The friendly salesman in Bangalore, India…
…who sold me my first TV-computer! This shop also sold loads of solar-powered flashlights, if I recall.
I remember plugging the machine into this little TV, there at the shop (I always recommend testing your electronics in the grey-market). In just 2 clicks of the mouse, I was at a BASIC programming prompt. I remember thinking, “hmm, what else could be done with a $10 educational computer?”
Talking with my friends at Srishti School of Design, and then later at Calit2 and MIT’s IDDS, we agreed that the best way to make this computer as powerful as possible would be to open it up to the world as a platform for open-source learning games. That’s why Playpower is all about content–we’re trying to build better learning games, not cheaper computers. While an 8-bit computer is a highly constrained environment, you’d be surprised at what it can do!