[PD] cheapest production-scale pd-anywhere platform?

[Andy Farnell]

On Sat, May 19, 2012 at 01:16:58PM +0200, dreamer wrote:
> True, but just get your hands on one. Start prototyping and then prepare
> for the actual mass-production.
 
Indeed, it's not just the device but the whole principle going further.
There are interesting parallels between the OLPC and R-Pi projects.
In some ways the R-Pi roll-out has been a failure for the ideological
aims of the foundation. A hype bubble and big show, no doubt for the 
sake of potential investors, has popularised things too fast. Those who 
should be able to get hold of them cannot, while despite best efforts there
are boards reselling on E-Bay for $100's. Meanwhile dozens of other 
companies are positioning themselves to produce similar things. 
Even though people like myself, who just patiently waited,
cannot get hold R-Pi boards for my students, or to do workshops and
develop educational materials, I have faith that things are going in
the right direction and will eventually benefit open education
and technology freedom. 

The irony of the OLPC  project is that it did very little directly
towards its goal of providing cheap computing to third world children.
What it did do was break the equilibrium and price point of the laptop
market that was holding out at >$500 for almost 5 years.
I bought all of my EEEPC's for less than $100. They all run Debian
or Ubuntu, and I even have spare ones that got lent out to students. 
They can be considered, semi-disposable commodities now, 
through which I have spread much interest and curiosity amongst
young people about real computing, free software and programming.
I would not now pay more than $100 for a computing device and 
consider what you can buy for that sum as the standard of the 
"average computing device". 

In the same way the R-Pi project is redefining the price and value
for open ubiquitous and embedded computing, which I predict as $5 to $10
within the next 2-3 years. It may not itself be a "success". Or 
achieve the goal of putting a tiny computer into the hands of 
every student. 



> The thing is that the RasPi foundation is licensing the design to other
> vendors that (will) produce the device themselves.
> Currently everything is still just in a start-up phase. The hype is a bit
> overblown I guess, but I think it's still a device to look out for.


So yes, we can start to act, and plan course material, as if it already has.
What it will do is break the oligopoly of mobile cellphone 
manufacturers for the _closed_ mobile, embedded and ubiquitous markets,
the alternative to which is still expensive experimental
development boards, and absurdly priced things like the pico-ITX
which is effectively obsoleted now. Kids will seriously re-engage
with computing when they realise it's possible to build their own
communication devices for ad hoc texting, running a pocket webserver,
or making musical devices. I can see Pd playing a significant part in this.


For a while the richness of convergent technology in the cellphone
provided a window of opportunity, but we can breathe a sigh of
relief and start seeing cellphones as just phones again, because the
age of the commodity mobile general purpose computer is here. And
fortunately, let us hope, the future of this platform is going to 
be OPEN! Three cheers for the R-Pi foundation. This is _much_ 
bigger than just the technology you see.

Also many schools are moving to ban cellphones. Imagine if responsibility
for use of technology could be inculcated through the principles
of design and ownership when the school can afford to give everyone
a reconfigurable multi-use platform.

It may have further impacts, by decreasing the price while increasing
the value of open commodity hardware it can challenge the unimaginable
environmental waste of the billions of locked down and useless
cellphones manufactured. On this subject I have written a position 
paper for DIS sceptical of the "mobile music market" as a form of mediated
quasi-creativity and the suitability of the cellphone for such uses.

Many of the now desirable R-Pi boards will end up on shelves, in drawers
and museums of people who never really had much investment in their potential.
They bought one because they were "cool at the time". But by contributing
to the hype and creating a real _movement_ the foundation will find fame
alongside the early Apple, Sinclair ZX, OLPC, and other catalytic projects.

Andy