I was browsing through Quirky's Pricing Game when I came across the case for Raspberry Pi. Imagine my excitement, when I thought of the endless possibilities that we can do with it when it comes to nation building!!!
Okay, Raspberry Pi is not a food but a credit-card sized computer that costs almost similar to a textbook. It sells around $25-35 which would be around 1,000-1,400PHP. I think my finance book costed about 800PHP (which I bought for half a price because it was second hand). If you want to know more, you can check out their main website. It runs on Linux and is open-source... And, well, me not being the most techie person out there, I believe you can just search them out in Google for other specs.
I think that underdeveloped countries can really have a go at this. Back when I was in college, I had to do school profiling for some public schools and they were in dire need of computers. It's cheap and a great starter for any community that's interested in getting things started in the right direction~
On Trading
As we're on the topic of nation-building, an American news channel (I forgot which one) was also doing a feature on some fishermen in the States who were using the internet to directly target consumers to buy straight from the day's catch. Based on their data, 50-80% of seafood source are usually sent to repackaging sites (mostly to China) but possibly go bad by the time it gets to resellers or grocery stores-which means that it isn't as fresh and at the same time, isn't as sustainable.
What they do is try to eliminate the middle-men so that people can directly converse with the fishermen, know where they get it (which sea they get the catch, how they operate, etc...). A person who purchases from ilovebluesea.com can usually get the fish within 24-48 hours so it stays fresh.I was conversing with my friend (her family farms) and she mentioned to me how difficult farming was in the Philippines since it involved some middle-men. I can see that we've a lot to go from here. I mean, we don't even have good infrastructure and great internet connection but I think we're off to a good start. I know a lot of NGOs are really working to get things to happen.
I'd just like to say, again... Oh! The interesting possibilities!!
