The Charisma Machine: The life, death, and legacy of One Laptop per Child(morganya.org)
morganya.org
The Charisma Machine: The life, death, and legacy of One Laptop per Child
https://morganya.org/charisma.html
243 comments
> Overall, my impression was of a project whose participants treated it as a vehicle for promoting their personal "pet" projects
I'm so glad to see others speaking out about this. I'm 100% in agreement that's what "saviour" projects like MIT Asia, OLPC have all ended up being.
> the Pixel Qi display (monochrome mode was poorly utilized by software)
I've said this before about the Pixel Qi panel in the XO-1. I'm not attempting to be negative, but I actually work in the display industry and found the PixelQi display on the OLPC-XO-1 to be unusable. My perception of the display was one with very low quality color with backlight; and terrible viewing angle and unreadable contrast levels in bright sunlight. It also had low resolution. The XO-1 display I had access to had lots of pixel defects. If I am not mistaken (as I do not know actual pricing that Quanta got for the PixelQi displays) they were more expensive than LCDs and required additional parts that made managing their supply chain overall difficult. Most experts in my industry that I talked to expressed the opinion that it was a reality-distortion field type charismatic executive (ML Jepsen) who managed to convince people at OLPC to try that idea. It was funded by UN and money from developing countries budgets who were excited by the promise of being able to educate their masses. Sadly it looks as if those countries and their budget expenditures were taken for a ride by Nicholas Negroponte and his gang, rather than benefiting from a genuinely merit based idea.
I'm so glad to see others speaking out about this. I'm 100% in agreement that's what "saviour" projects like MIT Asia, OLPC have all ended up being.
> the Pixel Qi display (monochrome mode was poorly utilized by software)
I've said this before about the Pixel Qi panel in the XO-1. I'm not attempting to be negative, but I actually work in the display industry and found the PixelQi display on the OLPC-XO-1 to be unusable. My perception of the display was one with very low quality color with backlight; and terrible viewing angle and unreadable contrast levels in bright sunlight. It also had low resolution. The XO-1 display I had access to had lots of pixel defects. If I am not mistaken (as I do not know actual pricing that Quanta got for the PixelQi displays) they were more expensive than LCDs and required additional parts that made managing their supply chain overall difficult. Most experts in my industry that I talked to expressed the opinion that it was a reality-distortion field type charismatic executive (ML Jepsen) who managed to convince people at OLPC to try that idea. It was funded by UN and money from developing countries budgets who were excited by the promise of being able to educate their masses. Sadly it looks as if those countries and their budget expenditures were taken for a ride by Nicholas Negroponte and his gang, rather than benefiting from a genuinely merit based idea.
Your assessment of the properties of the display specifically seem to go counter what I perceived as a convincing argument by the OLPC guy brought up in a TED talk at the time, namely, that the two biggest cost factors of a new laptop are marketing and the display unit. He then argued that the project can largely just do away with marketing altogether (plausible) and went on to say that even displays that come out of production with a single pixel error have a massively reduced price tag. From that I concluded that the project could reasonably build cheap hardware if only they went with no advertising and run-of-the-mill display units that narrowly failed quality checks.
Nothing in that talk hinted at the possibility that instead of opting for a established and proven technology like LCD they'd choose to go with RDF (reality distortion field) displays instead.
I feel being lied to.
Nothing in that talk hinted at the possibility that instead of opting for a established and proven technology like LCD they'd choose to go with RDF (reality distortion field) displays instead.
I feel being lied to.
> I feel being lied to.
I notice this kind of response anytime I say something that goes against the faith of the OLPC believers.
If you feel something I said is factually inaccurate, then please point it out specifically.
Otherwise, I believe all my points have been proven out. Quite simply, we can all observe the fact that nobody is using a Pixel Qi display or any technology related to it. If your speaker's claims about "Nothing in that talk hinted at the possibility that instead of opting for a established and proven technology like LCD they'd choose to go with RDF (reality distortion field) displays instead." were true, then I'd have been proven wrong and the display industry today would be worshiping at the feet of Jepsen.
I notice this kind of response anytime I say something that goes against the faith of the OLPC believers.
If you feel something I said is factually inaccurate, then please point it out specifically.
Otherwise, I believe all my points have been proven out. Quite simply, we can all observe the fact that nobody is using a Pixel Qi display or any technology related to it. If your speaker's claims about "Nothing in that talk hinted at the possibility that instead of opting for a established and proven technology like LCD they'd choose to go with RDF (reality distortion field) displays instead." were true, then I'd have been proven wrong and the display industry today would be worshiping at the feet of Jepsen.
He meant he was being lied to by OLPC, not by you.
One Display Unit Failing QA Per Child? There aren't that many failed displays in the world! Especially in the cost, size and energy budget of a hand crank computer.
> low resolution
Do you mean color resolution? The screen pixel resolution was 1200x900, which was unusually high both for a 7.5" screen, and for a 2007 laptop.
Do you mean color resolution? The screen pixel resolution was 1200x900, which was unusually high both for a 7.5" screen, and for a 2007 laptop.
> The screen pixel resolution was 1200x900, which was unusually high both for a 7.5" screen, and for a 2007 laptop.
RGB XGA was dominant by 2006 so I don't think that's accurate.
RGB XGA was dominant by 2006 so I don't think that's accurate.
Don't think which part is accurate? 1200x900 has 28% more pixels than XGA, right? (And that XGA was often on a 14" screen instead of a 7.5" screen.)
I think this is another effect of the reality distortion field.
XO-1's resolution was 692×520 (1/3 of 1200×900 which is the black&white resolution). Apples to apples means RGB XGA vs 692x520 bayer or whatever layout Jepsen claimed was better than industry standard.
There were many XGA 7" and 6" panels in 2006 from Panasonic, Sharp and others.
XO-1's resolution was 692×520 (1/3 of 1200×900 which is the black&white resolution). Apples to apples means RGB XGA vs 692x520 bayer or whatever layout Jepsen claimed was better than industry standard.
There were many XGA 7" and 6" panels in 2006 from Panasonic, Sharp and others.
Why do all of the pages I’m finding with a quick search say it’s 1200x900? Some wires must be crossed somewhere or some massive limitation must exist for your 1/3rd res to be correct, that I’m missing
It's 1200x900 subpixels. In transmissive (color) mode, this was effectively 600x450, since it took a full 2x2 elements to display a color (it used a Bayer-style RGBG matrix, iirc).
I think the OLPC software still treated the display as 1200x900, but this meant that there were visible color artifacts on any sort of fine detail, and color rendition was pretty awful.
I think the OLPC software still treated the display as 1200x900, but this meant that there were visible color artifacts on any sort of fine detail, and color rendition was pretty awful.
> it’s 1200x900? Some wires must be crossed somewhere
1200x900 in XO-1 is tft pixels not RGB pixels like XGA. In the simplest 1d layout, a 1x1 resolution RGB display is actually 1x3 tft pixels. That's why I'm saying apples to apples comparison.
1200x900 in XO-1 is tft pixels not RGB pixels like XGA. In the simplest 1d layout, a 1x1 resolution RGB display is actually 1x3 tft pixels. That's why I'm saying apples to apples comparison.
I have an XO-1 in my closet and the display was really the only thing I loved about that laptop. I wish I had the knowledge to create a display driver for it to hook it up to a raspberry pi that could make a fun little netbook.
A display that you could actually read outdoors was super useful for me. I used the XO-1 for a few months as my actual laptop after my macbook died and I bought a macbook pro. Those were literally unusable outdoors and for a while I would carry the XO-1 around with me instead of my laptop just because I could actually use it. Honestly if they keyboard had not been complete crap I might have never replaced my macbook.
Even today my laptops 500 nit display is only usable outdoors at 100% screen brightness and destroys my battery life.
A display that you could actually read outdoors was super useful for me. I used the XO-1 for a few months as my actual laptop after my macbook died and I bought a macbook pro. Those were literally unusable outdoors and for a while I would carry the XO-1 around with me instead of my laptop just because I could actually use it. Honestly if they keyboard had not been complete crap I might have never replaced my macbook.
Even today my laptops 500 nit display is only usable outdoors at 100% screen brightness and destroys my battery life.
Well Pixel Qi seemed like a magical display at the time. I wonder if given a few more revisions it could have been more competitive? It always felt like a shame that we lost the option of having this display.
I have seen really cool stuff like Mirasol and CED displays come and go and it just sucks that we have seen so many nifty things never really make it. I am holding out hope for CLEARink ePaper and playNitride microLED.
I have seen really cool stuff like Mirasol and CED displays come and go and it just sucks that we have seen so many nifty things never really make it. I am holding out hope for CLEARink ePaper and playNitride microLED.
> Well Pixel Qi seemed like a magical display at the time.
Not to me. I had the chance to carefully look at an OLPC XO-1. It was terrible even by the lowest standards of the industry at the time.
> I wonder if given a few more revisions it could have been more competitive?
This is like saying Theranos' drop of blood test could laso have become successful if we just gave the founders a few more billion and a few more decades.
> I have seen really cool stuff like Mirasol
Yes, it is sad that we still can't make interferometric displays work reliably. Some day though. Some day. I still have some hope.
Not to me. I had the chance to carefully look at an OLPC XO-1. It was terrible even by the lowest standards of the industry at the time.
> I wonder if given a few more revisions it could have been more competitive?
This is like saying Theranos' drop of blood test could laso have become successful if we just gave the founders a few more billion and a few more decades.
> I have seen really cool stuff like Mirasol
Yes, it is sad that we still can't make interferometric displays work reliably. Some day though. Some day. I still have some hope.
>reality-distortion field type charismatic executive
This sounds like something you would read in a SCP article, but is the perfect description for those kind of leaders
This sounds like something you would read in a SCP article, but is the perfect description for those kind of leaders
I'd say this is a fair assessment of the project. It came off as overambitious with a number of high-risk project management decisions made at the expensive of a minimum-viable initial product. And this was just looking at it from an engineering point of view, ignoring whether it did actually provide value over other options for educational spending in developing countries.
Funny enough it seems like the hype it generated was its main contribution, which led to the netbook product segment and ultimately Chromebooks. I'd say its spiritual descendent is the humble grades 7-12 school chromebook with much more conventional hardware and software choices. The killer app for school Chromebooks is the combination of Google Docs and whatever Google's classroom management software is, provided cheap to schools in a long-game move by Google to hook a future generation on their office suite. Ironically, despite the very agressive price points of sub-$200 Chromebooks, their current market is limited to the US and the wealthier Commonwealth nations.
Funny enough it seems like the hype it generated was its main contribution, which led to the netbook product segment and ultimately Chromebooks. I'd say its spiritual descendent is the humble grades 7-12 school chromebook with much more conventional hardware and software choices. The killer app for school Chromebooks is the combination of Google Docs and whatever Google's classroom management software is, provided cheap to schools in a long-game move by Google to hook a future generation on their office suite. Ironically, despite the very agressive price points of sub-$200 Chromebooks, their current market is limited to the US and the wealthier Commonwealth nations.
> Ironically, despite the very agressive price points of sub-$200 Chromebooks, their current market is limited to the US and the wealthier Commonwealth nations.
Most likely, Chromebooks are too dependent on the "cloud" to be useful in middle-income countries with comparatively flimsy Internet connectivity. A general-purpose x86 laptop will simply go a lot further there. (And if you put a lightweight OS on it, you will almost never be limited by performance for basic workloads, even on old hardware.)
Most likely, Chromebooks are too dependent on the "cloud" to be useful in middle-income countries with comparatively flimsy Internet connectivity. A general-purpose x86 laptop will simply go a lot further there. (And if you put a lightweight OS on it, you will almost never be limited by performance for basic workloads, even on old hardware.)
