Servo Control Systems Solve Educational Woes In The 3rd World
Servo control systems are used in just about every industry. They exist primarily as a means of automating processes which, in consequence of the existence of sophisticated CAD programming, CNC machines, hydraulics, pneumatics and solid state electronics, no longer call for the intervention of human beings, save in a maintenance or reprogramming capacity.
While they might bring on the wrath of doomsayers who see them as a means of displacing human workers and consequently amping up unemployment, the cost effective nature of servo control systems also means that there’s the potential for them to do a lot of good, especially in the field of philanthropic manufacture. Take, for instance, the now famous OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) Association, the US non-profit organization that aims to provide children in the developing world with low-cost, low-power, rugged, fully connected laptops, with software intended to promote “joyful, collaborative, self-empowered learning”.
As of 2009, the company’s research arm is still struggling to reach its goal of producing a laptop for under US $100, but the mere fact of the company’s existence has exerted competitive pressure on the IT industry, causing megacorporations such as Acer and Hewlett Packard to launch their own initiatives aimed at further reducing the cost of entry level laptops. The brilliance of the company is, in essence, the economic pressure that it currently exerts on companies only interested in profit to, as a useful adjunct to seeking profits by driving down prices, effectively democratize information technology and make possible a world of learning and opportunities to the underprivileged.
The company has also stimulated development for its operating system (a simplified GUI known as Sugar) by making the software open source, so that people everywhere can program for it. Thus, the minds of a world of philanthropic programmers, along with one and a half million books encapsulating much of the knowledge of the developed world, have been made available to owners of the OLPC XO-1.
The fact is that such an initiative would never be even conceptually possible without the advent of servo control systems capable of taking over the work of human beings. Simply put, while machines do qualify as a hefty initial investment, in the long run they are nowhere near as costly as would be hiring the multiple individuals that would be required to carry out each of the tasks that, say, an NC cutting or tooling system can perform. Thus, the initial costs of the OLPC association would be too high (especially given their home base, having to deal with the relatively high expense of working in US territories), and kids the world over would not have the opportunity with which they’re now being presented of being ushered into the world of computing technology and the online community the internet represents.
Instead, in the OLPC manufactory, the welding arms of servo control systems can be seen doing great good, overseen by no more than a few dozen employees. They are the ultimate proof that, though it most often is, big business need not be evil. The investment of a few million dollars in machinery can change the lives of millions or billions, an investment that can truly never be overvalued.
