

The Tragedy of One Laptop Per Child - cwan
http://www.slashgear.com/the-tragedy-of-one-laptop-per-child-3067199/

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martincmartin
I think the biggest contribution of OLPC was to scare both hardware makers and
Microsoft into creating netbooks. We wouldn't have netbooks today without
OLPC. No one wanted to sell low end laptops because they wanted to maintain
profit margins.

Perhaps OLPC will goad others into making great tablet PCs as well.

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cema
An interesting take. I do not remember it this way, however. Any links,
papers, etc, with supporting evidence?

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nostrademons
I remember it that way. When the OLPC was first announced in 2005, a "cheap"
laptop was $799-999, and a decent one was about $1600. Now an average laptop
(as long as it's not a Mac) is around $500, with cheap netbooks in the $300
range.

Citations:

<http://blogs.computerworld.com/what_was_the_first_netbook>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netbook>

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NathanKP
If you are trying to say that the OLPC was what drove down laptop prices I
would have to disagree. The OLPC was made possible by the same forces that
drove down other laptop prices: cheaper electronics parts.

OLPC may have had a slight effect, but the larger cause was the natural
development of computing technology. As electronics advance prices drop at a
fairly predictable rate. What cost $100 this year is probably going to cost
$50 next year, and $25 the year after that.

That is the real reason why laptops have gotten so cheap, not because of
anything the OLPC foundation has done.

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nostrademons
So, there's both a proximate and an ultimate cause. The ultimate cause of
cheaper laptops is cheaper laptop parts. They wouldn't even be possible if the
parts couldn't be had for less than the sale price.

But until somebody in the industry breaks from the pack and says "I'm going to
offer this cheaply, damn the profits", all that cost savings accrues in
profits to the OEMs. That maverick could be an upstart startup intent on
market share with nothing to lose. Or it could be a nonprofit director on a
mission to save the 3rd world.

In this case, the OLPC was the catalyst. The technology existed beforehand,
and most people _knew_ the technology existed. But Nicholas Negroponte was the
first one to say "It can be done, therefore let's do it."

The same structure exists in lots of other industries. Why is broadband 10x
faster in Japan than here (citation:
[http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/Images/commentarynews/bro...](http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/Images/commentarynews/broadbandspeedchart.jpg))?
They have the same technology. But the telecom industry in the U.S. is a
duopoly between Comcast and Verizon (with a few bit players), and they have an
incentive to dribble out only enough in speed increases to stay ahead of their
competitor.

Perfectly competitive markets exist only in an economics textbook. In the real
world, things don't happen until somebody says "We're going to _make_ it
happen."

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sethg
_But until somebody in the industry breaks from the pack and says "I'm going
to offer this cheaply, damn the profits", all that cost savings accrues in
profits to the OEMs._

...or the manufacturers concentrate on bringing the features of $1500 laptops
into the next generation of $1000 laptops, instead of bringing the features of
$1000 laptops into a new generation of $750 laptops.

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nicpottier
I think it is a bit premature to call it a failure. I think there is far too
much focus on the hardware going on. The fact is that OLPC is actually doing
some pretty good work. Yes, the hardware is more expensive than they had
hoped, but it is still really cheap, and the simplified UI does seem to work
pretty well.

Their latest deployment is in Rwanda, and although I will fully admit that I
was chagrined to see OLPC still selling, once I watched some of the videos and
did some reading it was clear that they are actually doing some real good.

See:
[http://www.informationweek.com/video/infrastructure/36557810...](http://www.informationweek.com/video/infrastructure/3655781001;jsessionid=EZDAWPSXTDX1VQE1GHPSKH4ATMY32JVN)

There is something to be said for having a bright green laptop that isn't
terribly useful for adults and doesn't run a standard OS. It makes them less
of a target for theft or resale in poorer countries and keeps them in the
hands of the people that need them, the students.

I think a lot of good is yet to come from OLPC, it is just taking a lot longer
than they expected. I do however fully agree that the touchscreen vision is a
joke.

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rbanffy
I really hate to see people bashing the OLPC for the wrong reasons. The
project has a lot of flaws and a good couple lose ends, but, all in all, it is
a great idea that has faced huge resistance from the very governments that
should embrace it. I also suspect some governments active sabotage it because
such a device allowing communication and free access to information would
weaken their grip on local populations.

