Ashamed? Intel? I doubt it

Written by Adam Gosling

Thursday, 24 May 2007

Page 1 of 3 COMMENT: Intel Chairman Craig Barrett probably should be ashamed his company is playing hardball to compete for profit against a not-for-profit charity, but it is doubtful he will. Barrett's interest is not in helping the children of developing countries, he's paid to help Intel maintain and increase market share and OLPC is a threat he is duty bound to try and obliterate. [To be fair on Craig Barrett, he is not only Chairman of Intel Corp, he is also Chairman of the United Nation’s Global Alliance for ICT and Development. So he has a dual duty to protect and expand Intel's business while also promoting the use of technology to help developing nations. Whether the two objectives are in conflict is not for me to judge and not my area of interest here.] The Wintel (Windows and Intel) monopoly is the bedrock of the computer industry. It was Intel's innovations in off-the-shelf X86 processors teamed with Microsoft's DOS (Disk Operating System) that kick started the PC industry twenty odd years ago driving the planet's processing power through the stratosphere and prompting a change from centralised computing to decentralised processing where your work happened right there on your desk rather than in a data centre on another floor. It caused a revolution in productivity equal to, if not greater than, the Industrial Revolution two hundred odd years ago and has propelled the United States and other developed countries that were advanced enough to leverage Information Technology, to undreamed of prosperity. The Wintel duopoly made computing cheap and ubiquitous to the benefit of all who could access it. The economics of Information Technology are so powerful it is capable of lifting under-developed countries above their own challenges and into the first world in a way no other single factor can. Evidence of this has been seen in India, which over the past five or ten years has used Information Technology and software in particular, to begin transforming its economic landscape and raising the standard of living for millions of its citizens a thousand fold. As some commentators have pointed out, the power of Information Technology backed by the unbridled success of personal, general purpose computing platforms and the challenge of equipping people in developing countries with the technical skills and tools they can use to better their lives are not mutually exclusive to profit and capitalist market dynamics such as competition. There are, however, dangers in allowing this to happen. Above all, giving in to the hegemony of the Wintel way could mean missing out on an enormous opportunity that could benefit us all - the potential explosion in innovation and entrepreneurial development based on tens of millions of people raised on a diet of free, open source software. Let's for the moment ignore the calls by some that claim computers are a secondary need and point out there are still millions of children living in abject poverty with little food and no reliable access to clean water. There's no doubt this is true, but it's not the target audience Negroponte is trying to help. If they feel that strongly about it let these commentators start their own charity. << Start < Prev 1 2 3 Next > End >>