[iDC] One Laptop Per Child - MIT/Negroponte Initiative

[Andreas Schiffler]

molly wright steenson wrote:
> Would those modifications help children? Are aftermarket modifications 
> a reality? $20 is awfully expensive for schools that lack desks and 
> families in slums who make $1 a day and use microfinancing and savings 
> schemes because they make too little money to be within the reach of 
> banking. New microphones made of... what? Are we imagining Arduino 
> closet industries and not auto-rickshaw drivers or housepainters or 
> scrap metal haulers? A nice idea, but there are many more pressing 
> needs first.
I think point in Liz's blog was, that the tool is not useful for adults 
because of the small keyboard size, limiting its usefulness within the 
general population, thus - for her - making it a flawed design. The 
small keyboard is of course a 'by design' feature of the OLPC, so that 
adults do not take the device away from the kids. I don't think it will 
even matter much, simply because if adults wanted to use the OLPC they 
would have options to overcome keyboard limitations as many of the 
worlds PDA users already do. Physical options exist as well, like 
external keyboards as well as virtual ones through OLPC users 
programming software for the already build in microphone, camera and 
touchpad to augment the input capabilities of the device. (The $20 
number is a Canadian retail price for one of these items I pulled form 
the net and if the government of Egypt would make an order for 10K of 
these keyboards from the Chinese manufacturer to "upgrade" their OLPC 
deployment, the price would not be $20 a piece but maybe 1-2% of the 
final OLPCs price.)

My key point was not that there are upgrades possible, but that there 
are options which are not material in nature and involve no money. This 
is ultimately the promise of software. I guess programmers, such as 
myself, believe that programmable devices ultimately will set creative 
energy free for the better of the whole. The OLPC is thus seen as a 
'good', because the device software is so open and 'hackable'.


David Golumbia wrote:
> I don't deny that giving a laptop to every child might be fun, and 
> might be beneficial in many ways, and I don't in any way want to deny 
> any person who wants a computer access to one. But until and 
> unless things like OLPC become efforts stemming *from* indigenous and 
> minority culture members, rather than from technophiles, and an effort 
> that does not provide dramatic incentives for minority and indigenous 
> peoples to sacrifice their languages and cultural practices to engage 
> with "the machine," I am forced to view it with the deepest suspicion 
> and concern. 

But isn't that a bootstrap problem? ... Wouldn't you need the make the 
indigenous and minority culture members - at least to some degree  - to 
technophiles. Only a basic understanding will allow them to participate 
in the construction and design of 'the machine' (or shall we say with 
the OLPCs launch imminent, 'the next machine').

I can see where you are coming from when you observe the "sacrifice of 
languages and cultural practices" in all this. I second your concern. 
But if it is not the OLPC, it will likely be some some form of gameboy, 
ipod or razor that will further the uniformity of communication and 
technology culture for those who can afford such devices ... and it 
still wouldn't matter for people who can't afford them. And given a 
choice, I'd prefer the open and practical design of the OLPC over, say a 
cheap GSM phone with vendor lock-in ...

The real issue may be that technophiles accept a certain kind of 
uniformity more easily because under the hood, the boolean logical and 
strict syntax of code is the lifeblood of everything digital. I guess 
the traditional geek belief is, that once this kind of sacrifice has 
been made, the possibilities available are endless and worth the price 
of such uniformity. Interestingly enough, there are parallels in the 
promise of computer games and virtual worlds towards the players. So the 
question I wonder about: Will the OLPC end up being just a 'gameboy'?

--AS

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