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Monday, November 13, 2006 Part I: Philanthropy's New PrototypeContinued from page 1 By James Surowiecki
Carnegie is usually talked about today as a precursor to people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, multibillionaires who have dedicated most of their wealth to philanthropic endeavors. But when you look at the way Carnegie built libraries--seeding institutions around the country and encouraging local involvement in the hope of convincing people of the virtues of free access to knowledge--what it calls to mind most is not Gates's prodigious effort to fund the fight against infectious diseases but, rather, an endeavor called One Laptop per Child (OLPC)--or, as it's colloquially known, the $100 laptop. The $100 laptop sprang from the fertile, utopian mind of tech guru Nicholas Negroponte, who is the cofounder and chairman emeritus of the MIT Media Lab, a successful venture capitalist, and the author of Being Digital, the 1995 paean to the digital economy. The concept behind the project, which Negroponte unveiled at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, less than two years ago, is as simple as its name: give all children in the developing world laptop computers of their own. If we achieved that, he believes, we could bridge what's usually termed the "digital divide." The laptops would offer children everywhere the opportunity to benefit from the Internet and would enable them to work with and learn from each other in new ways. OLPC, the nonprofit organization that Negroponte set up to manage the project, has taken responsibility for designing the computer and engaging an outside manufacturer to produce it. But the nonprofit is not going to buy the computers. That, at least for now, is the responsibility of governments, and Negroponte has said that the $100 laptop will not go into production until he has firm commitments from governments to buy at least five million units. Would (or should) any government be willing to lay out the cash? Negroponte answers that question with characteristic bluntness. "Look at the math: even the poorest country spends about $200 per year per child. We've estimated what a connected, unlimited-Internet-access $100 laptop will cost to own and run: $30 per year. That has got to be the very best investment you can make. Period." Despite the appeal of this vision, Negroponte's project has attracted skepticism as well as support. In part, that's because of Negroponte himself, whose self-assured optimism makes him a permanent lightning rod. More than that, though, OLPC is effectively trying to do two dramatic things at the same time. It's trying to lower the cost of computing to the point where it's accessible to the world's poor--which is to say, to most of the world's population. And it's trying to succeed with a new model of philanthropy, albeit one that harks back to Carnegie--blending private, nonprofit, and governmental interests to create a project of vast scale and scope on a budget that is, even by philanthropic standards, surprisingly small. Of course, this will only work if OLPC can deliver on its promise, and the problem is that at this moment you cannot buy anything resembling a computer, much less a portable one, for a hundred dollars. OLPC had to design and build an entirely new kind of laptop from scratch--one that would endure rough handling, function even in the absence of a steady power supply, and allow easy networking and Internet access, and whose readable if small screen would use startlingly inexpensive technology. Not surprisingly, critics doubted that it was possible. Yet in the past year, Negroponte has lined up an impressive array of partners to furnish the innards of the computer, including AMD and Red Hat, while Quanta, the Taiwanese manufacturer that currently makes around a third of the world's laptops, is on board to manufacture the machines.
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Part III: Philanthropy's New Prototype
11/15/2006
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comments
gabrielg01 on 11/13/2006 at 12:38 AM
313
http://www.palm.com/us/products/handhelds/z22/
...and we are talking about a commercial product, which is supposed to generate profits. That means that if you were to sell this PDA at philantropy prices it would cost much, much less...perhaps $50? Then you could use the $50 difference to attach a larger screen and keyboard to turn it more into a laptop format. It could run simple programs, and it could read ebooks. There you have it.
SVE on 11/14/2006 at 2:02 AM
44
As many firms have sadly found out in the past, a particular price point is never a good enough reason or unique enough value proposition for customers to adopt a whole new architecture. Low price is an unsustainable advantage. The incumbents can eventually match any price point with their existing design approaches. It just takes time and steady improvement.
To justify any new type of laptop, you have to do something that the incumbents cannot match, or be in a space that they are vacating. But here, the incumbents are reducing their prices, adding wireless communications, and improving their power consumptions. $100 price is not some big new revolution.
mattharper on 11/14/2006 at 4:35 PM
1
gabrielg01 on 11/14/2006 at 11:44 PM
313
I think this "laptop" is in fact just a reinvention of the wheel, a reinvention of the PDA in fact: small screen, low power chipset, flash memory, SD card slot etc. The only real difference is the physical format of the device. It's a bit of an exaggeration to call this a laptop. But call it what you want.
And 2 more things:
1) if you want to help the 3rd world with real laptops, you can just gather up the old laptops for free, refurbish them, and send them overseas. There is a well established precedent for this with cell phones. You can donate your old cell phone to foundations, and they will refurbish it, and send it to Africa. I believe this will be done with laptops too.
2) People in extremely poor or devastated areas have other, more urgent priorities: like clean water, food, basic medication, physical security from bandits or marauding militias. When you're starving, and your village is hit by cholera you won't care for a laptop. In fact a radio or a cell phone is a million times more useful, because you can use it to ask for help.
ssargent on 11/26/2006 at 2:30 AM
11
OLD COMPUTERS WILL NOT WORK. THESE LAPTOPS ARE MADE SO THEY ARE HARD TO BREAK. PEOPLE IN THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES ARE NOT USE TO WORKING WITH LAPTOPS OR THEIR FRAGILITY AND DO NOT HAVE THE MONEY TO GET A NEW ONE IF IT BREAKS. PDA'S AND CELL PHONES CAN SUFFER FROM THIS SAME PROBLEM.
ALSO, Read the part about how it can be powered mechanically (reinventing the power wheel). Which is another distinction between this laptop and cellphones, pda's, and refurbished laptops.
Finally, you bring ridiculous things like choleral outbreaks. You really think that the western world will ever commit to feeding all the hungry and curing all the sick in the world. maybe their better off getting a laptop and reading about sanitation techniques and methods of building water filters from simple materials to prevent outbreaks instead of just waiting for western countries to drop medicine on them.
As for militias, maybe they could download some instructions on explosive making off the internet to defend themselves (I'm being facetious). I'm not sure that all poor people are inherently in physical danger so I'm not sure why militias are the deal breaker on this one.
As for food, lots of food production knowledge can be procured online or distributed on a disc with the laptops. You clearly favor dependency over giving people the information to help themselves. I'm not saying we can't give them food or medicine or anything else in addition to laptops. Mostly it seems like you are engaging in shallow criticism in your search for something to say.
If you really think this is such a terrible idea maybe you should design a better laptop homie. Not saying this is the greatest thing ever or that it's going to solve all the world's problems, but it sure isn't a bad idea.
DMercer on 12/14/2006 at 11:25 AM
1
"Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime."
Give them medicines, food, etc., and you'll make them dependent upon you for them, and resentful of you when it's not available.
Give them access to education, teach them, and you give them something they can call their own for generations to come.
plasticdoc on 11/14/2006 at 12:51 AM
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grausc01 on 11/15/2006 at 9:44 AM
12
pelo8280 on 12/31/2006 at 9:53 AM
1
As for the mp3 player, I don't know about $50, but you might be interested in iPod Linux: http://ipodlinux.org/
anonymous on 11/22/2006 at 12:10 PM
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clboling on 01/02/2007 at 12:13 PM
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Viswakarma on 01/04/2007 at 3:56 AM
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rayalu on 01/06/2007 at 4:39 AM
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sitamraju on 01/07/2007 at 2:04 AM
1