From OLPC to ASUS: An Overview of 4P Computing
Three years ago, the IT industry was shocked with a radical idea – a “$100 laptop” designed specifically for education in the developing world. Price would be low and yet quality high, through innovative design mixed with low-cost components, and sales would be focused exclusively on the developing world.
This heretical bombast upset the longstanding computer manufacturing tradition to keep adding functions to maintain high prices in the developed world, while ignoring the developing world. The revolution was lead by One Laptop Per Child and its visionary founder, Nicholas Negroponte, and we now have a whole plethora of revolutionaries – from the upstart Asus to the goliath Intel – who are developing “4P Computers” in response to OLPC’s iconic XO Laptop.
4P Computing is a new class of appropriate technology – computing power, performance, portability, and price specificity designed for the realities and markets of the developing world.
Now join Wayan Vota, an expert on ICT in the developing world, in an overview of this revolution, the resulting 4PC’s, and their impact on the whole information and communication technology industry:
A special thanks to Alexius International for creating this video.