Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT) has rolled-out its $150 laptop created for poor children in Africa and other Southern Hemisphere regions.  Its begins its full-scale launch in July. The One Laptop per Child initiative unsurprisingly has both its evangelicals and its critics.


I hate to admit, however, that I completely forgot about the debate as I read the description of this little green and white minx of a computer:

Linux operating system; hand crank to charge the battery; a screen that switches to black and white in the sunshine; a keyboard that can change between languages; video cam; wireless; and a "meshwork" capability.

Sweet.

Then I remembered an earlier encounter with another seductive little piece of communication technology. A decade ago, I was at a roadside cafe outside of Maputo. A group of  school kids was ogling a display, and I peered over their heads to behold a bright yellow radio that required no electricity and no batteries. Just a little hand cranking. According to the display, if you drank a million bottles of Coke, you might be able to win one.  It was the first one I had ever seen.  My first thought was "amazing!" It was a perfect idea for making sure folks who lived in areas with difficulties accessing or paying for electricity could still listen to the news. 

And I had a second thought:  "Where can I get one?"

It turned out — at least at first — that the radios didn’t come down in price fast enough or low enough to widely reach the people who could have benefitted the most from them, and, indeed, were their initially intended audience.  Briton Trevor Bayliss had invented the hand-crank radio after watching a TV documentary about how the lack of access to information had contributed to more HIV deaths in Africa.

As the news media reported on the machines, Western audiences had the exact same thought I had had.  Wind-up radios became popular American camping or emergency gear, a vacation home accessory or simply a geeky toy.  While the radios are much more available in Africa these days — especially South Africa — there is a lesson in all this.

The $150 laptop will face the same pressures.  By this time next year, a lot of kids will be using these machines, but will they be the ones who call Kibera home?