This. I'm in the military, so keenly interested in how much you can do without network. I have two XO-1 laptops and I was a Cr-48 test pilot (their label for their beta testers). I took the Cr-48 with me to Japan for Fukushima in 2011. ChromeOS was not all that useful. Why run ChromeOS when Xubuntu is available? Lubuntu? Pick your favorite lightweight Linux distro. After about a week I cried uncle and installed Xubuntu. Depending on network for the ability to type a document is non-sensical. If I recall, Google Docs didn't have offline mode yet, but due to that experience I have keenly attended to offline mode. It improves things, but it's not a panacea.
I don't think a laptop without network is ever going to be as awesome as one with network, but there's a lot of room on a laptop to do more than run AJAX applications in a browser (do they still talk about AJAX?) that offload all the smarts to a server-side app.
I don't think a laptop without network is ever going to be as awesome as one with network, but there's a lot of room on a laptop to do more than run AJAX applications in a browser (do they still talk about AJAX?) that offload all the smarts to a server-side app.
The CR48 was over a decade ago wasn't it? I was also a cr48 beta user and I recall being a teenager, which I have not been for a while. Comparing chromebooks today to the cr48 feels like comparing... idk, anything from 12 years ago to anything from today?
ChromeOS can now run Android apps and a full linux environment.
ChromeOS can now run Android apps and a full linux environment.
It's not fundamentally different though. I had the cr48 too and it was just a toy compared to a normal Linux distribution. It didn't displace my similarly underpowered Asus netbook, since the later ran Debian (I think that's the distro I ran back then).
Chromebooks of today are more powerful, which they need to be because web developers of today waste more memory and CPU cycles than ever. But fundamentally the concept and limitations of these "online first" devices are similar. The ability to run Android apps is certainly a step forward, but these things are really designed to lock people into Google's cloud products first and foremost.
Chromebooks of today are more powerful, which they need to be because web developers of today waste more memory and CPU cycles than ever. But fundamentally the concept and limitations of these "online first" devices are similar. The ability to run Android apps is certainly a step forward, but these things are really designed to lock people into Google's cloud products first and foremost.
It is different. I can run a Debian VM with GUI applications on any recent x86 Chromebook. It's pre-installed and supported.
It is so, so fundamentally different. It has been over a decade. Chromebooks today run debian. I've got a debian shell right now where I'm working with intellij.
> anything from 12 years ago to anything from today
IDK, I have access to pretty much any hardware I want (cloud GPUs, rack-mounted DGX-type systems, actual supercomputers, yada yada) and in the evening I still sit down to use old ThinkPads. My oldest daily driver is an X201 which actually predates the Cr-48. I don't find my brain working any faster using a 16" macbook. I do find during the workday that the massive amount of screen real estate of 2 XDR monitors is handy to quickly refer across 2 or 3 applications (e.g. scribing for a document under discussion in a video call, while looking at the references under discussion, and checking my calendar with a glance)
IDK, I have access to pretty much any hardware I want (cloud GPUs, rack-mounted DGX-type systems, actual supercomputers, yada yada) and in the evening I still sit down to use old ThinkPads. My oldest daily driver is an X201 which actually predates the Cr-48. I don't find my brain working any faster using a 16" macbook. I do find during the workday that the massive amount of screen real estate of 2 XDR monitors is handy to quickly refer across 2 or 3 applications (e.g. scribing for a document under discussion in a video call, while looking at the references under discussion, and checking my calendar with a glance)
What's different is that ChromeOS was an alpha OS 12 years ago and obviously is radically different today. One major difference is that you can run a full debian environment.
this debian environment is news to me. thanks for that.
> middle-income countries with comparatively flimsy Internet connectivity
Most middle-income countries I've been in had faster internet than the city I grew up in in Canada, and for about $10/mo.
Sure, internet goes down perhaps once or twice a month for half a day or so, but it often does in rural-adjacent parts of Canada too. And in middle-income countries unlimited or near-unlimited LTE phone data for tethering is also very cheap.
I never truly relied on wired internet in low-income countries, so I can't speak to those.
Unless you consider Thailand or Ukraine low income. Although my internet in Belarus and Albania was fast and reliable, and I guess those are low-income countries.
Most middle-income countries I've been in had faster internet than the city I grew up in in Canada, and for about $10/mo.
Sure, internet goes down perhaps once or twice a month for half a day or so, but it often does in rural-adjacent parts of Canada too. And in middle-income countries unlimited or near-unlimited LTE phone data for tethering is also very cheap.
I never truly relied on wired internet in low-income countries, so I can't speak to those.
Unless you consider Thailand or Ukraine low income. Although my internet in Belarus and Albania was fast and reliable, and I guess those are low-income countries.
I don't think you'd find many Chromebook deployments in rural Canada, either. Having an IoT thin-client device as your main computing platform turns "internet is down/dog slow" from a mild nuisance into a total showstopper for the day.
> I've been in had faster internet than the city I grew up in in Canada, and for about $10/mo.
> Sure, internet goes down perhaps once or twice a month for half a day or so, but it often does in rural-adjacent parts of Canada too
With 90% of the population less than 100 miles from the US border, what's their excuse for being worse than Albania?
> Sure, internet goes down perhaps once or twice a month for half a day or so, but it often does in rural-adjacent parts of Canada too
With 90% of the population less than 100 miles from the US border, what's their excuse for being worse than Albania?
A government-supported private telecommunications cartel. Also, in Nova Scotia, a government-supported private electricity monopoly.
> A government-supported private telecommunications cartel
What's the point? Why not simply have a fair market with competition?
> Also, in Nova Scotia, a government-supported private electricity monopoly.
I think Quebec has the same no? That's actually one instance where I was told the government was doing a good job. My colleague told me he pays something like 0.05$ per Kw/h. That's insanely cheap. I assume Nova Scotia does the same.
What's the point? Why not simply have a fair market with competition?
> Also, in Nova Scotia, a government-supported private electricity monopoly.
I think Quebec has the same no? That's actually one instance where I was told the government was doing a good job. My colleague told me he pays something like 0.05$ per Kw/h. That's insanely cheap. I assume Nova Scotia does the same.
Even that relatively dense 100 miles has pretty low population density by European standards I think.
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/canadian-provinces-and-t...
Even if we assume their entire population is in that 100 mile range, it is 42 people/kmsq [37.7M/(8891*100)], which is like half that of Albania.
Of course the true answer is that it is our bad influence is seeping up across the boarder. Have you heard of Comcast?
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/canadian-provinces-and-t...
Even if we assume their entire population is in that 100 mile range, it is 42 people/kmsq [37.7M/(8891*100)], which is like half that of Albania.
Of course the true answer is that it is our bad influence is seeping up across the boarder. Have you heard of Comcast?
You would not believe how connected to the internet people from middle income and low income countries are. Everyone has internet.
No, it’s mostly that phones are more convenient/cheap than computers. Everyone just has a cheap smartphone, computer feels redundant and expensive for what it can do. And computers are too expensive for educational segment.
No, it’s mostly that phones are more convenient/cheap than computers. Everyone just has a cheap smartphone, computer feels redundant and expensive for what it can do. And computers are too expensive for educational segment.
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Provocatively, imagine if had been one Emacs per child. With EXWM.
(Actually, I was recently surprised to find that after an apt-get install on a chromebook, Emacs started up in full gui mode.)
(Actually, I was recently surprised to find that after an apt-get install on a chromebook, Emacs started up in full gui mode.)
AIUI, the basic architecture of the "Sugar" environment is quite Emacs-like, though not literally built on Emacs. That's why they thought it would be important to have a "view source" feature.
I (also peripherally involved) suggest OPLC had a unicorn-or-dead business plan, but stalled unexpectedly long in not-quite-dead but not-unicorn-yet, and didn't adapt well. Intel and Microsoft/Gates put a lot of effort towards dead. A unicorn story of "succeed (massive country-wide deployments), and they will come (developers, content creators, educators, etc; also network and power infrastructure, next-gen laptops, maintenance and deployment infrastructure, supply chains, etc)" means you're doing a minimum viable unicorn launch. So for illustration, when you're bouncing along, running out of runway, and Guido (python BDFL) publishes clueless criticisms, and the python open-source community isn't "showing up" to help, do you spend scarce funds on hiring a community outreach person to nudge that, or focus on making your next bounce just that little bit higher enough to ignite your unicorn rocket engine, and make training wheels and bootstrap wings a non-issue? Especially when a critical bottleneck isn't technical, but Bill flying around offering politicians Microsoft and Gates Foundation bounties on unicorn eggs.
So I suggest the goal was to trigger mass deployments, supporting subsequent refinement. I'm unclear on what/which technical improvements might have been sufficient to alter the deployment outcome. But people have been critiquing the unicorn-pathfinder-prototype-alpha-preview-0.0.3 unicorn corpse ever since. :)
So I suggest the goal was to trigger mass deployments, supporting subsequent refinement. I'm unclear on what/which technical improvements might have been sufficient to alter the deployment outcome. But people have been critiquing the unicorn-pathfinder-prototype-alpha-preview-0.0.3 unicorn corpse ever since. :)
> However, the project placed very little emphasis on the development of boring-but-practical end-user software for the device, like educational games and tools, book reading tools, or course management software.
OTOH, I recall that media interest in the OLPC project helped pave the way for the earliest "netbook" class devices, which could readily accommodate these features, and in turn found plenty of use as educational tools in middle-income countries. (Though not in the poorest countries nor in the earliest grades of primary education; in either case, this would have called for rugged subnotebooks - much like the OLPC itself or, more to the point, the Toughbook series which was very costly on the market.)
OTOH, I recall that media interest in the OLPC project helped pave the way for the earliest "netbook" class devices, which could readily accommodate these features, and in turn found plenty of use as educational tools in middle-income countries. (Though not in the poorest countries nor in the earliest grades of primary education; in either case, this would have called for rugged subnotebooks - much like the OLPC itself or, more to the point, the Toughbook series which was very costly on the market.)
The need for '3-4 year old proof' devices is still acutely felt in the first world, where many of the solutions just involve adding a larger back and sides shell and hoping nothing major happens to the screen.
It really doesn't help that touchpads generally have oversimplified interfaces and poor support for any sort of peripheral that would aid in greater input speed or acuity. (Bluetooth doesn't count, I hate current wireless so much.)
It really doesn't help that touchpads generally have oversimplified interfaces and poor support for any sort of peripheral that would aid in greater input speed or acuity. (Bluetooth doesn't count, I hate current wireless so much.)
Why do 3-4 year olds need devices?
Because there is actually quite a lot of educational material available. It took a bit of curation but my son's time with the screen is generally positive. Of course it's one of many activities, but screens are not inherently evil.
They don’t need devices. Parents choose to give them devices because hanging out with kids can be tedious.
> Parents choose to give them devices because hanging out with kids can be tedious.
Kids entertainment evolves with the rest of society. Parents give kids devices for all the same reasons they give them other toys.
Kids entertainment evolves with the rest of society. Parents give kids devices for all the same reasons they give them other toys.
This seems equivalent to saying “technology doesn’t change anything,” which obviously has numerous counterexamples over the last 50k years.
Strongly agree, all my friends give their kids phones just because they think they deserve some time off from them, I think that's wrong.
Never gave my baby a phone, ever and I think it's a good decision, she's not even two yet so how is that affecting her brain?
How is a child supposed to learn how to interact with people if you leave them with a device that might in fact teach them something, like counting and stuff, but that's not the case. Until the age of 4-5 your focus should be primarily to make your kid socially acceptable so they can participate in as many activities and get a chance to join as many conversations in the future as possible, you want to help them be social. Giving them a tablet will not help them become socialized at all, in fact it will just turn this around. You don't want that for your child. You want your kid to be liked, otherwise it will end up being miserable, think about it.
Spend every minute of your spare time with your baby, that's the way to do it, help them enter the society, by showing them how to interact with people.
How is a child supposed to learn how to interact with people if you leave them with a device that might in fact teach them something, like counting and stuff, but that's not the case. Until the age of 4-5 your focus should be primarily to make your kid socially acceptable so they can participate in as many activities and get a chance to join as many conversations in the future as possible, you want to help them be social. Giving them a tablet will not help them become socialized at all, in fact it will just turn this around. You don't want that for your child. You want your kid to be liked, otherwise it will end up being miserable, think about it.
