Living in Lala land

Pipe Dreams: Researchers in India Say They Can Build a Laptop for $10 - Gizmodo

I love this article especially the category title - Pipe Dreams. So, my dear desis are at it again. They are going to build $10 laptop. Hell, have they built a decent $1000 laptop. With virtually no semiconductor manufacturing industry to speak of (SCI does not have a decent manufacturing facility and we did turn dowm the Intel facility because Intel asked for a whole lot of sops). Remember Simputer or Amida simputer - wonder how many of it got sold - 100? ... 1000?

For a while the mantra was "appropriate technology" - I guess that would mean abacus - environmently friendly, can be produced by folks in villages and can handle simple arithmetic. I am glad that we are off that bandwagon atleast.

I don't understand our eagerness to grab at the imaginary silver bullet whether it is Ramar Pillai's magical fuel (fake), or the Anup hair rejuvenator. Last time I was in India my mom trust into my hands a newspaper article about a kid that won some prize for a technology concept about an engine that runs on water. My mom was like ..."see ...this will solve all our issues." It did not seem to matter that it was just a concept. And, between clean water and fuel which is more scarce. In meantime we got 1950s design cars, trucks and autos running with a mix of petrol and kerosene spewing deadly fumes.