Groundbreaking technology can be simple

If IBM gave us the personal computer, chipmaker AMD placed it in everybody's hands.

Actually I think that's not a too unrealistic version on how historicians will describe the computerization of the world in the late twentieth century and the early 21th.

I am talking about the PIC from AMD, a $200 neat device that comes with Windows CE, basic word processing, e-mail program and an Internet browser. The small computer that could be connected to any monitor and a dial-up or broadband connection targets the third world market fo people earning between $5,000 to $10,000 a year.

The PIC is offered to Internet providers for $185 and they can then either sell it with a mark-up or for break-even, with the revenues coming from the Internet subscriptions.

There are two things I just love with this product:

1. It's great a company like AMD have the courage to target the third world, and to do it on a commercial basis. They see greens coming here, but in the same time they may change the world.

2. I think this product may not only revolutionize the third world but the whole world. There are a lot of people in the industrialized world who don't need more features than what the PIC is offering. And they will either discover this specific product, or other followers who realise this is what the future is about.