MIT's famed dome... coming to a PC, laptop or tablet near you! (Image credit: Bustachange.com)

Someday, someone in an appropriately empowered government position in Pakistan needs to take a bold step forward and break through the bureaucracy and red tape government is despised for. There are so many incredibly high value, low cost initiatives to take up in areas as diverse as agriculture, education, energy and information technology that the shortage is not one of ideas, but simply that of initiative and vision.

Here at TechLahore, we’ve discussed some of these ideas before. Today, an announcement made by MIT compels us to talk of another…

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as one of the world’s foremost technology and engineering schools, needs no introduction. It is nothing less than one of America’s greatest strategic assets. MIT has produced graduates who have gone on to conduct pioneering research in defence, space technology, IT, material sciences, genetics and numerous other areas, advancing the state of the art for their country and the world at large. By some estimates, MIT graduates have contributed almost one trillion dollars worth of market capitalization to the US bourses. But as you may have heard, it’s not easy to get into MIT. Seats are limited, competition is tough and most of all, it’s expensive and remote for most of the citizens of the world. But what if the MIT experience could be bottled up and shipped across the internet to anyone who wanted to benefit from it? While it wouldn’t be exactly akin to attending classes at MIT physically – certainly the environment and some measure of interactivity would be lacking – it would, nonetheless, be a giant step forward.

MIT took this very step, in fact, some years ago, by launching their OpenCourseWare initiative. In a variety of formats, ranging from audio, slides to fully taped video lectures, a select group of courses were put online for anyone in the world to access without charge. You can learn more about OCW by visiting this MIT website. Now, MIT is taking this program to the next level. M.I.T.x as the new online learning initiative will be called, will expand the amount of content available and will also offer completion certificates to candidates who test well at the end of the self-paced “term”. This certificate will not be an MIT degree, nor will it bear the name of MIT, but will be granted by a non-profit set-up specifically for this purpose as an MIT affiliate. Nice as that might be, certificates and degrees are essentially pieces of paper. The real value is in the learning process and the acquired knowledge. Exposing oneself to a well designed, cutting edge curriculum, the added benefit of virtual presence in MIT classrooms through the magic of internet video, interaction with other learners via online discussion boards and finally, being “tested” without spending a single cent or leaving the comfort of home, is truly a revolutionary development!

Can this program be embraced by the Provincial or Federal governments in Pakistan? Can we deliver the MIT curriculum in classrooms at our institutions and use local teachers in a supportive role, making up for any loss of interactivity? Can we launch programs where, like the 100,000 free laptop distribution made by the Gov. of the Punjab, laptops and tablets can be gifted to any student that shows a completion certificate for some number of MIT engineering classes? Could we augment our virtual university curricula with this MIT content? What about providing free DVDs with all of this content to anyone in Pakistan who is interested and may not yet have the broadband connection to easily access the video component? How about selecting a few of the MIT freshmen courses and broadcasting them on TV – not only to teach, but also to spread awareness about this great resource? How about translating the videos into Urdu and even regional languages? There’s so much that can be done with this content… and with not much investment!

But with that said, even if the Government, as usual, doesn’t do anything, you and I can at least spread awareness about this great resource. To the extent we interact with learners, college students, those who are curious about science and engineering, folks that are not happy with the quality of education they might be receiving at a local institution – anyone with an interest – we can tell them about this resource. We can share MIT OCW videos with our friends on Facebook so they know this resource exists and can tell others. We can, when we have a few moments to spare, invest an hour or two to perhaps translate a video in Urdu. Anything we can do to spread news of this great resource and enhance its value will be of tremendous benefit to Pakistan.

This is a great step towards democratizing access to the world’s best education. And it’s not the only earth shattering, historically unparalleled change we’re seeing enabled through IT. It’s practically a new world out there, with more potential than has been available at any time in human history. Soon, location, geography and to a great extent – money – will no longer matter in very important ways. And with all of this magnificent change unfolding around us, it’s our job to go out and make something of these fabulous new opportunities. Let’s make it happen!

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Farid's LCF offers courses in a variety of different areas

We’ve often talked about the need for Pakistanis to understand personal finance and the realities of the complex financial dynamics in today’s world. Thus far, there hasn’t really been an effective way to impart this education to willing learners without having them enroll in a university. To make things simpler, Jawwad Farid, founder of Alchemy, has launched an online e-learning portal called LCF. Jawwad’s audience, however, is not just limited to those interested in Personal Finance, nor is it limited to Pakistan. His courses have been incredibly well received by a global audience. In Jawwad’s own words:

“We recently crossed the 100,000 visitors benchmark after crossing the 200,000 pageviews benchmark in August. Traffic is up at about 8,000 monthly visitors and over 17,500 pageviews. An average visitor spends upwards of 2 minutes with some users spending all of 40 minutes at the site validating its stickiness. All content is locally generated and our online video course library has doubled this quarter and we hope will double again before the end of the year.

