[reaperducer]

A couple of the web sites I maintain have a primary audience of poor, largely immigrant, people with a fifth-grade education and only rudimentary English.

The server logs show most of the connections come from people using what people on HN would consider toy or throwaway convenience store phones. The high-end is people on Windows XP.

(The sites are in the healthcare space, and if one of our clients is really so desperately poor that they can't even afford a smartphone, we'll give them either a laptop and a hotspot, or a smartphone, so they can access the web sites. We pay for their connection.)

[emteycz]

I think tech people should get their funds together and uplift everyone on the planet. Today we have modern speedy hardware that is just as cheap... And it would add huge demand to software.

[HenryBemis]

Even if we give everyone a $1000 laptop, we will create the following pitfalls:

-people don't know how to use them (and I mean even all the people living in the EU know how to use a desktop/laptop - and I don't mean just the old)

-people that are not educated will start clicking left right and center, their computers will be infested/compromised in one day, good luck supporting them. If you don't support them, you just helped create an extra 1bn zombie network

-most areas don't have adequate infrastructure or even no infrastructure at all, in many locations in EU, you 'feel' it when kids begin online classes. Suddenly the countries' networks get flooded with 1-2-5 million streams. I am not saying to leave areas in the dark forever, but it is a slow progress to expand/include all geographies, it takes time, and the need creates the work. We cannot force-invest to bring fast internet in remote locations just for the sake of bringing it to them.

-tech people make and spend money. Preference is give to 'make'. Making an investment of $100bn with a potential revenue of $1tn sounds good. By why would (e.g.) Lenovo donate $50bn worth of laptops? How will they recover this amount when their software sales are negligible? Will they track (spy) everyone to generate revenue? Will (e.g.) Microsoft sponsor those laptops, that will then 'monetize' (spy) to recover the costs?

so many more points/questions.. I will stop here..

[Veen]

Plus, if you give them a $1000 laptop, they'll sell it, buy a cheap phone, and use the remainder to buy something that serves a more pressing need.

[emteycz]

That means somebody bought it - presumably someone who doesn't have any other computing device and wasn't awarded one.

Also, $1000 is way too much, I was thinking in terms of $150.

[reassembled]

Everything old is new again https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child

[emteycz]

Indeed. But look at the specs of that computer - any raspberry pi is way more powerful than this. That's the point - the technology today enables meaningful change, back then it was only a dream because the device was too expensive and underpowered