Spend every minute of your spare time with your baby, that's the way to do it, help them enter the society, by showing them how to interact with people.
> hanging out with kids can be tedious.
Just wow. Sorry for your kids if you have any, or sorry for your childhood if this is what you were taught.
Sorry to be judgemental, but in 30+ years of raising kids, never did the word "tedious" come to mind.
Just wow. Sorry for your kids if you have any, or sorry for your childhood if this is what you were taught.
Sorry to be judgemental, but in 30+ years of raising kids, never did the word "tedious" come to mind.
Please do not cross into personal attack in HN comments.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I have a young child. I love hanging out with her, but it’s very repetitive. She’s literally entertained by me holding a rubber giraffe in front of her for hours on end. I don’t blame people for getting bored after days / months. But sure, pass judgement all you want. I really don’t care.
Sometimes you just have to go with the flow and admit that Mrs. Giraffe is indeed a very special giraffe.
Every single parent I've known will, in honest private conversations, admit to the same thing. Loving your child doesn't mean that the repetitive mentally unstimulating parts of raising them magically become non-tedious. It means you do it anyway, because you care for them.
I think this is a consequence for our generally nonsensical arrangements for raising children.
The 2 parents (or maybe 1 single parent) are supposed to do it mostly by themselves in what is called a nuclear family. That is a quite recent development. Earlier it was common to live in larger groups (like extended families) so the work of raising kids was spread out over more people.
The other thing is that is is no longer culturally acceptable to let kids roam by themselves. You always have to have them at arms length when they’re out. If you like to criticize parents for too much screen time, well, what are those kids supposed to do instead?
The 2 parents (or maybe 1 single parent) are supposed to do it mostly by themselves in what is called a nuclear family. That is a quite recent development. Earlier it was common to live in larger groups (like extended families) so the work of raising kids was spread out over more people.
The other thing is that is is no longer culturally acceptable to let kids roam by themselves. You always have to have them at arms length when they’re out. If you like to criticize parents for too much screen time, well, what are those kids supposed to do instead?
It takes generations to build up the sort of tightly-knit social capital that makes it generally feasible to cohabit as an "extended family" or to leave kids lightly supervised. Our arrangements for such things follow on from a general way of life that discounts long-persisting social ties as quite unimportant.
I think tedious may be wrong use of word to describe it.
My daughter who is almost 3 is definitely exhausting.
Non stop, hyperactive at night goes to bed at midnight lately.
We play/do activities for like 12 hours a day. Plus work full-time.
She has a tablet with learning activities, very smart for her age and helped her advance (reads at "3rd grade" level). We let her play 30-60 minutes a day if she wants to, or we need a quick distraction while I make dinner or something.
Everyone I know, including my grandmother whose tended to 30+ kids agrees she is simply exhausting.
She's very interested in alot of things. Technology one of them.
My daughter who is almost 3 is definitely exhausting.
Non stop, hyperactive at night goes to bed at midnight lately.
We play/do activities for like 12 hours a day. Plus work full-time.
She has a tablet with learning activities, very smart for her age and helped her advance (reads at "3rd grade" level). We let her play 30-60 minutes a day if she wants to, or we need a quick distraction while I make dinner or something.
Everyone I know, including my grandmother whose tended to 30+ kids agrees she is simply exhausting.
She's very interested in alot of things. Technology one of them.
Many of the most valuable, precious, and important things in life are tedious, boring, difficult, and painful. The unpleasant costs should underline the immense value we place in the things we're willing to suffer for. Very little is withheld when parents suffer for their kids, and it's ok to be honest about it.
It's adults who need to keep their devices around where kids are.
The disjointed efforts & lack of care for the most common use modes are jarring. The inability to get hardware promises really delivered sucked.
There were some really good & powerful underlying OS concepts that I think we ought have deep reverence for. Even if the hardware-layer 802.11s wifi mesh didn't work, the systems-layer link-local XMPP mesh, used to create Telepathy Tubes, was ultra-advanced systems engineering that just worked, that was supremely well engineered by discerning sharp choices.
There's so many examples of really smart really sharp visionary engineering. To tick off all the places a complete rebuild of the computing experience failed is cheap and easy. Of course there were a lot of pet project hanger-ons, a lot of non-core engineering. It's just a pity we live in such a scarce, chased society, where such a novel engineering project failed to garner the love & attention it deserved. If there's a reason OLPC failed, it's as much because the rest of the world failed to show up for some bold visionary open source engineering. And in my personal view, it's because open source was already chiefly a husk, a shell, for industrial software development. I don't think the world ever really engaged OLPC at the level it deserved, we all failed to explore a delivered viable greatness & make it our own (a difficulty amplified how long it took for Sugar builds to be available on other platforms). The positive powerful lessons XOPC had for us weren't understood or appreciated then, and we're still today hooked on sad story of failure. Rather than anyone bothering to understand the victory & success & power that was built. Out of best of breed open source systems[1].
Effectiveness could have been higher. But this project chose great tech, & it feels as much like an indicator of failure by the geeks who should have seen further. It's hard to form open source community, but there were so many good ideas here, and just a little more getting-the-ball rolling would have lead to a radically different song we sing about this. There was an incredibly interesting platform for software development in a class-room scale, extremely well envisioned, and we all failed to rise to the high standards of possibility this new, vanguard capability set out for.
[1] https://www.aosabook.org/en/telepathy.html
There were some really good & powerful underlying OS concepts that I think we ought have deep reverence for. Even if the hardware-layer 802.11s wifi mesh didn't work, the systems-layer link-local XMPP mesh, used to create Telepathy Tubes, was ultra-advanced systems engineering that just worked, that was supremely well engineered by discerning sharp choices.
There's so many examples of really smart really sharp visionary engineering. To tick off all the places a complete rebuild of the computing experience failed is cheap and easy. Of course there were a lot of pet project hanger-ons, a lot of non-core engineering. It's just a pity we live in such a scarce, chased society, where such a novel engineering project failed to garner the love & attention it deserved. If there's a reason OLPC failed, it's as much because the rest of the world failed to show up for some bold visionary open source engineering. And in my personal view, it's because open source was already chiefly a husk, a shell, for industrial software development. I don't think the world ever really engaged OLPC at the level it deserved, we all failed to explore a delivered viable greatness & make it our own (a difficulty amplified how long it took for Sugar builds to be available on other platforms). The positive powerful lessons XOPC had for us weren't understood or appreciated then, and we're still today hooked on sad story of failure. Rather than anyone bothering to understand the victory & success & power that was built. Out of best of breed open source systems[1].
Effectiveness could have been higher. But this project chose great tech, & it feels as much like an indicator of failure by the geeks who should have seen further. It's hard to form open source community, but there were so many good ideas here, and just a little more getting-the-ball rolling would have lead to a radically different song we sing about this. There was an incredibly interesting platform for software development in a class-room scale, extremely well envisioned, and we all failed to rise to the high standards of possibility this new, vanguard capability set out for.
[1] https://www.aosabook.org/en/telepathy.html
That's great, but using a load of poor countries to alpha test your new OS ideas seems a bit dodgy.
Everyone should have realised inventing something brand new for every part of the stack would fail.
We want new hardware, and firmware, and OS design, and GUI design, and apps? And make it all something no one is familiar with?
Everyone should have realised inventing something brand new for every part of the stack would fail.
We want new hardware, and firmware, and OS design, and GUI design, and apps? And make it all something no one is familiar with?
If I may riff and provide a potential view of a tangential alternative force that was at play that made the project destined to be doomed (via this approach you mention about un-implemented features across lower cost legacy hardware)
The declining costs of the hardware (screens, capacitive touch, battery, processor, memory, etc etc) via a Wright's Law/ Moore's Law type curve meant that over-optimizing around lowering the costs by choosing 'imperfect' hardware meant it was very difficult to ever get this going as a viable platform - which if we imagine a world of these costs declining 1/4 the rate (4x slower), this ecosystem would have more likely found enough backers and funding to get some more roots and sprouts going.
Ultimately, the cost curve declines of the other equipment meant that smartphones/Netbooks/tablets were bound to leapfrog it well before this OLPC 'formulation' was able to take off and be sustainable on its own.
The declining costs of the hardware (screens, capacitive touch, battery, processor, memory, etc etc) via a Wright's Law/ Moore's Law type curve meant that over-optimizing around lowering the costs by choosing 'imperfect' hardware meant it was very difficult to ever get this going as a viable platform - which if we imagine a world of these costs declining 1/4 the rate (4x slower), this ecosystem would have more likely found enough backers and funding to get some more roots and sprouts going.
Ultimately, the cost curve declines of the other equipment meant that smartphones/Netbooks/tablets were bound to leapfrog it well before this OLPC 'formulation' was able to take off and be sustainable on its own.
I have two; a friend of mine had one. We both threw Debian on them and relished in the glorious Pixel Qi display and the nigh-indestructible nature of them. Great for backpacking and road trips in dirty areas, at a then-unbeatable price.
These shipped?
I've been looking for a laptop with eink for a decade, so I can use it in the sun.
The new pine e-ink thing gives me hope, with a keyboard, but bah
I've been looking for a laptop with eink for a decade, so I can use it in the sun.
The new pine e-ink thing gives me hope, with a keyboard, but bah
> The new pine e-ink thing gives me hope, with a keyboard, but bah
Give it some time, they've just about gotten started on the low-level graphics support for that particular device. The next step is coming up with meaningful UX, probably no easy task given how different e-paper is from other sorts of visual output.
Give it some time, they've just about gotten started on the low-level graphics support for that particular device. The next step is coming up with meaningful UX, probably no easy task given how different e-paper is from other sorts of visual output.
It's not e-ink, it's a transflexive LCD where you can remove the colour and turn off the backlight to get higher res, as the subpixels are setup like a camera (square of RG/GB) instead of the normal 3 vertical subpixels (RGB)
Volunteers were able to acquire them early on, then they had the give-1-get-1 programme, and now many are just sitting on Ebay.
I bought both of mine for around 200 CAD.
I bought both of mine for around 200 CAD.
At that time (~2003) I didn't realize the benefit - India govt asked MIT Media lab to leave India due to their high salaries and I guess lack of accountability..
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/08/business/technology-rift-...
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/08/business/technology-rift-...
> The project placed excessive emphasis on nonessential high-effort software initiatives, like developing their own BIOS replacement, desktop interface, UI framework, and nonstandard file manager. Developing and supporting this software consumed a lot of time at the Foundation
How many of these were funded PhD thesis vs software from salaried devs?
How many of these were funded PhD thesis vs software from salaried devs?
None were funded PhD theses -- a mix of salaried devs, donated engineering time from partners like Red Hat, work done by volunteers in purchasing countries like Uruguay, and general open source contributions.
(I was a long-time salaried dev for OLPC.)
(I was a long-time salaried dev for OLPC.)
Interesting.
I assumed the research component was bigger since the project originated at MIT, and that it was one of the reasons they were pushing for a system that didn’t exist at the time instead of porting a known Linux distribution to it.
I assumed the research component was bigger since the project originated at MIT, and that it was one of the reasons they were pushing for a system that didn’t exist at the time instead of porting a known Linux distribution to it.
> Overall, my impression was of a project whose participants treated it as a vehicle for promoting their personal "pet" projects, rather than as a means to a specific educational/humanitarian goal. This severely compromised the effectiveness of the project.
Be that as it may:
1. The research projects were kind of cool.
2. I suspect that OLPC paved the way for the netbook/chromebook/cheap laptop era.
3. And cheap tablets are even cheaper and work great for accessing khan academy and wikipedia as long as you can get free wi-fi somehow.
4. I still think it's a great idea to make computing (including programming) accessible to everyone, be it via web browsers, raspberry Pi, micro bit, cheap laptops/tablets, or whatever.
