Technology: A Computer for $25???

May 15, 2011 by Hannibal Tabu Leave a Comment

The price of computers has often been an impediment to people of color. What if you could get one for $25?

It's not much bigger than your finger, it looks like a leftover from an electronics factory, but its makers believe their [$25] computer could help a new generation discover programming.

The games developer David Braben and some colleagues came to the BBC this week to demonstrate something called Raspberry Pi. It's a whole computer on a tiny circuit board – not much more than an ARM processor, a USB port, and an HDMI connection. They plugged a keyboard into one end, and hooked the other into a TV they had brought with them.

The result, a working computer running on a Linux operating system for very little, and a device that will, like the kit computers of the 1970s and 80s, encourage users to tinker around under the bonnet and learn a bit of programming. And it's a yearning to return to those days that is driving Braben and the other enthusiasts who are working to turn this sketchy prototype into a product that could be handed to every child in Britain.

You're not gonna take over the world with 128MB of RAM and a 700 MHz ARM 11 processor, but it's here and it's the essential guts of what people would need for barebones computing — the equivalent of last decade's Gateway. Which is probably boxed up somewhere in your garage or your mom's.

[Source: BBC News and Gizmodo]

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About Hannibal Tabu

Born in Rockford, Illinois; raised in Memphis, Tennessee; matriculated in
Tacoma, Washington and broadcasting live from Los Angeles, Hannibal Tabu is
a writer, a brother, a husband, a misanthrope, a son, an emcee, an uncle, a
poet, a father, a designer, a nephew, a romantic, a storyteller, and by
god, a fan. He spent more than ten years doing the journalist thing for
Vibe, Slave Trade, MTV Online, Rap Pages, America Online, the Los Angeles
Sentinel, Spinnerrack.com, Speak and The Source. Hannibal has worked as a
web designer/producer and graphic artist for American Honda, eHobbies.com,
Quicken.com, Express.com, the California Association of REALTORS, Disney
Channel, NextPlanetOver.com, Toyota Motor Sales, Kaiser Permanente,
California Bank & Trust and many more. As a poet, Hannibal has been
published in The Drumming Between Us, (sic) Vice Verse, Drumvoices Review,
Voices From Leimert Park and other anthologies, as well as being author of
the collection BORN BENEATH AN ANGRY STAR and co-author of FLIGHT MANUAL.
As a novelist, he's written THE CROWN: ASCENSION and FARAWAY (both
available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble & Smashwords) and the upcoming sci fi
political thriller ROGUE NATION. He's the winner of the 2012 Top Cow Talent Hunt, writer of Waso: Will To Power for Stranger Comics, Project: Wildfire for Legends Press, and co-writer of an issue of Watson & Holmes (alongside 2 Guns writer Steven Grant) for New Paradigm Studios. For six years he was the editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch group of newspapers, is currently the co-owner and editor-in-chief of Black geek website Komplicated at the Good
Men Project, and uses his Operative Network website (www.operative.net) to
publish his poetry, market what he's doing, rant at the world and emit
strangled cries for help. In addition to all that, Hannibal collects comic
books, has scores of action figures, DJs private parties, is a Mac OS
zealot, sings and sometimes even hosts karaoke, practices a form of
spirituality based on ancient Egyptian belief, and goes to bed every day,
secretly hoping that half the world will commit suicide in his honor.