When a computer comes free with a magazine
The title says it all: buy this magazine and we’ll give you a computer. A computer stuck to the cover that you peel off, connect to the corresponding peripherals and it works perfectly. If you want to buy it without the magazine, it will cost you five bucks. Meet the PiZero, Raspberry Pi’s latest model, and that is more powerful that its predecessor. What’s more, it’s not made in China, but in Wales, based on the idea of making the lowest cost computer possible.
It might not look like it, but the PiZero is a computer, albeit in the form of a nine-gram circuit board, the components of which are all visible: the makers do suggest placing it in a box. The secret of its miniaturization is based on using layers of circuitry, so if you place on a surface that conducts electricity, it can short circuit. It can be powered using a cellphone charger, and then put to work by connecting it to a multi-USB port and then to a keyboard, a mouse, a wireless adaptor, a screen (television or monitor, using HDMI, and the MicroSD card that comes with the operating system and that can be used for storage.
In other words, we have now reached the point where a computer costs less then the WiFi dongle we need to connect to the internet, or the keyboard, screen and other kit needed to get the thing going.
The PiZero looks complicated to use, but isn’t: it can be set up and connect in a jiffy and works like a dream. And yes, it’s a computer, able to browse the net and even to watch high-definition video.
And neither is this the first such initiative: the CHIP, launched via Kickstarter, is similar, although it costs all of $9; I’ve seen others out there. What we are witnessing here is a move into a new era: computers will look different, and have now reached the point where the connectors we plug into them are bigger than the circuit board itself. I can think of few better examples of Moore’s Law.
As a result, we need to start rethinking a few things. For example, a computer is now no longer an entry barrier. Being able to use computers in the classroom, which was the idea behind the Raspberry Pi Foundation, is now possible. If I decided to set up a classroom to teach computer sciences in a remote rural area of Africa, to use one example, I would probably face a bigger challenge in finding the other components, and of course broadband, not to mention electricity, than I would in securing computers. But leaving education to one side for a moment, we need to ask ourselves what happens when entrepreneurs are able to get their hands on a computer for five dollars?
In short, what kind of world are we living in when both in terms of cost and size, we can now have computers everywhere?
When a computer costs five bucks and comes as a gift with a magazine, we have arrived at the point where just about anything is possible. And when that computer is produced in Wales, by European workers, that also says a lot. As a concept, the PiZero is genuinely revolutionary. But what it can generate in the future defies the imagination.
(En español, aquí)