Be that as it may:
1. The research projects were kind of cool.
2. I suspect that OLPC paved the way for the netbook/chromebook/cheap laptop era.
3. And cheap tablets are even cheaper and work great for accessing khan academy and wikipedia as long as you can get free wi-fi somehow.
4. I still think it's a great idea to make computing (including programming) accessible to everyone, be it via web browsers, raspberry Pi, micro bit, cheap laptops/tablets, or whatever.
You know, they were funded because of these novelty. If you spend more time with international charity activity, you'll see that no one truly want to help the poor, they are more interested in showing their kindness.
I don't think it's quite that. I think it's that the prospect of making reducing poverty your life's work and the end result is that you reduce the world poverty rate by 0.02% is just too oppressive to face head-on. So you either get people who devote themselves to the process rather than the outcome, or you get outcome-oriented people who look for shortcuts and miracle fixes. But that doesn't mean the motive is insincere.
I think it’s a bit more complicated than that — wasn’t Negroponte involved with it?
The funny thing about "pet projects" is that successful projects were also "pet projects" – linux, python etc. Nothing wrong with feeding your "pet project" per se.
Both Linus and Guido are benevolent dictators in their own way but neither of them existed in a vacuum.
The lack of iteration and change of direction based on user/field feedback is probably the main difference here.
The lack of iteration and change of direction based on user/field feedback is probably the main difference here.
But the point is that it doesn't work the other way around: not all pet projects become successful projects. In fact, very, very few pet projects ever ship.
Honestly, your criticism sounds like it could be extended to non-profit/volunteer work in general; not just OLPC.
Without the "meet customer demands or starve" dynamic that places pressure on for-profit organisations, a whole lot of critical but unsexy work just doesn't get done.
Without the "meet customer demands or starve" dynamic that places pressure on for-profit organisations, a whole lot of critical but unsexy work just doesn't get done.
That’s why I like effective altruism: there’s a lot to be criticised on a purely utilitarian view of help, metrics are often wrong and all that, but any form of self-criticism is such a step-up from the usual white-saviour complex. "We stop this unless we reach that goal" feels horrifying to people on the ground who can’t accept why beneficiaries would be punished, until they realise that, no: you are taking away an unhelpful service. Potentially better options now have a budget. It’s messy and goes in circles but at least it doesn’t stay someone ineffective.
> hardware buttons for software features that were never implemented (particularly "view source")
Wasn't this implemented? I don't have my XO-1 in front of me now but I definitely recall being able to do that.
Wasn't this implemented? I don't have my XO-1 in front of me now but I definitely recall being able to do that.
There is nothing wrong with the product vision. Remove the part about the handcrank and monochrome screen, and you are basically describing a modern day Macbook. Unfortunately they did not have the budget of Apple to deliver such a device.
I'm from Uruguay and here OLPC was adopted by the government in 2007. Till now every kid and teenager from public and private schools receive a "ceibalita" laptop that they can use for whatever they want. They are used at school by some teachers although not all.
During the recent pandemic the program was fundamental because it allowed all children from all socio-economic backgrounds to switch to remote learning.
Most poor kids don't have a PC at home and it's hard to access the labor market without knowing how to use one.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceibal_project
During the recent pandemic the program was fundamental because it allowed all children from all socio-economic backgrounds to switch to remote learning.
Most poor kids don't have a PC at home and it's hard to access the labor market without knowing how to use one.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceibal_project
The author has one opinion, here's mine:
The OLPC designers, developers, engineers, educators (and whoever contributed to the project) have done a fantastic job.
I got an OLPC for my kids through their Give 1 Get 1 program. The beautifully designed little laptop was a fantastic learning tool for children. The software and hardware kept my daughters engaged and exploring. OLPC was a way better educational tool than any available ipad software at the time. Considering the unique experience, and even now it is better than an iPad (although I am assuming the software might have caught up by now). My daughter loved programming scratch on OLPC growing up, and she preferred it to other computers and ipad too. Later on, I even installed the OLPC distro on my old Thinkpad because she wanted the simpler interface. During covid, they became more familiar with chrome and iPad, although, had it been pushed further, I believe OLPC would be a much better platform than Chrome, and iPad for learning during covid.
The OLPC designers, developers, engineers, educators (and whoever contributed to the project) have done a fantastic job.
I got an OLPC for my kids through their Give 1 Get 1 program. The beautifully designed little laptop was a fantastic learning tool for children. The software and hardware kept my daughters engaged and exploring. OLPC was a way better educational tool than any available ipad software at the time. Considering the unique experience, and even now it is better than an iPad (although I am assuming the software might have caught up by now). My daughter loved programming scratch on OLPC growing up, and she preferred it to other computers and ipad too. Later on, I even installed the OLPC distro on my old Thinkpad because she wanted the simpler interface. During covid, they became more familiar with chrome and iPad, although, had it been pushed further, I believe OLPC would be a much better platform than Chrome, and iPad for learning during covid.
I'm a bit skeptical of the thesis of this book.
Moonshot projects usually fail, by definition. OLPC was likely to fail from the beginning. That doesn't mean it wasn't worth trying.
We can -- and should -- diagnose and learn from everything which went wrong. The name -- Charisma Machine -- is fair. It describes what's wrong with a lot of modern MIT: big names, big charisma, and marketing over substance.
On the other hand, for the burn rate (~$12M/year), it seems like it was a worthwhile risk. If it worked as promised, the gains would be in the trillions. If it kinda-worked, the gains would still be high. I gave it maybe 5% odds, and I think that's fair for this type of project.
Moonshot projects usually fail, by definition. OLPC was likely to fail from the beginning. That doesn't mean it wasn't worth trying.
We can -- and should -- diagnose and learn from everything which went wrong. The name -- Charisma Machine -- is fair. It describes what's wrong with a lot of modern MIT: big names, big charisma, and marketing over substance.
On the other hand, for the burn rate (~$12M/year), it seems like it was a worthwhile risk. If it worked as promised, the gains would be in the trillions. If it kinda-worked, the gains would still be high. I gave it maybe 5% odds, and I think that's fair for this type of project.
Agree. And who learns from failure is sometimes important too.
Sometimes a project is the same old failure that has happened a 1000 times, and is otherwise owed condemnation as forseeable, but if a NEW class of person/org is getting that learning, then it can change their future trajectories in meaningful ways. I don't know what sort of org OLPC was, but perhaps it was uniquely valuable that these people to fail and learn. Or maybe it was stupid :) I'm just agreeing it's often more complicated to understand than it first appears
(The above applies to individual people, but also to organizations. For e.g., maybe non-profits or governments taking their first babysteps into failures of a certain sort, is valuable in the way its not to savvy startup communities who perhaps already know to avoid certain things)
Sometimes a project is the same old failure that has happened a 1000 times, and is otherwise owed condemnation as forseeable, but if a NEW class of person/org is getting that learning, then it can change their future trajectories in meaningful ways. I don't know what sort of org OLPC was, but perhaps it was uniquely valuable that these people to fail and learn. Or maybe it was stupid :) I'm just agreeing it's often more complicated to understand than it first appears
(The above applies to individual people, but also to organizations. For e.g., maybe non-profits or governments taking their first babysteps into failures of a certain sort, is valuable in the way its not to savvy startup communities who perhaps already know to avoid certain things)
>Moonshot projects usually fail, by definition. OLPC was likely to fail from the beginning. That doesn't mean it wasn't worth trying.
No, but it can very well mean it wasn't worth trying this way - and this might have even been evident from the start not just in hindsight (see a top comment above from someone involved in the project).
No, but it can very well mean it wasn't worth trying this way - and this might have even been evident from the start not just in hindsight (see a top comment above from someone involved in the project).
I started reading the book and part of the thesis is that nothing was learned at the time and the industry is repeating similar mistakes.
Perhaps.
I think the core reasons why OLPC failed include:
1) Bad people. By bad, I don't just mean "incompetent." I mean sleazeballs in it for themselves. That's not everyone on the project, but folks like Nicholas Negroponte.
2) Bad risk management. OLPC tried to reinvent everything, down to the display technology. If you take a dozen major risks like that, only one has to fail for the project to fail.
I don't think it got far enough to reveal any fundamental reasons why it had to fail. It was a lot of bad execution.
I don't mind repeating similar mistakes if we go further next time.
I think the core reasons why OLPC failed include:
1) Bad people. By bad, I don't just mean "incompetent." I mean sleazeballs in it for themselves. That's not everyone on the project, but folks like Nicholas Negroponte.
2) Bad risk management. OLPC tried to reinvent everything, down to the display technology. If you take a dozen major risks like that, only one has to fail for the project to fail.
I don't think it got far enough to reveal any fundamental reasons why it had to fail. It was a lot of bad execution.
I don't mind repeating similar mistakes if we go further next time.
Read Todd Oppenheimer's "The Flickering Mind" and you'll find this false mantra (new technology alone will magically solve a deeply human problem) being repeated throughout the history of education technology.
> On the other hand, for the burn rate (~$12M/year), it seems like it was a worthwhile risk. If it worked as promised, the gains would be in the trillions.
The risk-reward calculation is important here. Arguably simply spurring interest in developing and using cheap netbook easily paid off the investment in the project in terms of benefit to the world.
The risk-reward calculation is important here. Arguably simply spurring interest in developing and using cheap netbook easily paid off the investment in the project in terms of benefit to the world.
From what I have gathered MIT Media Lab != MIT. The Media Lab is commonly referred to as the Remedial Lab on campus. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20944282
Was. Past tense. This was definitely the case around the year 2000 (and during most of OLPC).
The Media Lab has mostly stayed constant. The rest of MIT ramped up hype, marketing, branding, form-over-substance, and occasionally, corruption. Today, the Media Lab is one of the higher-integrity parts of the Institute, not by virtue of improving, but by virtue of the rest of the Institute slipping.
The Media Lab has mostly stayed constant. The rest of MIT ramped up hype, marketing, branding, form-over-substance, and occasionally, corruption. Today, the Media Lab is one of the higher-integrity parts of the Institute, not by virtue of improving, but by virtue of the rest of the Institute slipping.
Well that sucks.
The free market and the march of technological progress did a better job than any moonshot project designed to solve digital literacy in poor countries. Many sub-Saharan and Southeast Asian countries have better LTE rollout than rural America does. Everyone has a smartphone or tablet, made possible by the fact that cheap Android devices are really cheap but still effective. And that's because the free market doesn't care about the opinions of a bunch of committee members who all want a say in how the device is designed. It doesn't have the luxury of endless nonprofit grants. Devices either fulfill needs and make money or they don't and company goes broke.
Just because they don't do computing like _you_ do, using a laptop, doesn't mean they don't have access to the Internet for what they need.
Just because they don't do computing like _you_ do, using a laptop, doesn't mean they don't have access to the Internet for what they need.
I actually think the OLPC was a big step in making computers more accessible. Netbooks were entirely a response to the OLPC, when companies like Asus noticed that there was a gaping, totally unserved market for low-end notebooks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Eee_PC
These netbooks (and especially imitators running Windows that came soon after the eeepc) were very commonplace - especially amongst university students - when I was living in East Africa in the early 2010's. They were, as you say, really cheap and effective enough. Eventually phones have caught up for many use cases, but they certainly weren't there at the time...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus_Eee_PC
These netbooks (and especially imitators running Windows that came soon after the eeepc) were very commonplace - especially amongst university students - when I was living in East Africa in the early 2010's. They were, as you say, really cheap and effective enough. Eventually phones have caught up for many use cases, but they certainly weren't there at the time...
Their market penetration for the general population definitely wasn't great though. A big reason IMO was they didn't have a cellular data connection and cell infra hadn't yet been sufficiently developed with good speed and coverage. 2G/3G pretty much universally sucked even in its later forms.
