One Computer Per Village - telemedicine

Ram Dhurjaty, posting in the OLPC News blog, raises the idea of the telemedicine application of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) "XO" laptop computer, which is currently in pre-production trials. I am inviting the readers of that post to use this space for the dvelopment of more discussions on this possibility, with or without the OLPC machine.

In 2005, when I raised my first public criticism of the OLPC program I had been pursuing the idea of "one telecentre per village", which I now modify to "one computer per village", or OCPV. I expanded further on the concept with a post that laid out the telecentre concept in more detail.

While my criticisms have had minimal impact on the OLPC project (so far as I can see, which is not very far), their active publicity function plus their great progress on designing hardware and software with the level of reliability and user-accessibility necessary for use in developing countries has captured the attention of a large number of computer-capable people around the world. One would be a fool not to make use of this interest.

My experience includes structuring the information-exchange forum that was instrumental in establishing the personal computer industry in Silicon Valley, and I see the need for such a forum in establishing a new industry (one which I call "Fair Trade Technology"). I would hope that this site could provide one of many manifestations of such a forum.

I suggest that people use the category "OCPV" to search for and categorize entries.