“Ghosts go through walls.”

[Alyssa] One of my friends from college had an Electronic Frontier Foundation sticker on his laptop bearing the legend "Information Wants to Be Free." One of the coolest examples of that sentiment I've seen in recent years is this joint Israeli-Palestinian venture to build a no-cost virtual computer, called G.ho.st, by integrating functions from services like Google Documents and Flickr. This is hardly the first project in recent years to try to address the problem of computer access in under served communities, particularly for children without steady computer access. On the hardware end, probably the most elegant solution is the One Laptop Per Child project, which combines tough, portable technology with simple functionality. Obviously, G.ho.st won't produce hardware that individuals can keep and access any time, but it also can't fall prey to hardware breakdown or lack of maintenance. Leaving the Israeli-Palestinian cooperation element aside, which the project leaders acknowledge is an important byproduct, if not the main point, of their collaboration, G.ho.st seems to represent another step forward in thinking about what you really need for personal computing. It seems to me like Apple went in the wrong direction in creating the MacBook Air; the product is both utilitarian and elegant, but its hefty price tag for the power makes it less accessible than other computers that can do more. While people who can afford it will probably continue to want increasing bang for the buck in their computing purchases, projects like G.ho.st and One Laptop Per Child, or really for that matter Google Documents, raise good questions about what we actually need and want out of our computers. G.ho.st's primary purpose will probably be to provide computing services to people who wouldn't be able to save documents and access them again later otherwise, but I know I'd be interested in some kind of effective services integrator simply because it's convenient. And hey, G.ho.st even has sense of humor about itself. The official launch is slated for Halloween.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/05/-ghosts-go-through-walls/45116/