The site is a great reference for business school students, consultants, bankers and technologists who need a crash course in higher finance topics. And the fact that we get traffic from over 5000 cities in the world and 186 countries somewhat validates that. More that 50% of the traffic originates from North America and Western Europe. “

What’s particularly interesting to us is that entrepreneurs from Pakistan are no longer just focused on IT services and products, but are expanding export opportunities to knowledge products as well. E-learning represents a massive global opportunity that, given first rate content and material, should be an area of focus for local entrepreneurs. It has all the attributes of a viable export-oriented offering for Pakistani startups:

1. Being a virtual good, it can be delivered effectively through digital, online means.
2. It leverages domain specific knowledge that is available across a broad set of areas in Pakistan (e.g. medicine, finance, law, economics, math etc.)
3. It scales tremendously! Perhaps even more so than other digital goods such as software. While the support burden will increase with the number of customers an application acquires, it is usually not the case with educational content delivered online.
4. It is a great arbitrage opportunity. Education in developed countries is becoming increasingly expensive. Inexpensive, high quality learning alternatives are bound to find a foothold due to the value they deliver.

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Does this road lead to Hell? Or to personal and national prosperity? (Image credit: MasterNewMedia)

The very word, “money” evokes interesting reactions amongst Pakistanis. Principally, there are two categories in which most responses fall. First, that money is unnecessary or trivial and that the Lord provides to whom He deems fit. And second, that money is the root of all evil, an instrument of Satan… and so on. The role of money in our national dialogue is most often that it is associated with scams, the latest Zardari or Nawaz Sharif theft story or as an instrument of coercion by external forces. No surprise that there is a generally negative attitude toward the word and the concept.

Yet, the reality is that, more so than ever before, cash is king. Money is important because so much of what we consume in our modern lives is acquired by it. Gone are the days when fruits grew on trees to be plucked by anyone walking by, when land was so plentiful no one could think about charging for it (ala the Native Americans), when trees could be chopped down by anyone with an axe to be shaped into a home, plough or furniture, and when animals ran wild to be hunted and consumed by anyone with a bow and arrow. Resources are finite, the population is growing and at least to a degree, scarcity has kicked in.

And as for the acquisition of money being an evil pursuit designed to give you the upper hand over the suffering masses, that is so 1,000 years ago. Money is a tool and can be used to build, progress, gain knowledge and assist. In our part of the world, it’s just gotten too much bad press.

The reality is that money in of itself is neither evil, and most certainly, it is not unimportant. If there’s anything we need in the pursuit of happiness and satisfaction, it’s options. And many options are bought with money. Do you want to take a couple of years off and pursue a higher degree? Want to take your kids on a month long trip through Europe to introduce them to French art, Spanish history and Italian culture? What about taking up Polo? The bottom line is that sans money, none of these pursuits are possible. And so the list goes…

So, given that money is indeed essential, the art and science of making, managing, retaining and growing it is entirely absent from the social conversation in Pakistan. You see institutes and colleges mushrooming all over the place, which promise to impart skills that will secure a bright future for the their students, yet, none of these schools or colleges are in the business of teaching the most relevant skill; how to ensure personal financial well being. And by this, I don’t just mean balancing your cheque book at the end of the month and maintaining a ledger with records of where your money goes. I mean a truly informed and strategic view to accumulating, securing and building wealth. It’s just not talked about and is thus, a foreign concept.

Without a deliberate approach to financial success, the (legal and moral) acquisition of riches becomes the statistical equivalent of winning the lottery. Unfortunately, without well-to-do individuals, there is no social prosperity, and without social prosperity there is no national progress. It has to come from the ground up and is seldom imposed successfully from the top.

I get nothing but blank stares when I ask young, educated people working in tech companies whether they know anything about diversified portfolios, IRR calculations, the implications of compounding and how they work either for you or against you, effective strategies for saving, the development of multiple streams of income, or to borrow a phrase from Tim Ferris’ 4-hour work week, the creation of a financial “muse”. I still haven’t encountered anyone who has built a spreadsheet or financial model projecting wealth accumulation over a period of time, even factoring in basic items like salary, savings, interest income and so on. I don’t see people planning, saving or investing properly to account for significant life events that trigger sudden expense. And in the absence of all of this, I just fail to see how these young people – just joining the work force now – expect to retire in comfort, with their family doing far better than it is now, with their children having ten times the opportunity they had in life. Isn’t that the whole point? To improve your lot?

