Thanks to Jeebesh Bagchi jeebesh@sarai.net for sending it across... Is this some coincidence that all the low-cost PCs -- aimed at widening access to those who can't afford -- are almost all GNU/Linux-based FN

Curing Poverty with Computing Brazilian University Researchers Build Cheap Computers for the Masses Ben Goertzel http://www.goertzel.org/benzine/BrazilianComputers.htm

here is an excerpt

"The idea here was to create a computer that members of the Brazilian underclass could genuinely afford.� The Net PC will cost around $400 reiais (around US$ 200), and will be available by June 2001.�� Furthermore, in order to ensure affordability,� and a 24-month payment plan will be offered.

�The task of creating this machine was turned over to the computer science department at one of Brazil?s leading universities, the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), in Belo Horizonte.� The project was led by a number of expert computing researchers, including Sergio Vale Aguilar Campos, trained at Carnegie-Mellon University in the USA, and Wagner Meira, trained at the University of Rochester in the USA.�These professors are accustomed to spending their time doing research and teaching on advanced topics like parallel computing (running programs on specialized computers) and automatic program verification (programs that check to be sure other programs are doing what they?re supposed to).� But they and many of their colleagues and students were willing to take time out from this to work on the government-sponsored project of bringing much simpler aspects of computing to a much wider population.

The Net PC itself will be a fairly standard one . a Pentium 500 MHz, with keyboard, mouse, 56 Kbps modem, 14" display, 64 Mb RAM and no hard disk (16 Mb flash RAM instead).� According to those involved in the project, the technical aspects of designing the system were not particularly onerous ? no major inventions or innovations were required.� The hardest part was bargaining with the manufacturers of the various parts of the machine, who tended to be oriented toward making the most expensive and powerful machines possible rather than creating low-cost systems.�

Early on in the project it was realized that the Microsoft Windows OS was not an option, due to its high cost.� Instead, the system was built around the freeware Linux OS, the favorite of hackers everywhere.� This is a very interesting aspect of the project.� In the US and Western Europe, Linux is a minority OS, used by hackers, programmers and computer scientists only.� Standard tools like browsers and word processors exist for Linux, but aren?t quite as polished or user-friendly as on the Windows OS.� On the other hand, advanced tasks are much easier to carry out in Linux than in Windows, and there are other major advantages, such as Linux?s increased stability (machines running Linux can go for years without ?crashing?, whereas the typical time between crashes for Windows systems is more like days).����

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And Linux, unlike Windows, is an open-source software system, meaning that anyone around the world can edit the computer code that determines how the system runs, and make it run differently.� By its very nature, it invites participation from users, whether those users are in the Brazilian ghetto or in the heart of Silicon Valley.� In the same spirit as the choice of the open-source Linux architecture, the UFMG computer scientists decided to make the�main-board architecture for the machine open as well, meaning that any company will be able to make it, and that computer-savvy users will easily be able to modify it or add onto it as they wish.

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In fact, this is just one example of the international move toward open-source software, which does not yet pose a huge short-term threat to Microsoft?s hegemony in the OS market, but may well do so in a few years time.� For instance, the government of Argentina is considering passing a new law mandating that, after an adjustment period government offices can only use Open Source software.� And, less extremely, the French government currently dictates that no computer files can be used in government business unless they can be read and edited by Open Source software.�

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Each successive version of Windows software uses more and more computational resources, thus providing more functions (sometimes useful ones, sometimes useless one) and pushing consumers to buy more and more powerful computers each year.� As Wagner Meira says, in this regard the Net PC project was strikingly contrarian.�?We did a lot of hacking for shrinking a lot of software into 16Mb.� There was a lot of discussion around our minimalist approach versus the maximalist approach usually adopted by Windows. We are watching an ever growing and ever more flawed Windows over the years, and our project adopted exactly the reverse direction.?�

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Instead of asking what can be done to sell more software or more hardware to middle-class North Americans (the question on the minds of most people in the US computer industry), they asked, as Meira puts it:� ?What does a computing

novice really need in a computer? Internet (including multimedia) and text processing.� Eventually software for creating a spreadsheet or a presentation.�However,? ? and here is the big difference from projects like the American WebTV -- ?the Net PC does allow expansions for those that want to have an enhanced computing experience.?

