OLPC
God, it’s not pretty. The project seems to be falling apart under Nicholas Negroponte incompetence. Still the project has spurred an important movement and I am happy to have firstly given a laptop to a kid in the developing world and having a piece of history that now functions as my ‘living room laptop that looks up menupages.com to order dinner’.
“piece of history” is right. but I don’t blame negroponte’s mismanagement. The whole project is spectacularly misconceived. One does not create prosperity through the charitable giving of consumer products.
No, if negroponte wants to educate the children of the third world he needs to go capitalist. First build and sell them what they desire enough to actually purchase. Then upgrade them. Maybe there’s a market for cheap linux PCs in the hills of afganistan. (i doubt it, but that’s why you go for-profit to figure it out exactly)
Frankly this group is best served by knocking down the protectionism that keeps their rice prices absurdly high. Help them get a little richer every day. one step at a time…
Yep you are completely right (but that doesn’t mean Negroponte isn’t incompetent too).
Still I believe that the cheap sub-laptop category (eee pc and classmate) and other manufacturers like HP now bringing out products is a wonderful thing and capitalism at work and was tipped off by the OLPC initiative.
I also lend out money through kiva.org and think that is a wonderful example of what OLPC could have been.
The points OLPC missed (besides the capitalism) was the direct connection between donator and donatee, which Kiva does a great job of capturing.
I’d even donate more, if I was ‘lending’ the laptop to a person (who would be older than primary school age hopefully :), who could then work with that and Internet access and pay back the cost and then at the end of it be able to earn money and have a laptop and Internet access to do so.
I have had the opportunity to play with one of those little green laptops, and it was pretty cool. That’s all I have to say.