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Another item illustrating the observation that necessities have in general drastically dropped in cost over the last century, and you ain't seen nuttin' yet.
In all cases, the crucial thing was that someone made a prototype. Yes, yes, not practical, too expensive, nearly useless. But once people see the prototype, the creative energies are focused, and in a few short years, something that changes the world pops out.
"Previous efforts to build low-cost computers have been plagued by cost overruns. The most famous of these attempts, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, was launched by Nicholas Negroponte of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab in 2005. OLPC said it would deliver a laptop for $100, but when mass production started in 2007 the price had risen to $188 ...
When the Indian government decided it wanted to develop its own low-cost computer, Sinha was sent to M.I.T. to learn from the OLPC project...
Sinha credits Negroponte for the "original paradigm shift" in lower-cost personal computers."
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...-dollar-tablet
Star Trek world, in which "on Earth, there is no poverty and there is no war", might not be in the 23rd century; something near to it might come in the second decade of the 21st.
Current events are merely bumps in the road. These kinds of advances can overwhelm, by orders of magnitude, problems we think of as insoluble.
In all cases, the crucial thing was that someone made a prototype. Yes, yes, not practical, too expensive, nearly useless. But once people see the prototype, the creative energies are focused, and in a few short years, something that changes the world pops out.
"Previous efforts to build low-cost computers have been plagued by cost overruns. The most famous of these attempts, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, was launched by Nicholas Negroponte of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab in 2005. OLPC said it would deliver a laptop for $100, but when mass production started in 2007 the price had risen to $188 ...
When the Indian government decided it wanted to develop its own low-cost computer, Sinha was sent to M.I.T. to learn from the OLPC project...
Sinha credits Negroponte for the "original paradigm shift" in lower-cost personal computers."
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...-dollar-tablet
Star Trek world, in which "on Earth, there is no poverty and there is no war", might not be in the 23rd century; something near to it might come in the second decade of the 21st.
Current events are merely bumps in the road. These kinds of advances can overwhelm, by orders of magnitude, problems we think of as insoluble.
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