Bronte Media

The Journal takes a swipe at the One Laptop per Child project in a look through what’s happened so far: That Negroponte promised to sell 100-150 million laptops by the end of next year and the price will be $100. He has a snowflake’s chance in hell of achieving that.

I hate the way Negroponte blames Intel and Microsoft and the hardware manufacturers for ‘competing’ with his project. He comes off naive and searching for excuses for his own failings.

But I love both the mission and the actual laptop. I love the fact the computer is designed for rural areas and rugged use (sealed laptop, solar power, manual power, screen that works in daylight etc.). And is it just me or does the thing just look cool?

I am not surprised that third world governments have not embraced the concept. In fact, and this is rather naive and rude of me, it shouldn’t be surprising when you look at the governments in question. So much aid is wasted and filtered through corrupt governments. The United Nations is a bloated mess. etc.

I still think that efforts like this have a chance through grassroots adoption. You can give one and get one at laptopgiving.org. Apparently they have been getting around 5,000 orders per day in recent days (5,000 to the kids, 5,000 to the people in the US and Canada ordering them for a total of 10,000 per day).

If they keep it up, that’ll be 250,000 given by the end of the year.

Stupidly they are ending the program on December 31. Stupidly they are only allowing Americans and Canadians to order. Maybe that is because they aren’t ready yet to actually make but it just reeks of bad execution.

And then also this:

“Mr. Negroponte said some initial tech support would be provided by Brightstar Corp., a Miami-based wireless equipment distributor. Just who would provide support a few years from now, he said, was “a frightening question.” The students, he said, will need “to do as much maintenance as possible.”

Industries will sprout up. Entrepreneurs in these companies will start tech support companies. I’d love to lend/fund the entrepreneurs through Kiva.org or other sites like it.

It seems to me that the OLPC project just needs to let Negroponte slip into a figurehead role and let some smart technology entrepreneurs who want to do more with their lives than buy Boeing aircraft take center stage and actually execute upon this monumentally powerful idea.