Delirium wrote:
Jens Ropers wrote:
Also, I would observe that the "minimum prize level" I mentioned above is still totally out of reach of (to make up a number), say 90% of the world population. They just can't spare that money, ridiculously little though it may seem to us. Let's not forget that.
But they can't spare the money to pay for printing and shipping a 20-volume set of encyclopedias either. Someone else (i.e. donors) is going to have to pay for it either way. I was merely pointing out that it may be cheaper, in the long run, for us to ship people computers with CD-ROMs than for us to continually ship them paper encyclopedia sets every year or two.
Don't forget that some places only have electricity for 1-2 hours/day, and battery-powered computers (aka laptops) are rather more expensive than $500
The whole point of the "infrastructure" remark is sometimes a situation may appear to be unduly expensive or inefficient, but it is the easiest route because of the overall context. Printing/paper technology has been around for enough years that it has established infrastructure in areas where computers are still trying to get a foothold.
Stan