Also speaking as someone who used netbooks throughout my time in K-12 ed, they were woefully underpowered and laggy compared to today's low end smartphones. A $80 Xiaomi phone can probably run most websites/apps at 60 fps, a 11 inch netbook with crappy internal HDD/EMMC and single core Atom, not so much.
Also speaking as someone who used netbooks throughout my time in K-12 ed, they were woefully underpowered and laggy compared to today's low end smartphones. A $80 Xiaomi phone can probably run most websites/apps at 60 fps, a 11 inch netbook with crappy internal HDD/EMMC and single core Atom, not so much.
> Just because they don't do computing like _you_ do, using a laptop, doesn't mean they don't have access to the Internet for what they need.
True enough. But can we seriously call such activity "digital literacy"? What is "literate" about it?
True enough. But can we seriously call such activity "digital literacy"? What is "literate" about it?
>The free market and the march of technological progress did a better job than any moonshot project designed to solve digital literacy in poor countries.
Yeaaaaah. You know that had nothing to do with actually increasing digital literacy, and was actually directed at tapping into previously unexploitable markets right?
That mobile and telecom was realized before roads and secure ubiquitous access to potable water is not something that is impressive to someone whose sat through company meetings gushing over the value to be raked in by fee extracting developing markets.
>Many sub-Saharan and Southeast Asian countries have better LTE rollout than rural America does.
Population density does that.
>Everyone has a smartphone or tablet, made possible by the fact that cheap Android devices are really cheap but still effective. And that's because the free market doesn't care about the opinions of a bunch of committee members who all want a say in how the device is designed.
Android is also one of the most user-hostile computing platforms I've ever encountered, and I shudder to think of the people who have to tread their "first exposure to computers" being Android, then working their way back to a General Purpose computer. Android was never built as anything but a developer's portal to population of users. Nothing more. A general purpose computer, at least has utility as a springboard to conventions from which to bridge the gap to more special purpose computing regimes. Something, I might add, that that committee you disparage was more keenly interested in providing cheaply, robustly, and maintainable than any developer or architect of Android, or the handsets it runs on ever was.
>Devices either fulfill needs and make money or they don't and company goes broke.
Some problems don't lend themselves to profitable solutions. Free markets optimized around immediate profit potential essentially bury and write these problems out of the equation until there is simply no other choice, which is not guaranteed to be the optimal course of action in the long run.
>Just because they don't do computing like _you_ do, using a laptop, doesn't mean they don't have access to the Internet for what they need.
Correction: They can use the Internet for what someone deemed profitable to make available for them. The use cases that were not (General Purpose) remain out of reach.
It irks me when people don't fully render the positive and negative aspects of an implementation.
Yeaaaaah. You know that had nothing to do with actually increasing digital literacy, and was actually directed at tapping into previously unexploitable markets right?
That mobile and telecom was realized before roads and secure ubiquitous access to potable water is not something that is impressive to someone whose sat through company meetings gushing over the value to be raked in by fee extracting developing markets.
>Many sub-Saharan and Southeast Asian countries have better LTE rollout than rural America does.
Population density does that.
>Everyone has a smartphone or tablet, made possible by the fact that cheap Android devices are really cheap but still effective. And that's because the free market doesn't care about the opinions of a bunch of committee members who all want a say in how the device is designed.
Android is also one of the most user-hostile computing platforms I've ever encountered, and I shudder to think of the people who have to tread their "first exposure to computers" being Android, then working their way back to a General Purpose computer. Android was never built as anything but a developer's portal to population of users. Nothing more. A general purpose computer, at least has utility as a springboard to conventions from which to bridge the gap to more special purpose computing regimes. Something, I might add, that that committee you disparage was more keenly interested in providing cheaply, robustly, and maintainable than any developer or architect of Android, or the handsets it runs on ever was.
>Devices either fulfill needs and make money or they don't and company goes broke.
Some problems don't lend themselves to profitable solutions. Free markets optimized around immediate profit potential essentially bury and write these problems out of the equation until there is simply no other choice, which is not guaranteed to be the optimal course of action in the long run.
>Just because they don't do computing like _you_ do, using a laptop, doesn't mean they don't have access to the Internet for what they need.
Correction: They can use the Internet for what someone deemed profitable to make available for them. The use cases that were not (General Purpose) remain out of reach.
It irks me when people don't fully render the positive and negative aspects of an implementation.
> Yeaaaaah. You know that had nothing to do with actually increasing digital literacy, and was actually directed at tapping into previously unexploitable markets right?
That's the point. The market trying to make money does a better job at getting tech access to people than specialized initiatives to promote digital literacy.
> Population density does that.
The point was that the standard wire-to-the-home plus WiFi router plus laptop model that we have in the developed world doesn't work if you're trying to build out infrastructure for a large number of people cheaply.
> Something, I might add, that that committee you disparage was more keenly interested in providing cheaply, robustly, and maintainable than any developer or architect of Android, or the handsets it runs on ever was
The first step to learning to access the internet is not learning how to code. Smartphones aren't exactly competing with laptops - you can first get a phone or tablet and when you go to university or into the workplace you have a proper PC.
> Correction: They can use the Internet for what someone deemed profitable to make available for them. The use cases that were not (General Purpose) remain out of reach.
Android devices are capable of running arbitrary code through sideloading, including JIT compiled apps like emulators. About the only thing you can't do is boot your own OS, which by the time you know enough to boot your own OS you definitely have your own laptop. You are referring to iOS.
That's the point. The market trying to make money does a better job at getting tech access to people than specialized initiatives to promote digital literacy.
> Population density does that.
The point was that the standard wire-to-the-home plus WiFi router plus laptop model that we have in the developed world doesn't work if you're trying to build out infrastructure for a large number of people cheaply.
> Something, I might add, that that committee you disparage was more keenly interested in providing cheaply, robustly, and maintainable than any developer or architect of Android, or the handsets it runs on ever was
The first step to learning to access the internet is not learning how to code. Smartphones aren't exactly competing with laptops - you can first get a phone or tablet and when you go to university or into the workplace you have a proper PC.
> Correction: They can use the Internet for what someone deemed profitable to make available for them. The use cases that were not (General Purpose) remain out of reach.
Android devices are capable of running arbitrary code through sideloading, including JIT compiled apps like emulators. About the only thing you can't do is boot your own OS, which by the time you know enough to boot your own OS you definitely have your own laptop. You are referring to iOS.
Back in the day, the "non-user-hostile" alternative to Android and iOS was OpenMoko. I think it's fair to say that Android has been significantly more successful. Meanwhile, work on non-hostile mobile computing platforms is ongoing, but the OLPC folks are playing no significant role there. In fact, much of the momentum over "computing in early education, w/ a loosely constructivist philosophy" has now shifted to the Raspberry Pi (also a commercially successful product!) which is more and more looking like the one true successor to the OLPC.
"Just because they don't do computing like _you_ do, using a laptop"
Okay, can you write a book, programm an arguino, produce a song, calculate in a spreadsheets expected payments for your mortgage, design layout of your house, map out your farm for planting? No, not really.
They have devices that enable them to consume and feed the disguisting add industry and suvaliance machine, not to create.
Okay, can you write a book, programm an arguino, produce a song, calculate in a spreadsheets expected payments for your mortgage, design layout of your house, map out your farm for planting? No, not really.
They have devices that enable them to consume and feed the disguisting add industry and suvaliance machine, not to create.
> Okay, can you write a book, programm an arguino, produce a song, calculate in a spreadsheets expected payments for your mortgage, design layout of your house, map out your farm for planting? No, not really.
All of these things can be done on an iPad or a Linux tablet.
Is there something preventing them from being done on an Android tablet?
All of these things can be done on an iPad or a Linux tablet.
Is there something preventing them from being done on an Android tablet?
You can do all of the above on an Android tablet actually. Maybe you can't do all types of programming but you can definitely write a book, produce a song, use spreadsheets, and work with maps.
and the software has 1/10th the capabilities of it's desktop equivalent, and the experience is terrible. HN people commenting here live in a fantasy world
You have no internet access in sub-Saharan Africa with a traditional laptop. 4G LTE USB dongles basically don't exist or they're as expensive as a cheap Android phone. WiFi and copper to the home isn't widespread in developing countries. Without the internet you have no ability to learn whatever you want or communicate with anyone.
It's you that's living in a fantasy world. Why don't you try using a laptop without internet, or with intermittent internet access, for a month and then come back and see how productive you were?
It's you that's living in a fantasy world. Why don't you try using a laptop without internet, or with intermittent internet access, for a month and then come back and see how productive you were?
"Why don't you try using a laptop without internet, or with intermittent internet access, for a month and then come back and see how productive you were?"
I did that for 5 years
I did that for 5 years
Pretty sure there are Arduino IDEs for Android.
I went to talks by Walter Bender, Nicholas Negroponte, and others involved with OLPC at the time. At the same time I was working part-time teaching technology afterschool in the Boston Public Schools. It was pretty clear that the constructionist vision of education that the OLPC folks were promoting made sense for SOME kids, who were bright and self-motivated, but it wasn't where most kids were. A few of the kids I was working with loved working on their own projects and discovering new things. But for most kids, just giving them tools and letting them play wasn't really going to result in the kind of learning and creative expression that Papert and his colleagues were promising. We had a lot of trouble getting kids to even go to afterschool technology programs. The non-profit I was working for was even paying kids $500 to do the program.
I would imagine that if you're an education ministry with a limited budget you probably want to focus on efforts that are going to make measurable improvements for the average kids. I don't think "we deployed 1000 laptops, most of them are now paperweights or video game machines, but 10 kids are doing super creative things of their own initiative" is all that compelling to an education ministry.
I would imagine that if you're an education ministry with a limited budget you probably want to focus on efforts that are going to make measurable improvements for the average kids. I don't think "we deployed 1000 laptops, most of them are now paperweights or video game machines, but 10 kids are doing super creative things of their own initiative" is all that compelling to an education ministry.
One interesting aspect of the OLPC project is what it didn't attempt to do: to apply the theory of its design to first world countries that also have broad public education problems (I'm thinking specifically of the U.S.) I chalk it up to the idea that the revolution in education that the constructionists of the 60s and 70s thought would happen simultaneously along with the adoption of computing never came to pass. I can't stress enough how this vision of computing was supposed to go hand in hand with a more general transformation of education, rather than computing being its cause. I'm not sure, then, how that fit at all with the idea of pushing the technology (and none of the social or pedagogical changes) onto the third world.
> It was pretty clear that the constructionist vision of education that the OLPC folks were promoting made sense for SOME kids, who were bright and self-motivated, but it wasn't where most kids were.
Maybe the problem was that most of the kids' natural love of learning and creativity had already been extinguished by compulsory school. Or as Papert put it, "Children seem to be such remarkable learners on their own, but then they enter school."
Maybe the problem was that most of the kids' natural love of learning and creativity had already been extinguished by compulsory school. Or as Papert put it, "Children seem to be such remarkable learners on their own, but then they enter school."
> A few of the kids I was working with loved working on their own projects and discovering new things. But for most kids, just giving them tools and letting them play wasn't really going to result in the kind of learning and creative expression that Papert and his colleagues were promising
That’s the Media Lab in a nutshell. It attracts builders from all over the world. And it naturally selects for people that are self-learners.
That’s the Media Lab in a nutshell. It attracts builders from all over the world. And it naturally selects for people that are self-learners.
If your goal is average kids, then sure, you need to focus on average kids. But I'd say the smart self-motivated kids are always the biggest bang for the buck in education. Sometimes I get a sense that people (not necessarily here) consider disproportionate success among geeks to imply a program is "backfiring".
What does "bang for the buck" in education mean specifically?
If we are thinking in terms of democratic societies here, then certainly the (utilitarian) point of education should be to raise the bar especially for the "average kids," shouldn't it? Don't we want a better average in a society that we all operate together? That's to say nothing of the richness in life that education can provide...
If we are thinking in terms of democratic societies here, then certainly the (utilitarian) point of education should be to raise the bar especially for the "average kids," shouldn't it? Don't we want a better average in a society that we all operate together? That's to say nothing of the richness in life that education can provide...