Am I just talking to the wrong people, or do you also find that the conversation about money is limited only to headlines and slurs, but seldom develops into a constructive dialog about how to build and harness it?

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$100 Laptops, $135 Android touch tablets and more... they're flooding Pakistan

We’ve been discussing low cost Netbooks and Tablets for the last several years here at TechLahore, and we’ve always felt that the mainstreaming of these devices will be a huge force in democratizing communications, access and learning in the developing world. In 2007 and through 2008, we were tracking Nicholas Negroponte’s much ballyhooed Sugar OLPC project which unfortunately didn’t quite meet the price targets set for it. We also looked at the Intel Classmate PC and the Government’s sponsorship of this effort in Pakistan. All the while, we were quite sure that $100 price targets were not far from being met, not by education-focused initiatives like the Classmate and OLPC, but by run-of-the-mill mainstream budget systems. And that’s exactly where we are now.

Pakistan is awash in ultra-inexpensive Laptops, Netbooks and Tablets of every form factor. Being on a number of local distributors’ mailing lists, we are inundated with ads pitching the form factor du jour, at rapidly decreasing prices. Here is one example:

Cheap computers galore in Pakistan!

For reference, a US Dollar is roughly Rs. 84 in Pakistani currency as of 10/28/2010. So, divide the amounts to get to dollar prices. A Netbook for $110, and an Adroid tablet for $135 ain’t so bad! Low cost computers are a reality today, and you can buy them in quantities of one… not a million at a time as the OLPC programme required. So, now the question is, what will Pakistan’s schools, rural areas and low-income neighbourhoods look like in 5 and 10 years? How will this inexpensive technology help create new opportunities and solve problems that have thus-far remained unaddressed? That’s the 50 Billion dollar question. And we’ll certainly be watching how things go…

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Jawwad Farid’s Avicena, a Karachi-based e-education company, has recently launched a new Corporate Finance portal. This is an online resource for those interested in learning more about Corporate Finance – an incredibly important subject as the business environment in Pakistan matures and is layered with complexity and sophistication. I asked Jawwad about his targeted audience, and here is what he had to say:

“The suggested audience is really anyone who is looking for a quick refresher or ready reference in Finance without opening that storage box to locate their Corporate Finance text book.”

Jawwad also explained how the portal came to be:

“This is the second re-birth of Avicena, our e-education adventure. Someone who read the book asked me if I still had the content around and if I could get around to uploading it.  What took 4 people, 18 months and just under 250,000 dollars to put together a decade ago, took less than week in WordPress in February. Since then the site has done well.In addition to the courses we wrote at Avicena I now upload a new course almost every month and its gotten reasonably exotic very very quickly (as you will see with the progression in the course inventory)”

So head on over to the http://finance.oilinsights.net/ and get yourself a quick CF refresher!

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Sanjannagar Institute's Beena Raza presents at TEDx Lahore (Image credit: TEDx Lahore FB page)

For those who are presently hurtling away from the solar system at light speed in an attempt to validate Einstein’s Twins Paradox, this might be news. But for the rest of us here on earth, it should not be. TED – that wonderful platform for insightful talks – has come to Pakistan. Now, strictly speaking, TEDx is what has come to Pakistan… and the “x” denotes the fact that while the organizers involved have independently planned and organized the event, TED does bless the group and even helps promote their work on the TED.com website.

The first TEDx event was held in Karachi just recently, and now TEDx has debuted in Lahore. The first set of talks were held at the Ali Institute off Ferozepur road, and included subjects as diverse as musicology and philosophy, the psychology of terror, map making and more. The Express Tribune did a good job covering the event. Here’s the link:

TEDx Talking from Lahore

The TEDx effort is being undertaken in Lahore by volunteers, students, professionals and folks wishing to make a difference. Their spirit and intention is commendable. As they said via their Facebook status on Sunday, “We believe in doing, not waiting. We believe in getting things done to start a trend of pro-active behavior. We believe in less talk, more action. If you believe in these things, then you have the TEDxLahore spirit, whether you attended or not.” – Well said, TEDx Lahore team, and well done! We look forward to many more TEDx events in Lahore. It’s not just about listening to intelligent people talk about interesting things, platforms like TEDx can be supremely important in determining the course our country and people take in times to come. Indeed, the battle for the future is being waged in the minds of our countrymen. Whether these minds are won over by an insightful lecture at TEDx that captivates and enthralls, or by less productive, darker forces. That is the central question of our time.

