OLPC: Distractions from Intention

The OLPC -- the Little Green Laptop, the device itself -- is so interesting that it is distracting worldwide attention from the more important aspects of the project.

Someone affiliated with the MIT Media Lab -- it's not clear who -- has started an interesting blog: "Froth" (under the DoubleSoyLatte URL). They are saying some useful things...

The staggering scale and size of the numbers associated with one laptop per child (o-l-p-c) has distracted from its objective. The Laptop is dangerously close to overshadowing all that motivated its development. The initiative requires more attention than the tool.

What caught my attention at Nicholas Negroponte's keynote address at LinuxWorld Boston last February is that OLPC is an education project (rather than a computer project). I immediately registered that this is going to be the basis of misunderstanding while, at the same time, noted that this will be one of OLPC's keys to success.

A basic study of sustainable development will reveal that in order for this to be achievable on a truly global scale in an economically meaningful and environmentally strategic way, the emerging populations will need to technologically leapfrog the rest of the world. The most penetrating and instantaneous way to make this happen is by deploying to the youngest segments of the population.

Some of the objections to the project have been about the difficulty of distributing, managing, maintaining & preserving these devices in-country on such massive scale. Other objections focus on the design of the device itself: that it is too small; something is wrong with the User-Interface; the mesh network will never work in central Kenya, etc. There is also criticism about a lack of curriculum, but generally fewer people have focused on the educational side.

Criticism is normal and important for any serious project and certainly for a project with such ambition and one which brings audacity & talent to solving real & fundamental problems on a global scale.

It's my wish that the criticism would improve in quality. I think it would if people would focus more on OLPC's fundamental goals and not so exclusively on the laptop.

For innocent bystanders, it is also going to be useful to put on your bullshit detectors, to be able to tell the sincere criticism from the purely defeatist criticism sponsored by lazy-blogging, jealousy and industrial gamesmanship.

Comments

[wayan]

Sam,

You're welcome improve the OLPC criticism quality. Here's an open invitation to write for OLPC News, focusing on OLPC's fundamental goals with hype detectors activated.