I mean that the smart kids will show the most results for the same budget.
The utilitarian metric could also show that the average moves the most, and society benefits most, when those with the most potential can realize it. It's an interesting question. Either way though, I think it should be a basic constraint for an education system. Basically it's the same as saying classes should never be too slow for their students.
The utilitarian metric could also show that the average moves the most, and society benefits most, when those with the most potential can realize it. It's an interesting question. Either way though, I think it should be a basic constraint for an education system. Basically it's the same as saying classes should never be too slow for their students.
Raise the bar? Maybe they don't want to jump higher.
Not clear how the average is going to be "better" in any way by forcing them to.
> the richness in life that education can provide
The danger to deny the richness to those who can appreciate it.
Not clear how the average is going to be "better" in any way by forcing them to.
> the richness in life that education can provide
The danger to deny the richness to those who can appreciate it.
> disproportionate success among geeks to imply a program is "backfiring".
Perhaps the logic is that the bright, self-motivated kids already have an advantage, so helping them get even further ahead is a net negative.
Perhaps the logic is that the bright, self-motivated kids already have an advantage, so helping them get even further ahead is a net negative.
If society moves ahead by 100 points and the bright, self-motivated capture 75 of those points, I think that society is still better off.
Bang for the buck in what sense? What “smart self-motivated” kid needs the help? Show us a computer screen just once and our life pattern is set.
I haven’t read this new book. But I was at the Media Lab when all of this was going on (without directly working on it). Reading the reviews of this book, all I can say is if “scholars” ran this world, nothing would be done. Inaction is far easier than action, and no one has all the answers before big leaps are taken (and this was an insanely ambitious project). I also say that as a fan of some of the reviewers.
No doubt mistakes were made, and likely some where called out back then (including critiques I did hear at the time). But it’s also a very different world in 2022, where things like cell phones and Facebook have taken over the planet… I hope the book contextualizes this.
No doubt mistakes were made, and likely some where called out back then (including critiques I did hear at the time). But it’s also a very different world in 2022, where things like cell phones and Facebook have taken over the planet… I hope the book contextualizes this.
I'm pretty sure mine were some of the criticism you heard ;-) My critique largely focused on the imperialist attitude of the project: Negroponte described the project with hope that it would be as impactful as the "Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria" without any sense of recognition of th negative impact of those ships. When the first technical bring up touted OLPC developers running Doom on it, it was a reminder of how, no matter how much we claim technology is absent of agenda, it is many ways a reflection of the values of the developers.
Hi Seth!
Everything done by anyone is a reflection of them, their needs, constrains, ideas, and knowledge. Intention matters, and inaction is intention-less.
However I don’t think your metaphor is apt — OLPC didn’t intend to be a conquest in any way that was about extracting resources let alone bring resources those back home.
The OLPC didn’t replace something, it created something. It pointed a way.
Everything done by anyone is a reflection of them, their needs, constrains, ideas, and knowledge. Intention matters, and inaction is intention-less.
However I don’t think your metaphor is apt — OLPC didn’t intend to be a conquest in any way that was about extracting resources let alone bring resources those back home.
The OLPC didn’t replace something, it created something. It pointed a way.
> Intention matters
Does it really? We all know the saying about the road to hell, and I suspect the people on the receiving end didn't particularly care about intentions, especially if the result was a net negative.
Does it really? We all know the saying about the road to hell, and I suspect the people on the receiving end didn't particularly care about intentions, especially if the result was a net negative.
Was the OLPC a net negative?
I seem to remember Carlos Fuentes narrating an entire series "The Buried Mirror" starting out with that (he immediately follows it with "[Columbus put his newly-discovered] noble savage in chains") but I don't see anyone calling him racist.
> if “scholars” ran this world, nothing would be done. Inaction is far easier than action, and no one has all the answers before big leaps are taken
Do you mean to defend the OLPC folks as action-takers, or criticize them as scholars?
Do you mean to defend the OLPC folks as action-takers, or criticize them as scholars?
I'm saying OLPC folks were action takers. They sought to do an ambitious project to bring computing to the developing world, close the digital divide, bring up a new class of digital natives into an economy they'd otherwise be left out of, enable a suite of educational materials that otherwise wouldn't be available, tackle problems of electricity and internet access in these contexts, and find generous donors & governments to help fund it all.
Without economies of scale that eventually came from cell phones, this was a pretty amazing and ambitious project!
Without economies of scale that eventually came from cell phones, this was a pretty amazing and ambitious project!
You're confusing "action" with "outcome". Yes, OLPC generated a lot of buzz, and created a cryptocurrency-like hype machine. Yes, OLPC was probably very friendly to you when you were working right alongside them in MIT Media Lab. But what did they actually achieve?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child#Criticism indicates not much at all. The project was a beautiful boondoggle; their users didn't enjoy the product but the rich folk who donated could pat themselves on the back for looking like they cared. Even Bill Gates had the sense to walk away 5 years before OLPC even started: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/nov/05/billgates...
Let's also not forget that the founder of OLPC, and the chairman of MIT Media Lab, has gone on record praising a convicted, child sex trafficker: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Negroponte#Epstein_... and tried to cover-up their dirty money trail soon after: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-an-elite-univer... .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child#Criticism indicates not much at all. The project was a beautiful boondoggle; their users didn't enjoy the product but the rich folk who donated could pat themselves on the back for looking like they cared. Even Bill Gates had the sense to walk away 5 years before OLPC even started: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/nov/05/billgates...
Let's also not forget that the founder of OLPC, and the chairman of MIT Media Lab, has gone on record praising a convicted, child sex trafficker: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Negroponte#Epstein_... and tried to cover-up their dirty money trail soon after: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-an-elite-univer... .
> [Wikipedia criticism page] indicates not much at all
You shouldn't take criticism uncritically.
> Even Bill Gates had the sense to walk away 5 years before OLPC even started
Bill Gates didn't “walk away”, he used Microsoft to actively sabotage OLPC, by directly targeting their intended market to prevent it from getting hold, since it was seen as an existential threat to the Windows desktop monopoly.
You shouldn't take criticism uncritically.
> Even Bill Gates had the sense to walk away 5 years before OLPC even started
Bill Gates didn't “walk away”, he used Microsoft to actively sabotage OLPC, by directly targeting their intended market to prevent it from getting hold, since it was seen as an existential threat to the Windows desktop monopoly.
> he used Microsoft to actively sabotage OLPC, by directly targeting their intended market to prevent it from getting hold, since it was seen as an existential threat to the Windows desktop monopoly.
You use such strong words and make such enormous claims but I don't see you citing any evidence. Has that become the norm on HN?
You use such strong words and make such enormous claims but I don't see you citing any evidence. Has that become the norm on HN?
"Let's also not forget that the founder of OLPC, and the chairman of MIT Media Lab, has gone on record praising a convicted, child sex trafficker"
In the world of ad-hominem this is like a drive-by shooting with a nuclear bomb.
In the world of ad-hominem this is like a drive-by shooting with a nuclear bomb.
"In the world of ad-hominem this is like a drive-by shooting with a nuclear bomb."
But is it inaccurate? I wasn't sure. So I googled. Here's what I found: "Nicholas Negroponte, who co-founded MIT’s prestigious Media Lab in 1985, admitted to encouraging director Joi Ito to take Epstein’s money and even hanging out with the late pedophile back in the day"
At first glance, it appears to have substance to me.
But is it inaccurate? I wasn't sure. So I googled. Here's what I found: "Nicholas Negroponte, who co-founded MIT’s prestigious Media Lab in 1985, admitted to encouraging director Joi Ito to take Epstein’s money and even hanging out with the late pedophile back in the day"
At first glance, it appears to have substance to me.
Surely defend.
> "I also say that as a fan of some of the reviewers."
> "I also say that as a fan of some of the reviewers."
I read the book last year.
While it is definitely a critique -- and while Ames provides a debatable framing of her overall thesis -- the accounting of the actual, on-the-ground uses of OLPC laptops is invaluable. Assessment is not the same thing as inaction. It is worth understanding what happened and attempt to frame why it happened. In fact, one could argue that the "action takers" in computing today might do well to familiarize themselves with a bit more scholarship in the first place.
While it is definitely a critique -- and while Ames provides a debatable framing of her overall thesis -- the accounting of the actual, on-the-ground uses of OLPC laptops is invaluable. Assessment is not the same thing as inaction. It is worth understanding what happened and attempt to frame why it happened. In fact, one could argue that the "action takers" in computing today might do well to familiarize themselves with a bit more scholarship in the first place.
This passage from the synopsis made me stop and think:
> they were designed for “technically precocious boys”—idealized younger versions of the developers themselves
I was a technically precocious boy; I got my start on Apple II computers in the late 80s. I think it's common for nerds of my generation to look at newer computers, particularly mobile devices, and worry that they're robbing future generations of what we had in our childhood -- a computer that gave us an open, kind of hard-to-miss invitation to tinker, learn to program, and go as deep into the software stack as we wanted to go (it wasn't actually that deep on those old computers).
I'm tempted to think that I wasn't actually that special as a kid, and if newer computers were designed for technically precocious kids, there might be more such kids in future generations. But then, in my family with two brothers and a sister, I clearly was the only computer nerd. And I think it's likely that my siblings (and especially my mother, who was using a computer for real work) were happier with later computers than they were with our first Apple IIGS. So while I admit I was initially indignant at the quote above, I can see why it was actually pointing out a real problem.
> they were designed for “technically precocious boys”—idealized younger versions of the developers themselves
I was a technically precocious boy; I got my start on Apple II computers in the late 80s. I think it's common for nerds of my generation to look at newer computers, particularly mobile devices, and worry that they're robbing future generations of what we had in our childhood -- a computer that gave us an open, kind of hard-to-miss invitation to tinker, learn to program, and go as deep into the software stack as we wanted to go (it wasn't actually that deep on those old computers).
I'm tempted to think that I wasn't actually that special as a kid, and if newer computers were designed for technically precocious kids, there might be more such kids in future generations. But then, in my family with two brothers and a sister, I clearly was the only computer nerd. And I think it's likely that my siblings (and especially my mother, who was using a computer for real work) were happier with later computers than they were with our first Apple IIGS. So while I admit I was initially indignant at the quote above, I can see why it was actually pointing out a real problem.
Ames' concept of the "technically precocious boy" is her entire thesis in a nutshell: that the creators of the OLPC projected their values, experiences, and assumptions onto the whole project.
I have conducted hours of interviews with early personal computing pioneers and have noticed a lot of similar backstories when they first talk about what attracted them to computing. Almost all of the men I've interviewed have some memory of taking apart and re-assembling devices when they were young boys and they recall this as being formative.
On the other hand, what is computing? What is it supposed to "be like"? Is it a technology like a car, or a bicycle, or other complex productive machinery? Or is it instead like pencil and paper and the writing systems / literacy that go along with it?
If we go with the latter concept -- a "new kind of literacy" -- then this argument of the "technically precocious boy" only applies to the specific form of the technology produced. In other words, imagine criticizing ancient Mesopotamian scribes trying to extend the reach of writing because they specifically sought to teach in other lands the imprinting reed shapes into clay. One could argue (for good reason) that this is probably a bad approach, but that's less to do with the fact that said scribes learned this process as boys and/or had some initial affinity for it.
Ames also hedges her bets in the book early on: she bases her critique entirely on the writings of people like Papert and Negroponte, but explicitly says she will not be evaluating constructivism as a pedagogical framework. That's sort of too bad -- Papert et al were not just creating computing systems they thought would revolutionize education. They assumed that there would already be some kind of forthcoming revolution in education regardless, and they wanted to secure computing's place in that new world. It never came to pass. I feel like it's an under explored angle.
Of course these are complicated questions. Ames' book is really valuable as a postmortem, especially the parts that are based on her fieldwork. And I do think that the "technically precocious boy" framing is good in that it creates space to have a really nuanced conversation about this aspect of computing and education.