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The Old Building at Aitchison: Once called the "Chief's College", Aitchison is still an elite institution. Its students - future leaders of Pakistan - are increasingly turning away from the US.

I am an Aitchisonian, and proud of it. While it has been criticised for being an elitist institution, Aitchison has certainly produced leaders. Whether they be sportsmen like Imran Khan and Ramiz Raja, politicians like Farooq Leghari (former President of Pakistan), Balakh Sher Mazari (former Prime Minister) and Nawab Amir Muhammad Khan of Kalabagh (Governor), martyrs in our wars such as Lt. Col. Zafar Shinwari and Maj. Shah Rafi Alam or businessmen like Syed Babar Ali and Shahzada Monnoo, Aitchisonians are and have always been undoubtedly at the forefront of all segments of society. And because Aitchison is the cradle for a substantial part of Pakistan’s leadership, trends amongst its students are an interesting indicator of where Pakistan is headed, or at least what social trends are shaping its elite.

I left the school many years ago, in the 90s. At the time, students from a typical graduating H.Sc. (A’ Level – or the “13th” grade for our American readership) class mostly went abroad to pursue further education. Most of them had large land holdings, or family businesses to return to, so the few years spent abroad were a way to travel, get to know the world a bit better and develop a sense of independence before the eventual homecoming.

By far, the most popular destination for these students through the 70s, 80s and 90s was the US. Harvard, MIT, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, UT Austin, Northwestern and Rice were a few of the schools favoured by Aitchisonians. These Pakistani kids, almost exclusively from elite backgrounds, at an impressionable 17 or 18 years would depart to spend between 4 and 6 years in the US. During this time, these Aitchisonians didn’t just work towards higher degrees, they also experienced American college life, developed a sense of association with America and usually came back with good things to say about their experience. And when these kids went on to become industrialists, politicians, Army officers or leaders in other walks of life, they carried this favourable sentiment towards America with them.

The circumstances during much of the 20th century were such that living in a “friendly” America for a few years, conveniently obtaining visas and travelling there, and generally feeling comfortable in most American cities, was the usual experience for this highbrow elite. What they gained from their time in the US was a degree and a life experience. What America gained was powerful allies in a nuclear armed nation that is one of the most influential in the muslim world and also happens to be the sixth most populous state on earth.

Since 9/11, though, the US beauracracy and leadership has been like a turtle. Rather than understand the underlying issues, they have chosen to hide themselves behind a (series of) hard shell(s). While books can be and have been written about how these measures are unlikely to make America safer, and how the post 9/11 reaction that America exhibited has actually created larger armies of hardliners and potential terrorists in many countries of the world, let’s overlook that side of the debate for now. What is certainly clear is that by its extremely aggressive and, at times, clearly illogical and nonsensical policies, the US government has alienated its friends. In large numbers.

In fact, today, because of these US policies, Pakistanis who America would most want on their side, who America would most want to win over – the influential, powerful elite – are unwilling to even apply for an American visa for a summer vacation. With their money and influence, they can go anywhere on earth to enjoy themselves, to educate their children, to buy real estate or make investments. Why would they do so in a post 9/11 America that has shown too much insularity and insecurity, and very little understanding and acumen?

Looking at the list of schools to which the graduating  class of Aitchisonians is headed, one can confirm this trend. While a few students are still going to the US, the numbers have diminished drastically. What used to be 80%, is now a mere 20%.

Interestingly, those staying back in Pakistan and attending new, but immensely progressive and excellent  local universities like GIK Institute and NUST have increased in numbers from what used to be virtually zero in 1990, to a good 20% of the graduating class today. England, despite the train bombing episodes, has managed to be fairly even keel about visas, ease of travel and has managed to stay away from draconian steps such as implementing a “Patriot Act”, ala America. This more balanced reaction has allowed the UK to maintain – despite having a much smaller number of Universities to choose from – continued interest from the Pakistani elite.

Where do Aitchisonians go for higher education after they graduate? Not where they used to.

As you can see from the 2009 data above, almost a quarter of the Aitchison College H.Sc. graduating class stayed behind in Pakistan and chose to attend the country’s own elite universities. Frankly, I can’t remember any time during the 80s or 90s when this happened. Also, the US is now getting only 20% of Aitchison’s graduating class whereas it used to be the destination of choice for something between 65-80% of Aitchisonians. Canada and Germany have been huge gainers, because they are seen to be “friendly” and more relaxed.