WebTV and similar projects allow very limited Internet use at low cost, but they don?t allow the user to grow in sophistication.� With the Net PC, on the other hand, Meira says, ?by employing an incremental approach, we believe that we can reach a much larger portion of the population without restricting the use of the equipment.�My mother, for instance, had a hard time to learn how to double click, and she definitely does not know how to shut down the computer.?� Yet a young Brazilian who wants to learn to program software can do so on the Net PC; indeed its Linux kernel provides in a some ways a better platform for this than a standard Windows-based computer.

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Finally, Meira observes cannily that the minimalist approach taken in the Net PC is the sort of thing that could only emerge in a place like Brazil, not in a place like the USA, where ?More, more, more!? is the watchword.�?In Brazil,? he notes, ?popular stuff is usually minimalist, such as� the popular car (up to 1000cc), pre-paid cell phones, etc.?�� This is a small example of the general principle that the developing world must lead its own people into the information age.�The cultural and conceptual biases of First World countries aren?t necessarily in synch with the needs of the rest of the world, even though First World technology has universal applicability.

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What impact will these cheap, open-architecture computers have on the Brazilian underclass, on the tremendous economic inequity that is the underbelly of this rapidly growing digital economy?� This remains to be seen.� One hopes that they will serve to blur the distinction between the lower reaches of the middle class and the upper echelons of the poor.� That families will save their money to buy cheap computers for their children, who will then go online and learn about the depth of� world far beyond their neighborhood, opening their eyes to the possibilities that aren?t shown in TV sitcoms and reality shows.�� How many people, whose parents weren?t university-educated, will use their new Net PC?s as tools to help them gain computer skills, so that they can get in on the ground floor of one of the software start-ups in Brazil?s booming software industry?�

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Of course, cheap computers aren?t the whole solution to Brazil?s problems ? they?re only one very small piece of a huge and complicated picture.�Overall improvement of primary education in poor neighborhoods is a huge task which is inarguably both more critical and more difficult.� But it?s important not to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the human problems around us, and to realize that every little bit counts.� The popular bumpersticker says ?Think globally, act locally,? and this is one of those clich�?s that actually deserves the repetition it receives.�The computer scientists at UFMG, as they take a break from their advanced research on parallel algorithms and program verification to create inexpensive computers for the masses, are playing an integral role in the technological advancement of human race and the overall creation of global computational intelligence.� We need the next phase of the tech revolution to be founded on compassion and inclusion, not elitism, classism and egocentrism.� This is a responsibility that falls on us all.

��PostScript: Class Politics and the Cyber-visionary Community

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What do the leaders of the tech revolution in the developed world think of this kind of work?� Precious few cyber-leaders are in practice interested in devoting their time to such pursuits.�� One hopes that as more and more technology millionaires reach the age where they become interested in philanthropy, the spread of the tech revolution across the world will become a focus, along with other laudable goals like global health and education.� But at the present time, opinions on the importance of reaching out to the masses, and the optimal strategy for doing so, are all over the map.

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A few months ago, excited about the Brazilian Net PC and the prospect of further similar projects around the world, hopefully coupled with serious educational initiatives, I began talking about such things on the Extropians e-mail list, an Internet discussion group devoted to futuristic technology and its social and economic implications.� Someone noted that the views of the Extropian community tended not to be taken very seriously in the mainstream press, and I suggested that, perhaps, if the Extropian community became involved in doing something important to the mainstream world, their opinions would be valued more.� What if, for instance, a group of Extropians devoted some of their time to education in the Third World?

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Eliezer Yudkowsky, a friend and colleague whose opinion I respect, came down against this hard.�� According to him, his time and effort, and that that of his cyber-guru colleagues, should be spent pushing full-speed-ahead toward the ?Singularity?, his word for the point at which the acceleration of technical development becomes infinite, through computer programs rewriting their own source code, robots rebuilding their own hardware and other similar futuristic designs.�?How much money is spent on attempts to actually ship food directly to the poor?? he asked. ?Lots.� How much money is spent on direct efforts to implement the Singularity? ? Not much.?

