One Laptop Per Child: Charity, Prosperity, & Capitalism In The Developing World

First Thoughts

As the XO-1 is still in beta production and beta field testing, there are still many questions left to answer; we're looking right now at what can be, not what will be. At the forefront of questions are the intangibles, such as if the educational theory behind the OLPC organization is sound and these laptops will make as much of a difference as the organization believes it will. We're optimists and believe from our own experiences that the laptops will help out, but we also don't hold PhD's in education, so time will tell.

Education still remains as one of the greatest factors in creating and ensuring prosperity, and expanding it is one of the best ways to improve a developing country. At the very least the OLPC organization will succeed in making information more available; the deciding factor will be how it's used to improve education.

On a more technical note, there are still some issues we've seen with the XO-1 and its surrounding infrastructure that need to be worked out. The first XO-1's will likely be going to nations with some of the required infrastructure to use them, so it's not power that worries as much as it is internet access, which is especially sporadic in Africa. Full utilization of the XO-1 will require regular internet access, and this isn't something the OLPC organization has strongly focused on addressing. We'd expect many initial sites to be using either satellite or telephone connectivity.

We'd also like to reiterate our concerns about the software we're seeing at this time. On paper the software is great, but it's hard to translate that promise into the real world when the demonstrations we're looking at aren't showcasing the full software suite and there's so little time left. The hardware on the other hand is quite impressive on paper, and the field test results we've seen back that up. The only catch for the hardware will be getting the price of the unit down to the $100 goal from the current $175.

Last but not least, there are also practical issues of abuse with the XO-1 that bear mentioning. It was widely reported last month as offbeat humor that some of the XO-1 units being field tested were being used for browsing pornographic material, to which the OLPC organization has decided to include filtering on the shipping models. This still leaves open other concerns such as spamming and scamming, though the number of primary school students capable of and interested in such feats would naturally be low. Instead the issue will be adults who get their hands on the laptops, something the unique green design is supposed to deter through shaming since it would imply the laptop was stolen from a child.

Shifting away from the OLPC initiative for a moment, this represents the emergence of a new market that all sides believe is ripe for development. For the CPU industry, this may be a new front in the battle between Intel and AMD, vying for the new bottom end of the market along with the traditional top end. Although AMD is in the better initial position, Intel is plenty capable as we've seen in shifting resources toward solving new problems, so they are by no means out of the picture. For Intel this would merely be icing on the cake, given their current control of the processor market; for AMD the future success for the company is at least partially dependent on rapid growth here.

As for the success of the OLPC initiative and the XO-1, with production starting later this year we should have an idea soon of how much of an impact the initiative will really have. There is precedent for great change, and access to technology can be a catalyst. Time will tell if OLPC can make that happen for the developing countries.