What will happen in an age of netbook computers? When the computing power and the data live off in the cloud somewhere, and my little computer is used primarily to connect, and not to process?

Well, I think that ultimately the cloud is going to be partially collocated in your home or office, as well as off in some big server farm in Oregon (or pick any other state – you’re probably right). I think this will be solved by a combination of local storage (Network Attached Storage [NAS] perhaps, which is what I use right now), local processing power (I have a big computer in the studio and my portable computer can be used to control it), and remote processing and delivery of certain services that really belong out in the cloud closer to the customer.

Oh, and maybe I’d better look at the fine print in my Comcast contract – I am purchasing a “home” Internet service, and of course I am doing business-related tasks here every day. They probably don’t deliver the same kind of reliability to homes as they deliver to businesses. But I’m not the only one doing this, and if you combine the current rage for netbook computers and the current state of affairs in connectivity, it leaves us pretty vulnerable to outages.

Some netbook references:

• Netbook on Wikipedia (this is not the best or most complete article it could be, but it’s a start)
• Larry Ellison’s ideas about the network computer
• The ASUS eee PC (I saw three teens opening the box and oogling a new one outside Best Buy yesterday on a warm afternoon – they couldn’t wait to get it going) – look at their web site – this machine is clearly for (young) teens – these kids in the ads must have an average age of 14
• The OLPC laptop, which in many ways, but not all, is a netbook
• Is the iPod Touch a baby netbook waiting to grow up?
• Dick Tracy wrist-radio (is it a cellphone? is it a netbook? aw shucks, is it anything at all?)

This whole article is a precursor to a longer article about cloud computing’s role in our future, and inspired by a series of reports by JD Lasica.

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The International Symposium on Digital Earth was an opportunity for a few hundred experts and other interested individuals to get together, see and discuss ways in which online information systems are making it possible to explore our planet.

The most obvious, to me, being Google Earth. But there are lots and lots of others.

As I walked into UC Berkeley to register, I stumbled across Ed Cherlin, who I’ve known for a few years as a knowledgeable and good-hearted promoter of the Simputer (Simple Computer). This time he was wearing a volunteer staff shirt for ISDE5 and carrying an XO (the “$100 computer”) in his hand. Hmm, an XO. Time to talk to Ed I think!

Here’s what Ed had to say…

You may want to peruse these links while listening (audio 16 minutes 33 seconds):

• OLPC: One Laptop Per Child
• OLPC News: Other views on the project
• Seymour Papert (you know, I’ve only met him once, but his ideas were new when I was a graduate student and he is certainly one of the stimulating thinkers in my primary field of study and practice). Early experiments involved a programming language called Logo [see also the Logo Foundation] and a “turtle” device.
• Constructionist theory of learning (also see constructivist)
• Alan Kay – if you don’t know (of) Alan, just read this and explore from there
• Sugar – the interface for the laptop

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And let’s not ignore other efforts to create inexpensive computers, like Simputer and the recent announcement that India seeks to create a $10 laptop computer. (That’s, of course, going to be extremely difficult, but it does show that $100 may still be too high a price to achieve “everywhere” penetration.)

On CBS News, Lesley Stahl interviewed Nick Negroponte about the computer. There’s video there to be viewed. This is the CBS-OLPC institutional view, of course, but the discussion about OLPC in the blogosphere has gotten so negative lately that some positivity is welcome!

One Laptop Per Child

• OLPC main site
• “OLPC News“
• The CBS News report on OLPC

The Intel Classmate

• Google video of the first prototype of the Intel Eduwise computer (later the Classmate) at trade show (May 2006)
• C|Net article on Intel’s Classmate
• Brazil to test…Classmate
• A technical comparison of the OLPC “XO” and the Intel Classmate
• Wikipedia entry on the Intel Classmate

The Simputer (Simple Computer)

• Wikipedia entry on the Simputer
• Simputer web site

-posted using Ecto

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Apparently the South-Asian researchers have gotten the cost down to $47 so far, labor included.

They report “A meeting of industry and academia is to take place in IISc, Bangalore, later this month to go through the two designs and invite more suggestions.”

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And I’m going to emphasize those words “sharing” and “social” – I think that’s where the laptop will have its greatest effect (that is IF they really can keep these computers networked). Computers and networks are for communication as much as they’re for computing. Actually FAR MORE for communication than for computing. (When was the last time you executed a good floating-point operation on your computer? In fact, do you know what a floating-point operation is?) Nope, you use your computer for communication far more than you do for computing.

Keep your eye on Sugar.

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But I was pointed at a really good “review” article today entitled The Laptop Crusade – Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 laptop is a sweet piece of engineering. But can it really change the world? By Tekla S. Perry in IEEE Spectrum online. It’s worth reading. [The picture at the left is the Sugar interface that kids will use to operate the computer and discover their communities.]

You may already know that my opinion is that the OLPC computer:

• Will actually work, and will be useful as a communications platform;
• Be somewhat “fragile” in the field, and difficult to keep operating;
• Cost more than $200 because nobody’s counting the cost of shipping, deploying and making it operational in the field.

All in all, I am positive about its potential and think that it’s worth tracking as the story unfolds.

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The official source of information on the project is the MIT Media Lab. There is a good, and extensive, intro to “the $100 computer” at Wikipedia.

Ann McCormick at Computer Friends is blogging their efforts to navigate thru the sea of information and get software ready for kids worldwide.

There are several older efforts to get affordable computers built. These include the Simputer. And a favorite, since I met Lee Felsenstein in the 1970s, is the Jhai PC.

You know, another favorite thought of mine is that at some point Microsoft and other software companies might actually lower the cost of their software to the point where computer systems could be (closer to) affordable. What a great fantasy eh? Meanwhile the “$100 computer” is based on open source software. Entirely.

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