internet is only a
rumor. Inevitably, poor children are the biggest
losers: their lives are pathetically circumscribed.
While they need clean water, foot and health care,
they also need education and more-expansive horizons.

Attempts to bridge the digital divide failed because
there was no bridge. Nicholas Negroponte?s
Hundred-Dollar Laptop could be that bridge. Do you
think the HDL can be built? Write and tell me at
jason.pontin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

- Technology Review, Volume 108, Number 8

Links:

Informative essay on Brazil?s efforts to expand
internet access:
<http://www.aaplac.org/library/AlbernazAmi03.pdf>

Piece in the Guardian on the HDL:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5128106-110837,00.html>

An article on how the Brazilian government promotes
open-source software:
<http://www.brazil-brasil.com/2004/html/articles/mar04/p107mar04.htm>





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