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