You really don't need the courseware, at least not at the start. All you
really need to start is the regular textbooks transcribed as e-books. The kid
can then carry and access all their books, current and future, in one compact
volume, breaking any limitation on the kid's reading. Since OLPSs have network
connections, governments (and educational associations) can also spend some
money translating relevant topics from wikipedia, creating better localized
versions. Classroom activities can also be developed on top of the localized
software that already ships with them.

It's also lovely to suppose that local people cannot fix the machine because
"this intended market is illiterate". Living in a third world country, I am
deeply offended. This is, however, a failure of the OLPC plan. The OLPC should
also have been directed towards US schools in order to gain momentum, perhaps
even before attempting to go after the third world.

It's also foolish to overpromise impossible hardware. XO-2 and XO-3 are
ludicrous. XO-1.75 is great, however. I love the idea of Windows-proofing it
by running on ARM. I fail to see the educational value of running MS Ofice.

But it's absolutely unfair to expect the OLPC folks to develop courseware for
the machine beyond the outstanding materials already there.

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GiraffeNecktie
Huh? In what way is this a "tragedy"? Lack of clean water and mosquito nets is
a tragedy. The 2004 tsunami was a tragedy. I don't know if the OLPC is a
worthy goal or not but I'm quite sure it's not a tragedy that children don't
have access to computers and it's not a tragedy that someone is trying to make
them available.

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JabavuAdams
In terms of mis-spent resources: i.e. opportunity costs. If the OLPC project
is in fact a failure, consider how many mosquito nets could have been bought
with the funds.*

* Yes, I know people / companies would not have donated the same amount of $ for a non-sexy cause.

~~~
notauser
It seems more efficient to try and raise economic activity to the point where
foreign aid is no longer required; the OLPC was an attempt to do this through
jump starting technology education.

The areas for which it was intended did not need mosquito nets - places such
as rural Mexico. These places have power and running water.

While saving lives is a worthwhile goal, saving them just so they can carry on
being perpetually dependent on foreign aid seems to be pretty unfair on both
the nations giving aid and the nations receiving it.

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patrickgzill
There is good that will come from OLPC even if OLPC as an organization were to
vanish tomorrow.

PixelQi.com (spinoff from former CTO of OLPC) has developed a high-resolution
LCD technology that will compete with e-Ink; since it uses mainstream LCD
manufacturing the economies of scale will mean it will be much cheaper to
produce an 11" e-reader.

Assuming PixelQI succeeds, this means even more e-readers for less money, and
and an increase in whatever you perceive the benefits of e-readers to be (such
as less paper waste, or better use of time).

The Sugar project <http://www.sugarlabs.org/> is the software side of OLPC,
able to be run from USB sticks on any old PC you have lying around; a P3-700
or higher is still pretty snappy. I know of several test implementations using
it, for real, in schools (there are still bugs to work out until it can be
deployed widely).

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ja27
Neat hardware progress aside, has OLPC been a success in actually educating
the target kids? Just putting laptops in hands doesn't automatically educate
them. Here in the U.S., there are plenty of schools with computer labs,
computers in classrooms, or even, yes, one laptop per child.

Based all my teacher and parent friends, all the increased access to computers
here hasn't really improved education much. And we're buying expensive
commercial educational software, not just Sugar or gCompris.

Maybe the time and money is better spent funding CC / public domain textbooks?
That and Sugar are what I'm more interested in supporting.

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qjz
To paraphrase you, just putting books in hands doesn't automatically educate
them, either. There have been, and always will be, challenges in education.
But for those who are willing and able to make good use of the resources
available to them, computers and the Internet are two very powerful resources.

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mattm
Funny how people with the biggest dreams end up taking the most flack.

OLPC was a big ambition and, like most new initiatives, was probably bound to
fail initially. However, he had an idea and he did it! The great success is
that future initiatives will have the opportunity to learn and improve upon
it.

Are there other things that need fixing around the world? Yes, but the
argument that we cannot do anything grand until every single primitive human
need is solved is bunk. Innovation does not need to wait for a utopia.

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teeja
"What’s the courseware and curriculum?"

And if you don't ask this question first, your well-intended project to 'gift
the poor' becomes 'abetting the criminals'. Examples: FM. Television.
_Someone_ will fill the vacuum.

I maintain that there's a huge, untapped market for ed. software. Wikipedia is
a powerful clue ... and, now, a free resource. But education's a lot more than
shoveling data.

