Tech Waves

One Laptop Per Child’s XO is one of a few simple, rugged laptops soon to appear on the market. I hope they’ll appear, that is. So far, only prototypes have been built. The AMD-chipped XO might get killed off by Intel who also has a small, tough school-ready laptop, the Classmate PC. In a previous post, I argued against laptops in schools because currently-available laptops are just too delicate and complicated, with mercurial wi-fi capabilities and a very high price-tag. And for the majority of school uses, they are like using an elephant gun to hunt mice; they’re overkill. Desktops should be used for heavy-duty computing such as video editing, etc., and supervised labs are still the best place to get that stuff done. But either the XO or the Classmate PC seem to me to offer the promise of a cheap and simple laptop built to withstand the rigors of the schoolhouse.

There is great debate currently about the success that OLPC and Intel will have in implementing their laptops by the millions in schools in the developing world. Many argue that most of these countries should spend their limited funds on rural health programs, AIDS and malaria prevention, etc., rather than on “laptops” for school children. The idea sounds nearly-preposterous to me too, when I think too hard about it. I mean, shouldn’t laptops be provided to the developing worlds’ doctors, engineers and teachers first? Hmmm… But still, I can’t help but admire the vision of OLPC. Founder Nicholas Negroponte does argue that in many of these countries, a large percentage of kids never get the opportunity to go to school, so providing them with a laptop is in a sense giving them a school in a box, which is far better than nothing. That does make sense to me.

But the OLPC program, if it’s competitor Intel doesn’t do it in first, will likely only have a chance of success in semi-poor countries like Brazil and Thailand, with some basic infrastructure, and not so much in Niger or Nicaragua, with little. You’d think booming, technology-loving India would embrace something like OLPC, but last year they decided to spend their education money on other things, like books, paper and pencils — so far the only tools proven to actually increase student achievement. But I digress, again.

Only by selling the XO to developing nations in HUGE quantities can the endeavor be sustainable and the price come down to anywhere near affordable, which has been targeted at $100.00 per XO (still a lot for a poor country to spend). If not enough nations decide to buy the machines by the millions, the XO will never be affordable, to anyone: the prototype will never lead to mass production. And that would be a shame, because even though I am supportive although skeptical that the XO will prove a success in achieving it’s original goal in the near future, the XO and Classmate PC seem to be ideal school laptops for the DEVELOP-ED worlds’ schools, today. They are simple and rugged, and would be inexpensive if enough schools in, say, North America and Europe would commit to purchasing them.

Now I’m sure someone could politically correct me and say “Steve, you should be ashamed of yourself for suggesting essentially that the Developed world should “steal” these laptops from the Developing world,” but I’m not saying that. Though I hope OLPC is a success, I’m skeptical that the price per XO can come down enough to make it’s original objective possible. So instead of letting what I think is probably a great technology fade away, perhaps schools in the DEVELOP-ED world, who are also in need of this type of laptop, can provide OLPC with enough business so that somewhere down the road, it may have a better chance of reaching it’s original goal of large-scale implementation in the DEVELOP-ING world.

For more on OLPC, the XO and Intel’s Classmate, check out this segment from CBS’s 60 Minutes, which aired on May 20, 2007. It makes me want to cheer Negroponte and his dream of OLPC, and hiss at Intel and that greedy-seeming b$*&@!d, but who knows the real truth behind it all.