Not so long ago, just a few years ago, I remember reading this story on BBC about plans to make affordable tablets aimed at children in developing countries. The target price back then was an unbelievably low $100, which I though was ridiculous when the cheapest 7" and 10" tablets were all over $200 and the Apple iPad was well over $600. in just one year or so I began to see unknown Chinese brands selling tablets through Radio Shack for $100 as Christmas specials. Late last year, I bought a $50 RCA tablet, which I love because it's so capable and fast in spite of its price. The camera's resolution may be very poor, and internal memory is limited, but frankly, I don't care about that for what I use it...
Years ago when the Mexican Steampunk movement started and I witnessed its start remotely from the United States, I was surprised to see how many young steampunks came from areas which in the 1980s I knew to be marginalised compared to the affluent neighbourhoods in Mexico City. Almost universally, these young people, often studying vocational courses or still in high school, could engage in conversations about art, history, science, and most importantly be comfortable navingating the English dominated Internet.
Back in the days when I used to live in an ultra expensive home in a posh suburb outside of Mexico City, my grandparents and I had to make occasional trips to a small town in the State of Mexico. You see, in the 1980s, the small village of Huixquilucan ("who-is-kee-loo-kahn") was the county seat and we drove for about an hour through the mountains to pay our annual property taxes (a property that I found in 2011 was worth $5 million USD). But that little town was a throwback to the past, including cobble stone streets and, I-kid-you-not, one or two horse drawn carriages. The men wore white linen and big sombrero hats like you see in the movies The contrast between the wealthy urbanite taxpayers and the townsfolk was like something out of a time travel sci-fi movie. That was part of the fun of paying your taxes back then.
What a difference a few decades makes. Today the mayor of the town of Huixquilucan has a webpage with aerial view of the town and links to Facebook and Twitter. High luxury apartment towers and a cityscape that looks like downtown Tokyo (as of 2011). Fully engulfed by the metropolitan area, it now suffers from an explosive urban sprawl.
It seems to me that IT is exploding in developing countries and creating a tremendous revolution the likes of which humanity has never experienced. When you look at the jobs pages in Mexico, more than 1/2 of all the engineering openings, for example, are related to IT or the computer industry in some way.
According to that other BBC documentary, children in South Africa, for example, back a couple of years ago, used their smartphones to aid in the education process, through programmes sponsored by teachers and schools, because cell phones were significantly cheaper and more readily available than tablets. The idea of developing the $100 tablet was to take the phone out of the child's hand and give that child a bigger screen more conducive to learning.
I had a small malfunction the other day with my tablet. I dropped the tablet and accidentally knocked out the ON/OFF button. So I had to open the table to jury-rig a solution (I got the tablet working again, but I can't get a replacement switch, so I'll have to invent a solution). When I opened the tablet I was astounded to see how small the motherboard was. For a 1.4 GHz quad-core processor with 8GB RAM, the motherboard was no more than 2 by 3 inches in size and with just three ribbon connectors, a speaker cable and an antenna wire. Honestly, the motherboard is disposable. Dead simple to take apart, but the surface solder components are so small that you need a low power microscope to be able to solder the wires I attached to replace the ON/OFF button.
It's quite obvious the motherboard was not meant to be repaired. You just toss it out and get a new one. I even got tempted to discard the plastic case and incorporate the whole tablet into a Steampunk cabinet. But I already have a Steampunk case for it, so I'll incorporate my trademark buttons into the wire circuit so the tablet can only be used in my Steampunk case. I'm not about to spend another $50 for a broken ON/OFF button
I'm a Steampunk
Its obvious the motherboard is a smartphone-derived platform.
Now an Indian company has announced that they'll start selling the world's cheapest smartphone, the "Freedom 251" with 8GB RAM for the equivalent of only $7.50 (£5.00)...
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-35595500\Any thoughts on the wonderful implications?
