Re: One Laptop Per Child: What Went Wrong

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Michael Slavitch" <slavitch () gmail com>
Date: January 22, 2009 9:51:44 AM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] One Laptop Per Child: What Went Wrong
Reply-To: slavitch () gmail com

Another thing that went wrong was that Nicholas Negropante completely  
ignored the rise of the mobile phone in the Third World. In the West  
the primary communications device is the computer.  In polyglot  
countries with low literacy the primary communications device is a  
phone.  In Africa trading is done by voice pencil and paper or chalk  
and tablet. As a consequence so is learning. Culturally it will be  
easier to augment low cost telephones to meet their needs rather than  
invent new paradigms, as such devices will have high economies of scale.

The downside of this approach is that it does not allow for  
showboating.  Nobody got on the cover of Wired for making something  
"slightly cheaper", as Douglas Adams once put it.

Full disclosure: I work for a smartphone manufacturer.

Michael Slavitch

--
Michael Slavitch
Ottawa Ontario Canada

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>

Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 09:20:27
To: ip<ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: [IP] One Laptop Per Child: What Went Wrong




Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: January 21, 2009 5:57:53 PM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] One Laptop Per Child: What Went Wrong

One Laptop Per Child: What Went Wrong
January 19th, 2009
by Jon Evans
<http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2009/01/19/one-laptop-per-child-what-went-wrong/
>
In January 2005, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland,
Nicholas Negroponte announced the One Laptop Per Child project, with
the stated goal of giving every poor child in the world a “rugged, low-
cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed
for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning.”

Last week OLPC laid off half of its staff. Sales of its XO Laptop to
developing nations are far, far below initial projections in the
millions; in the third quarter of 2008 it shipped a mere 130,000
units, a trivial 2.3% of the world’s low-cost, small-screen “netbook”
laptops. Meanwhile, the income from their 2008 “Give One Get One Free”
drive dropped 93% from 2007. What went wrong? Any number of things,
including bad timing, production delays, poor management, and superior
competition. But if you ask me – and I feel bad writing this, given
all the hard work and good intentions that went into One Laptop Per
Child – its fundamental problems are twofold:

        • It was a bad idea to begin with.
        • The XO laptop is a piece of crap.
The best thing about the XO is its case: the pebbled exterior, built-
in handle, and dust/water resistance (which I didn’t test) are stylish
and useful. The problems begin when you open it up. It’s slow. On
occasion the cursor freezes or submarines. The screen and keyboard are
tiny even for a netbook. Even its vaunted connectivity is badly
flawed: my XO completely failed to connect to encrypted Wi-Fi networks
that worked with both my other laptops. When you do connect, its Web
browser fails to show paragraph breaks on Wikipedia pages, making the
world’s greatest collection of free information hard to read – on a
laptop allegedly designed for education!

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