So, what does all of this mean? For Pakistan it certainly means good things. First, by staying back, the most highbrow Pakistanis are stamping recently created local institutions of higher learning with their approval. Second, because these local schools are now providing education for the rich and powerful, they will also receive a lot more attention from this influential segment of society. Third, by heading for new destinations such as Canada and Germany, Aitchisonians are undoubtedly creating networks in those countries which will be beneficial to them and to Pakistan, in the form of business alliances, political liaisons and more.

However, this trend does not bode well for the US. Not only is it losing an opportunity to shape the future leaders of Pakistan, it is also increasingly seen as an unfriendly, harsh and arbitrary actor. You never know when you’ll get your visa stamped. It could be weeks, or it could be a year. You never know when some ill-trained, racist, angry-at-the-world type immigration officer will abuse the significant powers at his disposal to ruin your week. You never know when the next burst of anti Pakistan propaganda will hit the NYT or make the Fox/CNN airwaves. It’s all very disconcerting and uncomfortable, especially for Pakistanis who lead a life of privelege and couldn’t care two hoots for the economic opportunity American once represented.

By the way, while I have used Aitchison as a case study here, I know for a fact that trends at most other elite institutions in Pakistan are quite similar. America is out – or “tired” to use Wired magazine terminology. While Pakistan, Canada and Europe are in and most certainly, “wired”.

Of course, one has to wait for the myriad consequences of this significant shift to manifest themselves in public, inter-governmental and business affairs. In the next 5-10 years, as the post 9/11 generation of the Pakistani elite works itself into positions of power, what they see as a closed, unreasonable and biased America may no longer be automatically assumed to be a friend or even a desireable place, much less a country to be emulated or a beacon of freedom or democracy

Change is certainly afoot. The unintended consequences of the Bush reaction to 9/11 continue to unravel. Time will tell where things end up. From what I can see, America is causing itself more harm than its enemies ever could.

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Pakistan has produced a lot of computer science talent that is powering not only our local industry but also academia and research. As they are incredibly interesting and important areas, distributed systems, parallelism and supercomputing have attracted the attention of many of our brightest stars. These areas have almost been fused together lately, with commodity processors being used in large parallel clusters tied together with high speed interconnects; supercomputing has really become synonymous with distributed computing.

Prof. Shahid Bokhari of Lahore’s UET did seminal work in distributed systems and has a large number of noteworthy publications. Our very own Prof. Asad Abidi, former researcher at Bell Labs, long time chaired Professor at UCLA, winner of the IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid State Circuits and the IEEE Third Millennium Medal and former Dean of the SSE at LUMS, has many significant achievements in the related area of VLSI design. Beyond these individuals, groups such as the Khwarizmic science society in Lahore have been building clusters for over 15 years.

We can now proudly add to this list, the name of Basit Riaz, a Pakistani researcher who has won the Best Paper Award at an international Supercomputing conference recently held in France. Well done Basit! Now we’re hoping we will see you soon in Pakistan so that you can enrich local academia and industry. Good luck to you!

More from The News:

Pakistani gets coveted award for groundbreaking computer reseach

ISLAMABAD, May 7 (APP) – Basit Riaz Sheikh, a Pakistani Ph.D candidate at the Cornell University, the United States has become the first Pakistani to win the “Supercomputer Design Award” at Global Scientific Conference-2010 held in Grenoble, France. Basit has won the coveted ‘best paper award’ for his groundbreaking research work in the state-of-the-art computer design, according to the information reaching here on Friday.

[..]

Basit, a AVLSI Lab student at the prestigious Cornell University, has fully implemented transistor-level design that not only performed at 3.2 times higher speed, but also consumed six times less energy. [..]

Associated Press Of Pakistan

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A futuristic classroom at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. KAUST is becoming a jealousy magnet.

TechCrunch just published a piece about the inauguration of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology(KAUST). This institution is absolutely marvelous by all accounts. Not only does it have a $10BN endowment, one of the largest of any institution in the Islamic world,  it also has state of the art facilities, ranging from the world’s 15th most powerful supercomputer (Shaheen), to a nano tech fabrication lab  and the world’s highest resolution immersive visualization display. And these wonders are just the beginning. A lot more lies in wait for students and researchers. Shaheen, for example, will continue to be upgraded and will climb the world supercomputer rankings rapidly. Last but not least, the campus itself, built on 30 sq km, is beautiful.

