Photos: Low-cost tech aids basic needs
The world of consumer electronics thrives on the latest, greatest and fastest gadgets. New inventions tend to target a wealthy minority but most of the world operates at a far slower pace than that of Moore's Law.
More than a billion people around the globe lack safe drinking water, some two billion have no electricity and many millions die each year from easily preventable diseases. Billions of people earn less than a dollar each day. A growing number of companies and nonprofits are applying novel technologies to solve vexing problems among the majority of the world's population--known as the "other 90 per cent".
The best-known, most-recent example of the high-tech sector reaching out to the developing world may be the $100 computer from the One Laptop Per Child project out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The open-source, Linux-based notebooks, which now cost closer to $200, go into production next month. The program announced on Monday its 'Give 1 Get 1' marketing programme, in which Americans and Canadians can buy two laptops for $399 (£200).
Caption text by Elsa Wenzel, associate editor, CNET.
Credit: One Laptop Per Child
