A couple of years ago I attended the Digital Dividend conference in Seattle. The idea behind the conference was to talk about ways to bring the benefits of the information age to the world’s poorest three billion people. While most of the attendees talked about putting solar powered cyber kiosks in remote villages, it took none other than keynote speaker Bill Gates to bring everyone back to reality, pointing out that that the world’s most desperately poor citizens need vaccinations and clean drinking water more than they need PCs and email accounts.
Still, the idea of bringing computing to the developing world has its appeal, and numerous news stories abound of villages getting wired up and how living standards immediately increased. With this in mind, an Indian non-profit organization called the Simputer Trust designed a low cost handheld intended to be used mainly by the world’s rural poor. It sounded like a good idea, but a recent story on MSNBC.com details how the Simputer Trust is having trouble finding licensees to manufacture the device.