I have conducted hours of interviews with early personal computing pioneers and have noticed a lot of similar backstories when they first talk about what attracted them to computing. Almost all of the men I've interviewed have some memory of taking apart and re-assembling devices when they were young boys and they recall this as being formative.
On the other hand, what is computing? What is it supposed to "be like"? Is it a technology like a car, or a bicycle, or other complex productive machinery? Or is it instead like pencil and paper and the writing systems / literacy that go along with it?
If we go with the latter concept -- a "new kind of literacy" -- then this argument of the "technically precocious boy" only applies to the specific form of the technology produced. In other words, imagine criticizing ancient Mesopotamian scribes trying to extend the reach of writing because they specifically sought to teach in other lands the imprinting reed shapes into clay. One could argue (for good reason) that this is probably a bad approach, but that's less to do with the fact that said scribes learned this process as boys and/or had some initial affinity for it.
Ames also hedges her bets in the book early on: she bases her critique entirely on the writings of people like Papert and Negroponte, but explicitly says she will not be evaluating constructivism as a pedagogical framework. That's sort of too bad -- Papert et al were not just creating computing systems they thought would revolutionize education. They assumed that there would already be some kind of forthcoming revolution in education regardless, and they wanted to secure computing's place in that new world. It never came to pass. I feel like it's an under explored angle.
Of course these are complicated questions. Ames' book is really valuable as a postmortem, especially the parts that are based on her fieldwork. And I do think that the "technically precocious boy" framing is good in that it creates space to have a really nuanced conversation about this aspect of computing and education.
> the "technically precocious boy" is her entire thesis in a nutshell
Yuck? Amidst the many confused claims people have made for OLPC cultural imperialism, one that's valid (but seemingly rarely mentioned?) was its insistence on On Laptop Per Girl, even where that went against the grain. And IIRC, that was as much over XO for reading books, as over XO for writing or "computing". Mashing "literacy for girls" into "toys for boys", or "access to books" into "tech toy"... I hope that's not the thesis?
Yuck? Amidst the many confused claims people have made for OLPC cultural imperialism, one that's valid (but seemingly rarely mentioned?) was its insistence on On Laptop Per Girl, even where that went against the grain. And IIRC, that was as much over XO for reading books, as over XO for writing or "computing". Mashing "literacy for girls" into "toys for boys", or "access to books" into "tech toy"... I hope that's not the thesis?
What would a computer look like if it were designed for a technically precocious girl?
Oh, there's a good sci fi book which tackles that idea. It's not the only idea in the book, but it's a major theme. It's right there in the title.
Neal Stephenson "The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer"
It's a 25 year old book but slight spoiler, it's about what happens when this book made for a rich billionaire's child falls into the hands of a poor child. Among many interesting ideas, the book has its own source of funding (think, crypto) and uses that to hire actors (like zoom with full on mo-cap) to bring to life the characters in the story. IIRc, the lessons/dialog are all written but the actors can bring them to life and ad-lib, and one actor in particular ends up being the remote mother for this child.
Oh, another bonus part of the story I remember to give you an incentive to read it, there's a multi-page digression about how turing machines work retold as a fantasy allegory with like, castle bridges, chain links and trolls.
Neal Stephenson "The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer"
It's a 25 year old book but slight spoiler, it's about what happens when this book made for a rich billionaire's child falls into the hands of a poor child. Among many interesting ideas, the book has its own source of funding (think, crypto) and uses that to hire actors (like zoom with full on mo-cap) to bring to life the characters in the story. IIRc, the lessons/dialog are all written but the actors can bring them to life and ad-lib, and one actor in particular ends up being the remote mother for this child.
Oh, another bonus part of the story I remember to give you an incentive to read it, there's a multi-page digression about how turing machines work retold as a fantasy allegory with like, castle bridges, chain links and trolls.
Funny thing: I was hired by OLPC specifically to implement that book:
https://blog.printf.net/articles/2011/06/18/narrative-interf...
I forgot about that book! It is indeed a good one, and second the recommendation to anyone who hasn't read it. Although if that's the one with the drum people, they're kind of weird and might be off-putting to some.
Probably the same. From what I can tell, "technically precocious boy" means the same thing as "technically precocious".
It's a no-win situation for the researchers.
It's a no-win situation for the researchers.
Do they even bother to clarify what they mean by "technically precocious"? I've seen some references to the MIT hacker culture in the OP, but back in the day this was strictly about a tiny minority of people in the most technical parts of academia; by and large, children would not have had any exposure to computers for personal use until very late in the history of that culture, and the research questions about "constructivism" were precisely about how to make this kind of exposure educationally meaningful. I suppose that I'm seeing a lot of fuzzy, loosely-connected memes in the intro to the book but not much clear thinking and reasoning that would result in an intelligible argument.
The problem is that if you assume "being able to use a device" is what qualifies you as precocious then the argument becomes moot. But I'm not sure what else the authors could mean.
The problem is that if you assume "being able to use a device" is what qualifies you as precocious then the argument becomes moot. But I'm not sure what else the authors could mean.
"constructivism", and similar ideas about schools with no lessons where children just learn what they want to, are all based on children of smart parents who encourage such things.
The average child is happy watching youtube videos about unboxing single use plastic toys 24/7
The average child is happy watching youtube videos about unboxing single use plastic toys 24/7
I'm not even that old and I completely agree with your point. One would think that easy access to beginner friendly programming languages and environments would be a boon to technically precious children. However I think for most kids, highly addictive and cheap video games and social media end up monopolizing all the time and attention. It's really sad to see all that neuroplastic potential being wasted on TikTok. Personally, I came up around the dawn of Facebook and was only (partially) saved by being too poor to afford many video games or an expensive computer, and being too much of a loner to care about Facebook.
As a child of aid workers (hippie parents) I lived as a kid and teen in southern Africa. I was critical of the OLPC project mainly because it was a closed eco system, but told to shut up.
Poor communities are used to repairing everything that can be repaired and it seemed to me, that giving access to standard pc platforms would be a much better starting point.
Poor communities are used to repairing everything that can be repaired and it seemed to me, that giving access to standard pc platforms would be a much better starting point.
Is there such a thing as a standard PC (actually, laptop) platform? Some manufacturers are better than others at repairability, but between two different laptop models, even from the same manufacturer, the only things likely to be interchangeable are the RAM and the storage. The OLPC had repairability designed into it, but on the assumption that there'd be a large enough deployment of them in any given area, and you'd scavenge broken ones for parts.
I honestly don't think that it would have been much different in this respect had the OLPC been a single model of a consumer-grade laptop - parts would have been scavenged from broken ones. Except perhaps that consumer-grade laptops weren't designed for the conditions the OLPC was designed for, so would probably have failed more often.
I honestly don't think that it would have been much different in this respect had the OLPC been a single model of a consumer-grade laptop - parts would have been scavenged from broken ones. Except perhaps that consumer-grade laptops weren't designed for the conditions the OLPC was designed for, so would probably have failed more often.
absolutely. The OLPC looked like a well intentioned design-by-committee attempt of the first world people to solve the issue of the 3rd world.
>giving access to standard pc platforms would be a much better starting point
i've been in similar situation - end of 198x / start of 199x in Russia where we like the 3rd world were scrambling into computerization, and the standard PC platform with easy swappable/upgradeable components was the key here to the extent that even slightly non-standard brand-name PCs like Compaq/etc. were shunned away because the even so slightly customizations they had to their case, PSU, high-end adapters with custom drivers, custom usually non-upgradeable motherboards, etc. were making them practically feasible only to very rich companies/people.
>giving access to standard pc platforms would be a much better starting point
i've been in similar situation - end of 198x / start of 199x in Russia where we like the 3rd world were scrambling into computerization, and the standard PC platform with easy swappable/upgradeable components was the key here to the extent that even slightly non-standard brand-name PCs like Compaq/etc. were shunned away because the even so slightly customizations they had to their case, PSU, high-end adapters with custom drivers, custom usually non-upgradeable motherboards, etc. were making them practically feasible only to very rich companies/people.
A much better starting point would be to make laptops able to be as easily repaired as a normal PC.
PCs at the time were much more expensive, ran closed source Windows (versus open sourced Linux of OLPC), weren’t good ebook readers given their screen technologies, didn’t have mesh networking technologies, and a whole host of other things that made the OLPC far more interesting and hypothetically relevant to the problem they were trying to solve.
Having owned a range of second hand junk laptops at the time I assure you they ran Linux just fine. As did new machines.
The rest is true enough and I'd add that there wasn't anything nearly as rugged at the price (used Toughbooks, or that style, were more expensive).
The rest is true enough and I'd add that there wasn't anything nearly as rugged at the price (used Toughbooks, or that style, were more expensive).
There wasn’t anything at the price.
I vaguely recall Intel had some rugged convertible Classmate PC. It was sturdy and the price was reasonable but its performance was bad (like most netbooks).
Yes, but the Classmate was created in response to the OLPC laptop. From its Wikipedia page:
> The Classmate PC represents Intel's competitive response to the OLPC XO, whose unusually low prices and use of AMD chips threatened to steal market share from Intel and other major manufacturers.
> The Classmate PC represents Intel's competitive response to the OLPC XO, whose unusually low prices and use of AMD chips threatened to steal market share from Intel and other major manufacturers.
It was well over double the price of OLPC, and had different functionality.
Yes, I was referring to a rugged (child proof) laptop. I think I got mine around 500 USD, not cheap, but cheaper than the Thoughbook. Hence my reply.
iPhone internals are difficult to repair, but they make up for it with reliability. If OLPC had hit that target they could have been successful but it was basically not achievable for a mid-2000s laptop.
The iphone isn't actually that hard to repair. If you have the parts and the tools, almost all the parts can be replaced pretty quickly. The problem is a lot of the parts that tend to fail like a screen replacement or water damage to the main board cost as much in parts as the phone is worth. Which in a way makes sense because the screen and main board make up pretty much all the value of the phone.
The nice thing is they have come a very long way in terms of battery replacements. You can get it done by apple for quite cheap and soon you will be able to buy the battery officially.
But improving phone repairability wouldn't really do much for poor communities because it is more economical for them to just buy one of the dirt cheap working phones on the second hand market. You would never bother to fix an iphone 5 for example when you can get another working one for almost free.
The nice thing is they have come a very long way in terms of battery replacements. You can get it done by apple for quite cheap and soon you will be able to buy the battery officially.
But improving phone repairability wouldn't really do much for poor communities because it is more economical for them to just buy one of the dirt cheap working phones on the second hand market. You would never bother to fix an iphone 5 for example when you can get another working one for almost free.
The 'problem' is that Apple forbids their suppliers from selling any parts to consumers or repairmen in order to charge exorbitant sums.
And if you do find alternative parts and offer repair services to the public they prosecute you and destroy your life
https://repair.eu/news/apple-crushes-one-man-repair-shop/
And if you do find alternative parts and offer repair services to the public they prosecute you and destroy your life
https://repair.eu/news/apple-crushes-one-man-repair-shop/
> The problem is a lot of the parts that tend to fail like a screen replacement or water damage to the main board cost as much in parts as the phone is worth.
The problem is a lot of the parts that tend to fail like a $part cost as much in parts as the $device is worth.
A general problem leading to too much stuff into garbage.
Anyone coming up with a beneficial solution to this general problem might just win themselves a Nobel Prize.
The problem is a lot of the parts that tend to fail like a $part cost as much in parts as the $device is worth.
A general problem leading to too much stuff into garbage.
Anyone coming up with a beneficial solution to this general problem might just win themselves a Nobel Prize.
Putting that money into buying up surplus commercial systems and shipping them out to disadvantaged places could have been much, much better in terms of results. It wouldn't have been near as sexy a subject for feelgood reporting.
Once in a whole someone has to take on projects to try to explore the solution space and break out of local optima. It doesn't always work, but when it does, the gains are orders of magnitude. One example is the nascent reusable rocket industry vs. the existing space shuttle and converted ICBMs.
