p2pnet.net News:- Raj Reddy, a professor at Carnegie Mellon, has developed a wireless network personal computer for the four billion people around the world who live on less than $2,000 a year.

Controlled by a TV remote, his PCtvt would come in at around $250, says a report in the New York Times here.

Behind the project are Microsoft and South Korean computer maker Trigem and Reddy’s partner’s are the Indian Institute of Science, the Indian Institute of Information Technology and researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, says the NYT.

The idea must be to bring education and other benefits to people who’d otherwise have to do without. Right?

Well – “I kept asking myself, ‘what would the device have to do for someone on the other side of the digital divide to be desirable?” – Reddy is quoted as saying and, “The answer, he decided, was a simple device that would offer entertainment, making it something that even the world’s poorest citizens might be willing to pay a sizable share – perhaps more than 5 percent – of their annual income to own.”

The story also has Tom Kalil, special assistant to the chancellor for science and technology at Berkeley, saying entertainment is the killer app that will “smuggle something that is a lot more sophisticated into the home”.

Reddy’s team is also working with social scientists to determine the effect access to the technology has on communities.

“If we can do these experiments” and “show that people living in poverty are a market for computers, Reddy adds, according to the NYT, “we will have proved something”.

Well, er ….

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