HyprFocal - Latest Comments in The Crunchpad, GoogleOS, and Digital Equity

Re: The Crunchpad, GoogleOS, and Digital Equity

Daniel Rezac — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 01:08:49 -0000

Tim-
I cannot agree with you more about that. I'm definitely excited about the 7.2 billion in economic stimulus for broadband. Now, where that gets spent is what it's all about. Will Obama lead us toward some National Broadband plan that was talked about last November?

I'm stimulated by a couple of things:
1. Verizon's Effort to create a National Broadband plan: http://www.reuters.com/arti... This is a great sign by a private company leading the charge.

and

2. Poor rural areas are being left out. This is a great article citing (of course) the Pew study), but they really show you how rural areas are still going to be the last to be covered. I worked in the poorest urban areas in Chicago, and we still had Internet, if not wifi. It's just so much easier in the city, because of all the existing infrastructure there.

Lastly, the CrunchPad and the Google Chrome OS are smoke signals. The cheaper technology gets, the more accessible it is, the more it will drive the price of wireless and access down. These devices signal good things for access in rural areas. Of course, things will take time to trickle down, but getting on the Internet will soon be a given. The the digital divide will be about the type of content that rural and poor areas can afford or are being locked out of. The CrunchPad won't mean immediate gains.

Re: The Crunchpad, GoogleOS, and Digital Equity

timholt — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 13:10:16 -0000

That is all well and good about the flattening, but you forget one little thing:
If the kids do not have access to the web, the your Crunchpad, Chrome OS cloud computing take over the world scenario ends very quickly.

In poor areas of the US, like El Paso Texas where I live, there is a substantial number of families without internet access.

THAT is where you need to start taking about equity.

It is like everyone having a refrigerator, but if you don't have electricity, what good is it?

Tim Holt
El Paso

Re: The Crunchpad, GoogleOS, and Digital Equity

Stephanos Anton Ballmerfeld — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 07:26:50 -0000

I had my people obtain (by means I cannot admit to) from the Google Labs a model of the new Google OS and even better than that, the platform they plan on running it on! It's a radical new design slate computer! Sure enough it browses the internet, runs Google-Apps, has a task bar, prints and has a true chrome interface!
I will withhold judgement right now but I am not shaking in my boots over competition from this thing! I could be wrong, what do you guys think?