By Will Cade

When I think of competition, I usually imagine blood thirsty corporate lions pouncing on anyone they can to get a leg up. If anyone benefits from this merciless striving, it’s the individual at the top. Sometimes, though, more than co-workers stabbed in the back trail in the wake. A trail of innovation can also follow behind, waiting for the right opportunity to be put to good use.

Innovation and competition are probably the most intense in the computing world. Advancing exponentially, computers double in speed and nearly half in price every 2 years. Most people from our generation have experienced this trend. Say you receive a laptop for graduation and head off to university feeling well prepared and at least a little bit proud of your new, gleaming piece of hardware. By your third semester, a whole new generation of students have made their way onto campus, with a whole new generation of laptops. If you’re a techno-junkie like me, you might ask them what their “specs” are (like processing speed, hard drive size, RAM, etc.) and how much they paid. Realizing these newbies have cheaper, smaller, and better laptops, you might have the philanthropic desire to usher them into university life - with a good hazing.

Although this trend may bruise your ego on the university campus, it’s also helping usher the third world into the digital age. Up to this point, the information super highway has been reserved to industrialized powers. But now, thanks to cheaper, smaller, and better laptops, technology companies are marketing $100 laptops to developing countries. Well, the cost was $100, but after a slight revamp, the more traditional laptop has become a flat-panel, touch screen laptop doubling as an e-book, which costs closer to $200.[1]

Don’t crucify the capitalists just yet; even when they’re bettering humanity, they’re still human, and damn good businessmen. These revamps are intended to help school children, for they can function as laptops and e-books, saving schools money on books. Provided technology continues advancing like it has, these laptops should become cheaper in the next year or so. The designers of the laptop are also offering tax-deductible contribution programs (1 laptop to 1 child for $200) if you’re interested in contributing yourself.[2]

Or, if you’re a broke university student and you can’t even afford to buy yourself a new laptop, technology is offering you another way to do some good in the world. The website www.thehungersite.com donates food for every click and has links to sister sites for breast cancer, child health, literacy, the rainforest, and animal rescue. I have it as my homepage on my own laptop, so even if I spend the whole day gluttonously downloading pirated music, I at least start the day by doing some good.

[2] http://laptopfoundation.org/en/participate/