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On the other hand, Samantha Atkins, another Extropians list regular and a veteran Silicon Valley AI engineer, replied to Eliezer with a different point of view: ?Perhaps,? she suggested, ?there is a productive middle ground.� Some of us could say more about precisely how the Singularity, and the technologies along the way, can be applied to solving many of the problems that beset real people right now.�We can produce and spread the memes of technology generally and AI, nanotechnology and the Singularity in particular as answering the deepest needs, hopes and dreams of human beings?.�As part of this we also need more of a story about the steps up to Singularity as involves the actual lives and living conditions of people.� That we will muddle along somehow while a few of the best and the brightest create a miracle is not very satisfying.� What kind of world do we work toward in the meantime?� What do we do about poverty, about technology obsoleting skills faster than new ones can be acquired, about creating workable visions including ethics and so on?� What is our attitude toward humanity??

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What is our attitude toward humanity, indeed?� Eliezer is a very ethically serious person, and he truly believes that the best thing we in the cyber-elite can do is for the world is to produce superior technology.� The technology itself, he says, will transform the world for everyone, and the most important thing to do is to get the technology to this point, to the point where it can figure out how to solve the world?s problems on its own.�

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There is a certain amount of truth to this perspective.� And, in my view, there is also a certain irony to it, particularly given the fact that Eliezer?s research so far has focused on how to make AI programs ?Friendly,? in the sense of being well-disposed toward humans.�� His solution to the problem of AI friendliness lies in the realm of cognitive engineering ? he believes one needs to give an AI an appropriate goal system specifically designed to foster Friendliness.

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In early 2001, I was running the AI company Webmind Inc., and Eliezer visited our New York office to give a lecture on Friendly AI.� The lecture was received excellently by some and terribly by others.� Generally speaking the Webmind Inc. staff were absorbed with the practical problems of trying to create real digital intelligence, whereas Eliezer was more concerned with the various philosophical and futuristic issues that will arise once a truly intelligent AI system is completed.� But the issue of ?wiring in Friendliness? definitely struck everyone powerfully, one way or another.� Among the milder responses, one of our Brazilian software engineers ? not one of the several who had worked on the Net PC project before joining Webmind, but a good friend of those who had, and a student of Wagner Meira and Sergio Campos ? raised his hand and politely said: ?But perhaps the most important thing is not the in-built goal system, but whether we teach it by example.?�� The friendlier we are, in other words, the friendlier our AI systems are going to be.�

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The issue is clear and poignant.� What the Brazilian engineer was suggesting was that, if our superhuman AI grows up watching us act as though most humans are dispensable and irrelevant, perhaps it will, in its adulthood, believe that we too are dispensable and irrelevant.� On the other hand, perhaps, as Eliezer says, it will grow up and understand that building it was the best thing the cyber-elite could do for humanity as a whole, and it will then proceed to spread joy and plenty throughout the land.��Who knows?

These rarefied ethical disputes are fascinating, but they easily carry one away into the domain of angels dancing on the heads of pins. �And this is why the kind of work done by Campos, Meira and their colleagues is so intriguing.� There?s no arguing with the real physical-world power of millions of impoverished Brazilians logging onto the Net and discovering discussion groups like Extropians, where things like ethics and technology are discussed, and speculations on superhuman AI appears alongside critiques of the latest Java release.� Without the Net PC and other things like it, these people might well never get to log on and argue with Eliezer for themselves.� (Not, at any rate, unless the Singularity comes fast enough that superhuman AI systems revolutionize their lives before they get old.)

�In spite of the success of Cardoso?s economic reforms, there is a lot of justified skepticism in Brazil about the whole political system and everything the government does.� University people are up in arms over Cardoso?s plan to charge significant university tuition, breaking a tradition of free university education for all sufficiently academically distinguished students.� As Thiago Turchetti Maia, another Brazilian software engineer and student of Meira and Campos, says, ?You know the money saved from charging tuition is not going to go to send poor people to university.� You know it?s just going to disappear.?� But when asked about the Net PC project, he waxes at least a bit more positive.. ?Well, there, you can see what the money?s going towards,? he says.� ?At least that?s something real.?� He shrugs.� ?Maybe it will make some difference?.?

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Or is this hype ? �

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