Well, I finally got to see the Philippine sub-$100 PC! That’s me in the middle, holding the PC. I’m flanked by Dr Raffy Mananghaya, the UP professor and president of the Philippine e-learning Society (he’s the one in the red shirt), who assembled it, and an official from the Department of Education. I’m convinced Raffy’s approach is the right one. I’m not saying that we should not use new PCs and commercial software like Windows. What I am saying is that the situation in the Philippines demands more immediate and more creative solutions. Not to mention cheaper solutions. It’s really ironic that first world countries like the USA and Australia are pioneering in this approach to provide cheap computers for their own less-fortunate citizens!
Check out the Youtube video in my previous post about Freegeek.org. They’ve been assembling PCs from used components for use by their own “poor” citizens in Portland, Oregon. The per capita income in Oregon in 2005 was $32,103. The per capita income in the Philippines is about $700. Does it make sense for the citizens of Oregon to be going through trash dumps, looking for usable PC parts and assembling PCs, while we in the Philippines (where poor kids go through trash on Smoky Mountain) buy brand new Pentium 4 PCs for our high school students?
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