One laptop per comrade
12:57pm, 5th October 2007
The XO laptops are apparently just a little bit excellent. Who wouldn’t want a “spillproof, rainproof, dustproof and drop-proof” tablet PC/laptop with a 6 hour battery life, 200dpi screen and truly zero configuration wireless mesh networking? Especially for $400, but that price is only available for a few weeks in November. After that, you’ll have to go to Nigeria and steal one from a child.
The issue of theft and resale is real and may yet cripple the project. Since the plan is to completely forego selling to individuals and get developing world governments to order the laptops in $100m batches, then give them out to kids, we’re talking about a giant free handout to, by definition, poor uneducated youths. The laptops are valuable and easily tradable, so might there not be a slight temptation for those living on the poverty line to cash in their free gift for something more obviously useful? Nicholas Negroponte has heard this objection, but I find his response unconvincing. You can’t stop people selling their laptops if they want to, you can’t LoJack the device with disabler hardware if it’s as open as OLPC claim, and the idea that they can “make this machine so distinctive that it is socially a stigma to be carrying one if you are not a child or a teacher” has been blown out of the water by the Give 1 Get 1 programme, not to mention rave reviews in the New York Times.
The vision of millions of aspiring schoolchildren geeking out to wireless Wikipedia is beautiful, and I really hope it works, but I think implementing it as a Big Government Scheme is a mistake, and such a mistake as to possibly be the undoing of the whole thing. The key premise of the project is to take advantage of economies of scale by centralizing and collectivising the production. This is what the USSR did with farming, and while large farms can be more efficient than small farms, it was a complete disaster because of the total abandonment of traditional economic incentives. They had frequent famines, and the whole Soviet Union was eventually done in by its own lack of economic nous. It turned out that markets were much better at lowering costs than 5-year plans.
I end with a quote from the NYT review:
The laptop is now called the XO, because if you turn the logo 90 degrees, it looks like a child.
Really?
lol - slightly different proportions: here.
I just hope the lessons the Nigerian children are given with them don’t include scams and phishing!
The vision of millions of aspiring schoolchildren sharing warez with a pirate flag emblazoned on their laptop lids is beautiful.
It’s too easy to make the soviet/big government=BAD argument about everything. The USSR was mostly bad but their “big government” solutions put a satellite in space before the USA, and a man (and woman) in orbit before us. Collective farming was a failure in the USSR, but it has succeeded in other places like Israel (kibbutzes) and spain (revolutionary and in the mondragon cooperatives). the cold war is over. Government is only as good as the people, and they get the government they deserve (we have only ourselves to blame for GWB’s failures).
The market has failed to tap into this multi billion person market and is only now (look at intel wooing the 3rd worlders) trying a half assed attempt to get computers into the hands of the less poorer people on earth. The market has failed these people. Let’s see it get on board, I’m cool with that-oh…wait, they don’t have any money these corporations can take or tax breaks they could get.
I hope this program works, let the uruguayan open sourcers/haxors etc unite!!!!!
check out the wiki for olpc,
there is an interesting (and kind of scary) discussion on the potential use of the mesh in asymetrical war setting up essentially a ruggedized highly mobile commo kit for the future insurgent. I don’t want to see this thing accessorized with an AK 47.
thanks