Dawn of the Geeks

The Boston Herald is reporting that some MIT students are working on a $12 computer.

If you read the article you find that the $12 computer already exists in India but it’s using very old tech and is missing some important things that would make it easier for people who have them to learn skills such as programming.

A $12 computer of sorts - a cheap keyboard and Nintendo-like console - already exists in India, where people hook the devices to home TVs to run simple games and programs.

But Lomas, an American graduate student who stumbled across the computers in Bangalore while on an internship last summer, hit on the idea of upgrading the devices’ 1980s-era technology.

He and others at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology symposium hope to soup up the systems - which are based on old Apple II computers - with rudimentary Web access and more.

The goal is to upgrade the parts but keep the $12 price point. The biggest expense to any cheap computer system is the monitor. LCD screens are not cheap. By having an RCA or coax out they cut out the need to supply the monitor with the system. Any cheap TV will do.

One of the things lost on modern computers is the out of the box ability to program it. DOS and early versions of Windows came with QBASIC. Now you have to either purchase additional software or get an internet connection so you can download a free compiler.

The entry costs have gone up. There is also an artificial expectation of quality that has risen since the 80’s and 90’s. Text and 2D graphics don’t cut it anymore. Everyone wants to make 3D games which requires the ability to create 3D objects and animations. Or steal them. It’s very easy to be discouraged. People don’t realize that rendering graphics is the least of game programming or any programming for that matter. There is a lot to learn that is universal from graphically simple games.

The types of games that $12 computers are perfectly capable of running.