So, when TechCrunch sent a correspondent to cover the launch of the University and King Abdullah’s inaugural address, I expected that the event would attract the right sort of attention; folks interested in education, and happy to see progress and development. Unfortunately, the reactions on TechCrunch have been largely ugly, to say the least. The very first comment on the post involved filth and abuse, and it just got worse from there. At last count, the majority of the comments on this article were all hate speech against Saudi Arabia, muslim countries and basically, everyone who is not “western”. (“West” here is used loosely and includes a tiny patch by the mediterranean that considers itself part of the “west”)

So, is there any method to this madness? Any logical explanation for these outbursts of anger? And those too, on a simple, positive story like the inauguration of a centre of higher learning where many students from western countries are enrolled! Once again, not all western audiences exhibit these reactions, but such a sizeable number do that its worrisome nonetheless. What’s more, many of these disparaging comments are so obviously based on ignorance that they could only stem from deeprooted racial stereotypes perpetuated in western societies about muslims, Islam and the Middle  East. Deeply disturbing.

The one twist to all of this is that the negative commentary doesn’t always come from pure unabashed hatred built upon ignorance, it also comes from those who DO realize that muslim countries are progressing, but the only response they can muster to this is seething jeaolousy. When much of the world is suffering from a recession and university budgets in the US are being slashed, a brand new University such as KAUST would understandably raise eyebrows. When  after 8 years and several trillion dollars invested in the Afghanistan campaign, Gen. Stanley McChrystal declares  the situation for NATO to be near to a dead loss, and then the Pakistan Army proceeds to clean out Swat in 90 days,  there are bound to be comparisons. These comparisons may even evoke emotion. But why the tirades have to be so racially motivated and wreaking of frustration and hatred, I don’t understand.

The only time this happens is when those reacting either have  too many chips on their collective shoulder and suffer from a growing sense of insecurity, or when they see the  writing on the wall with respect to their own prospects and can’t face  reality with any semblance of sanity. Whatever it is, it is certainly sad. I don’t advise it, but if you wish to witness this sadness first hand, hop on over to the comments section of the TechCrunch article in question.

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Amazon's new Kindle DX E-book Reader

Over the past few years, I have spent the better part of  a King’s Ransom on tech devices. When Compaq’s very first Aero Pocket PC came out, I got it. With a 56Kbps compact flash modem. It cost me more than a PC, but I got it. I even had visions of using it in my PC’s stead. I’m still waiting for that to happen. When the new Sony Clie NZ90 came out, I rushed and grabbed me one… complete with Wifi card. I’ve bought more Windows Mobile and Pocket PC devices then you can shake a stick at. I was also one of the few people who ever bought the Palm VII and subscribed to the unlimited wireless service plan. Cybikos? Half a dozen. Netbooks? Three. Handsprings? Yes. Vtec Helio (What the hell is a Vtec helio, right?!) Yes! I’m sick that way, and yeah, a Kings Ransom is about right.

But, TechLahore, you might ask, why then have you not bought a Kindle Reader yet? Simple. Because I refuse to be transported back to 1983. I will not buy a reader which cannot show me my favourite magazines in colour! What is Robb Report, or Wired or Architectural Digest in monochrome? It is a travesty, is what it is! Yes, the resolution’s nice. Yes, the battery life and the always-on wireless access and the unlimited plan are all good. But the lack of colour? Sorry. I know the DX at almost $500 is hardly a steal… but I assure you I would be the first in the voluntary, please-rip-us-off line were the DX available in colour. But it is not. And therefore, I don’t own one.

Now, Chairman Bezos insists that colour versions are “multiple years” away, but Forrester research disagrees. They think a colour version will be out before the end of 2010. If Amazon doesn’t do it, someone else will. Here’s Forrester’s very interesting chart on the expected evolution of e-book readers:

Forrester's model of e-reader evolution

They’re expecting video and animations to show up in e-readers too… and of course, the much anticipated $99 unit price. Now that’s starting to get really interesting. What they don’t talk about here is touch and ink enablement on these devices to make them the replacement not just for a book, but a notebook. And then ofcourse, there will be wireless content sharing features, collaborative wireless notepads, synchronization features and much much more. This is going to be an interesting category of device.

But as for me, the market entry point is when the first colour model comes out. From that point on I will be writing cheques for e-books, and every successive generation of e-reader that comes out. So, Mr. Bezos, get with the program and come take away my money.

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