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TR: What was the purpose of the Give 1 Get 1 program?
WB: Our purpose was twofold: one was to enable us to jump-start laptop programs in places that couldn't afford to start them themselves. So we're trying to jump-start Haiti, Rwanda, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Cambodia.
The second point is that we want to broaden the base of participation. There are a lot of people who want to participate in this program, who want to be part of this global-learning movement. So the number of people who are engaged in our mission has increased dramatically over the last month. We're finding that the community is really jumping in in ways that are beyond our expectations. So for example, now we've got 40 volunteers manning a phone bank, around the world.
TR: It's customer support?
WB: It is customer support. But it's customer support from the community instead of from us. Part of the reason we can make the laptop inexpensive is that we're not building those kinds of things into the cost structure. We're cutting all those corners. And the way that we can cut them is to design this so that people can have local ownership of the problem. And so, for example, quite literally--you can go to YouTube and see this in action--a nine-year-old can replace the motherboard on the laptop.
When the backlight in my Lenovo laptop dies, I have to send it back for factory repair, and they replace the whole display. And if it wasn't done through warranty--and the warranty costs me more than one of our laptops--I'd probably toss the laptop and buy a new one, because it wouldn't be worth it. If the backlight dies on our laptop, it is ten screws and a two-dollar part. And not only is it ten screws and a two-dollar part--that a nine-year-old can do the field repair on--but even without the backlight, the laptop still works.
TR: With natural illumination?
WB: Yeah. And that broken display that someone's going to toss in a landfill somewhere--the one I have from Lenovo has mercury in it. The one that we make doesn't. So we've thought about this stuff. This is not a hack. It's not an academic exercise. It's serious stuff, and it's stuff that we're doing better than anybody else right now. And we hope that the rest of the world learns from what we're doing and does better than us. But right now they aren't. But they will. And that's part of the plan.
TR: Does that mean you plan to license your technology to other manufacturers?
WB: That's something we've been struggling with. We need an economist to help us figure this one out. It's not clear to me that we wouldn't be better serving kids to make everything we've done be available to anybody for any purpose. And that might get more laptops to more kids faster.
Charles Kane thinks industry partnerships will boost the laptop's marketability.
The philanthropic effort dubbed the $100 Laptop has not met its grand initial goals. But its first deployment, in Peru, may turn skeptics into believers.
The cofounder of MIT's Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte, wants to make $100 laptops available to poor children throughout the world. The next few months will be critical in determining whether the One Laptop per Child project succeeds.
Education is the key for everything
The one laptop project is great. I hope I can donate English training software, currently I am working on a one million computers for one million children of western China project. Any thing I make that benefits the world is free. Intel needs more corporate social responsibility training at the highest levels, directors and share holders.
The OLPC program just suffered another major set back here in Brazil. Intel's local partner was able to offer educational laptops as low as US$ 300,00 to the federal educational program. What's really wrong in this OLPC is the Betamax marketing strategy they're failing to implement. This won't be a world standard for anything, unless they allow it to be something good for the world. No matter what. Poor business men in Africa need laptops as much as sailors in Amazonia. Why digital educate only the children? Let people build the laptop paying a small royalty. And wait for the upgrades.
Mr. Bender mentions, “We need an economist to help us figure this one out.”
Several such experts on the economics of the poor on the OLPC board may help. One such resource could be 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus (microloans). His new book out on social business, “Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism” was recently featured on public TV.
See the Charlie Rose PBS interview: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1986204406774837194
"Technology will solve problems" = Utopian thinking
For about a century now, naive 1st world idealists have been trying to help 3rd world countries by bringing them technology.
The thinking always went along the lines of "If we can only bring them some 'railways', many of their problems will be solved, and then they will be able to take care of themselves."
As time has gone by, the 'railways' in this scheme have been changed to 'telephone lines', 'highways', 'schools', 'hospitals'...and lately to the 'Internet', 'cell phones'...and now to 'laptops'.
What people miss is this: most Americans in the 1950s had a much better quality of life, than most 3rd worlders have today. And the America of the '50s had a lot less technology than the 3rd world has today.
The idealists are missing the 'cause and effect' connection here. It is not the technology that makes a society advanced. It is its values. The technology development is only the result, or the effect, of good civilizational values.
And if you put this in reverse: you can deliver a lot of technology to a bantustan...it will still remain a bantustan.
OLPC should show us the vision
The most important point of the OLPC project should be to provide the world with a method of learning using exclusively XO computers. Although the word "$100 laptop" has some impact to our computer industry, the cost itself is a secondary issue. Now the time for Prof. Seymour Papert and his successors to show their vision to push OLPC up to the next stage.
Intel do themselves no favours
by trying to be too clever legally - the 'sales people aren't company officers defence' is too shabby for words.
Whatever your views on the OLPC one cannot question the organisations motivation and vision; more than can be said of the likes of Intel and others involved in spoiling manoeuvres.
I have work with communication development and served as president of Panaftel. I would like to discuss method and criterion for selecting countries to participate in the one laptop for child. A country Liberia in its progressive development would welcome this project one lap top.Please contact me for more input and contact information.
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Wildgorilla
4 Comments
N. Negroponte & OLPC team are the greatest educators in history
N. Negroponte and his OLPC team will go down in history as the greatest educators of all time. My suggestion to the OLPC is to get out of the computer business and run it as an educational organization managing licenses, because the creative part of the OLPC is almost done: creating a new market and profit center that giant corporations can fight over, drop prices, & improve the OLPC using the country model OLPC has created.
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gabrielg01
450 Comments
Re: N. Negroponte & OLPC team are the greatest educators in history
..."the greatest educators of all time"...aren't you exaggerating a little bit? :))
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