A Laptop Per Artist

'Various Low-Cost laptop projects bring opportunity for the Next One Billion People on the planet to gain access and benefit from ICTs whom have never touched or owned a computer before. These people are following closely after the previous lot of one billion people that have done so in the past 3 decades. The most significant fact here is that this new figure of One Billion will be accessible within a span of hardly 5 years instead of taking 3 decades as in the past. Now the real challenge is, that who will be part of this significant, people oriented change, how these people can create, remix and share content utilizing the emergence of a low-cost computing market driven potentially by Free and Open Source Software coupled with low-cost hardware.

Along with awareness, we will also explore whether these projects present themselves as viable, efficient and usable computer hardware devices creating far reaching social and economic advancement helping nations leapfrog in terms of accessing ICTs also benefiting them in terms of learning, local skills, knowledge and content creation leading to poverty reduction and mass employment generation.

Possible outcomes: The outcomes will be multifold. We will show the participants various low-cost hardware technology projects like the INK mPC product by Ink Media Inc. Canada http:www.ink-media.com, the OLPC by Negroponte at the MIT Media Labs http:www.laptop.org and the Intel Classmate PC as examples of this low-cost laptop innovation revolution as many of these are still unheard of by the general population globally. The presenter will also share pictures, pros and cons of all the projects and will engage the participants in an interactive discussion to share their perspectives on these initiatives and whether they will contribute extensively to the Creative Commons movement globally.'