Told to shut up by whom?
I presume his parents or anyone he raised his concerns with. From personal experience, international aid seems to attract a distinct subset of rather narcissistic and myopic people who do it for their egos rather than to help people. Despite their rude and harsh demeanour, we just have to put up with them because many of them end up climbing the leadership ranks and become even bigger psychopaths.
509 Bandwidth Limit Exceeded, archive here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20211221041947/https://morganya....
https://web.archive.org/web/20211221041947/https://morganya....
Thank you!
“Ames spent months in Paraguay in the actual communities that were recipients of OLPC laptops, cataloguing the experience of students and teachers. She also saw firsthand the many shortcomings of these laptops. Some of these were simple: classrooms often didn't have enough electric outlets or power strips to sustain everyone's laptop. But some were large: kids mainly used the laptops, not for creative expression, but just to consume media on the internet. They more often played video games than programmed them.”
https://www.amazon.com/Charisma-Machine-Legacy-Laptop-Infras...
https://www.amazon.com/Charisma-Machine-Legacy-Laptop-Infras...
> * They more often played video games than programmed them.*
That’s fine! If you don’t appreciate the use of computers, what exactly could you program for? Something esoteric and arbitrary? What good is that?
That’s fine! If you don’t appreciate the use of computers, what exactly could you program for? Something esoteric and arbitrary? What good is that?
Author here - I agree FWIW! :)
I think a lot of "they should have just given them a laptop" commentators forget just how expensive these were at the time. Making a special BOM to make a "cheap" laptop would have walked into precisely the same problems OLPC hit.
Post-hoc reasoning.
I don't like some of the MIT post-hoc reasoning too. "we like this keyboard BECAUSE its hard for adults to use" is crap.
Post-hoc reasoning.
I don't like some of the MIT post-hoc reasoning too. "we like this keyboard BECAUSE its hard for adults to use" is crap.
> a lot of "they should have just given them a laptop" commentators
Lol...I'm one such commenter on this submission.
> how expensive these were at the time
This logic only works if you assume a direct, monotonic relationship between quantity of devices provided and net utility imparted to society.
> Making a special BOM to make a "cheap" laptop would have walked into precisely the same problems OLPC hit.
You don't explain why you believe this to be true. Different technological implementations face different problems. If that were not the case, engineering would be a purposeless discipline. And there is no reason why "cheap" has to be a component of a philosophy behind contributing to the development of third-world economies and the communities from which those economies draw their manpower.
> Post-hoc reasoning.
The book itself is a reflection on the project, so "post-hoc" should carry no dirty connotation. Moreover, the problem of providing technology to poor kids persists in the present day. Today, we see a very different device landscape and cost profile versus back in the year 2005.
Lol...I'm one such commenter on this submission.
> how expensive these were at the time
This logic only works if you assume a direct, monotonic relationship between quantity of devices provided and net utility imparted to society.
> Making a special BOM to make a "cheap" laptop would have walked into precisely the same problems OLPC hit.
You don't explain why you believe this to be true. Different technological implementations face different problems. If that were not the case, engineering would be a purposeless discipline. And there is no reason why "cheap" has to be a component of a philosophy behind contributing to the development of third-world economies and the communities from which those economies draw their manpower.
> Post-hoc reasoning.
The book itself is a reflection on the project, so "post-hoc" should carry no dirty connotation. Moreover, the problem of providing technology to poor kids persists in the present day. Today, we see a very different device landscape and cost profile versus back in the year 2005.
> > how expensive these were at the time
> This logic only works if you assume a direct, monotonic relationship between quantity of devices provided and net utility imparted to society.
I'm not sure I buy that. MIT were driving to cheap because they were in a funding model which was value focussed on cost-per-unit. They rejected a lot of things which consumer devices have as normal, to reduce the BOM. If they'd gone with laptops they'd have driven to a higher cost outcome, irrespective of the social utility, and less units directly goes to less C in the OLP C sense. The utility function was "every child should have one" not "every classroom should have some"
>> Making a special BOM to make a "cheap" laptop would have walked into precisely the same problems OLPC hit.
>You don't explain why you believe this to be true. Different technological implementations face different problems. If that were not the case, engineering would be a purposeless discipline. And there is no reason why "cheap" has to be a component of a philosophy behind contributing to the development of third-world economies and the communities from which those economies draw their manpower.
This is two points in one. The BOM for a purpose built laptop would have wound up asking the same questions: can I get this made for my unit budget or do I have to find a compromise? They would have reduced the mAH of the battery, or reduced screen size, to the unit sizes which their supply chain could provide at the price.
The "cheap" drive was theirs. They brought cheap to the table, having rejected Gates' foundation support because it expressly demanded they adopt Microsoft product and align with that as the deliverable for "goodput" purposes. (I read this, I can't find references. If you have better information share, but I believe this to be the case right now) They brought cheap to the table because of their funding model. fixed capex but demanding maximum unit delivery. Uruguay wanted one unit per kid. They had a specified population. Uruguayan funding was contingent on every kid getting one. Now you have a budget problem, bring your BOM to the table.
>> Post-hoc reasoning.
> The book itself is a reflection on the project, so "post-hoc" should carry no dirty connotation. Moreover, the problem of providing technology to poor kids persists in the present day. Today, we see a very different device landscape and cost profile versus back in the year 2005.
No disagree on the last point. My primary complaint is there are a mix of things going on here, including stuff said at the time around how one-eyed Negroponte and Jepson were being, but some things said with hindsight were not how it was seen at the time. Like .. laptops. People are bringing modern unit cost to the table against what was feasible at the time. At the time, a viable laptop was going to bust their margins for their funding model. Negroponte was harking back to the glory days of the media labs, of MIT's influence on the nature of computing and society, and didn't want to be told practicalities and given what MIT had achieved in the past, it was tenable to think they might carry it off. Who knows, if sugar had more love, maybe it would be the interface du jour for education? I doubt it, but its not impossible. After all, nobody thought "zoom" was going to become the mechanism for education, and here we are.
> This logic only works if you assume a direct, monotonic relationship between quantity of devices provided and net utility imparted to society.
I'm not sure I buy that. MIT were driving to cheap because they were in a funding model which was value focussed on cost-per-unit. They rejected a lot of things which consumer devices have as normal, to reduce the BOM. If they'd gone with laptops they'd have driven to a higher cost outcome, irrespective of the social utility, and less units directly goes to less C in the OLP C sense. The utility function was "every child should have one" not "every classroom should have some"
>> Making a special BOM to make a "cheap" laptop would have walked into precisely the same problems OLPC hit.
>You don't explain why you believe this to be true. Different technological implementations face different problems. If that were not the case, engineering would be a purposeless discipline. And there is no reason why "cheap" has to be a component of a philosophy behind contributing to the development of third-world economies and the communities from which those economies draw their manpower.
This is two points in one. The BOM for a purpose built laptop would have wound up asking the same questions: can I get this made for my unit budget or do I have to find a compromise? They would have reduced the mAH of the battery, or reduced screen size, to the unit sizes which their supply chain could provide at the price.
The "cheap" drive was theirs. They brought cheap to the table, having rejected Gates' foundation support because it expressly demanded they adopt Microsoft product and align with that as the deliverable for "goodput" purposes. (I read this, I can't find references. If you have better information share, but I believe this to be the case right now) They brought cheap to the table because of their funding model. fixed capex but demanding maximum unit delivery. Uruguay wanted one unit per kid. They had a specified population. Uruguayan funding was contingent on every kid getting one. Now you have a budget problem, bring your BOM to the table.
>> Post-hoc reasoning.
> The book itself is a reflection on the project, so "post-hoc" should carry no dirty connotation. Moreover, the problem of providing technology to poor kids persists in the present day. Today, we see a very different device landscape and cost profile versus back in the year 2005.
No disagree on the last point. My primary complaint is there are a mix of things going on here, including stuff said at the time around how one-eyed Negroponte and Jepson were being, but some things said with hindsight were not how it was seen at the time. Like .. laptops. People are bringing modern unit cost to the table against what was feasible at the time. At the time, a viable laptop was going to bust their margins for their funding model. Negroponte was harking back to the glory days of the media labs, of MIT's influence on the nature of computing and society, and didn't want to be told practicalities and given what MIT had achieved in the past, it was tenable to think they might carry it off. Who knows, if sugar had more love, maybe it would be the interface du jour for education? I doubt it, but its not impossible. After all, nobody thought "zoom" was going to become the mechanism for education, and here we are.
Specifically, Intel made a craptop prototype to compete with OLPC and IIRC it was $400 while OLPC was $200 or less.
This thing didn't really make any sense to me at the time.
Did they have customer validation that clearly showed that OLPC was solving real problems in educating children in developing nations? In hindsight it seemed that there were people on the ground that were questioning this already.
Did they have customer validation that clearly showed that their solution was usable by their customers?
Did they measure outcomes from shipped OLPCs and adjust the product based on that feedback? They shipped additional versions of the hardware, but was the hardware actually the solution that was needed? Did they know?
Did they have customer validation that clearly showed that OLPC was solving real problems in educating children in developing nations? In hindsight it seemed that there were people on the ground that were questioning this already.
Did they have customer validation that clearly showed that their solution was usable by their customers?
Did they measure outcomes from shipped OLPCs and adjust the product based on that feedback? They shipped additional versions of the hardware, but was the hardware actually the solution that was needed? Did they know?
> it seemed that there were people on the ground that were questioning this already.
Is that a good measure? Is there any disruption that’s happened since the advent of speech that didn’t have someone standing to the side opining how this was a dumb and unnecessary idea?
Is that a good measure? Is there any disruption that’s happened since the advent of speech that didn’t have someone standing to the side opining how this was a dumb and unnecessary idea?
We have the benefit of hindsight here; it's clear that this product failed. So it's reasonable to look back at the dissenting voices and ask a reasonable question: why did the product owners ignore this feedback and did the product owners understand the problem that they were trying to solve? What could they have done differently?
This passage in the OP's article is gold:
> Drawing on a seven-month study of a model OLPC project in Paraguay, this book reveals that the laptops were not only frustrating to use, easy to break, and hard to repair, they were designed for “technically precocious boys”—idealized younger versions of the developers themselves—rather than the diverse range of children who might actually use them.
The top review on goodreads[1] also resonates with that view.
> Ames uncovered a far better theoretical paradigm in nostalgic design, in this case the tendency of the OLPC leadership to create something for their idealized childhood rather than the actual lived experience of children in the developing world.
If OLPC was able to see through themselves, they may have recognized the problem they were trying to solve was not the right problem at all. And that, by trying to solve it, they would alienate the very people who could help them. 5 years before OLPC came about, Bill Gates looked at the same problem space and decided against it[2]
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3040698985?book_show_a...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/nov/05/billgates...
> Drawing on a seven-month study of a model OLPC project in Paraguay, this book reveals that the laptops were not only frustrating to use, easy to break, and hard to repair, they were designed for “technically precocious boys”—idealized younger versions of the developers themselves—rather than the diverse range of children who might actually use them.
The top review on goodreads[1] also resonates with that view.
> Ames uncovered a far better theoretical paradigm in nostalgic design, in this case the tendency of the OLPC leadership to create something for their idealized childhood rather than the actual lived experience of children in the developing world.
If OLPC was able to see through themselves, they may have recognized the problem they were trying to solve was not the right problem at all. And that, by trying to solve it, they would alienate the very people who could help them. 5 years before OLPC came about, Bill Gates looked at the same problem space and decided against it[2]
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3040698985?book_show_a...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/nov/05/billgates...
> the tendency of the OLPC leadership to create something for their idealized childhood rather than the actual lived experience of children in the developing world
Well I can't say I haven't made that mistake as a parent
Well I can't say I haven't made that mistake as a parent
It's interesting to think about OLPC as a precursor to many of the hype-driven internet phenomena that promise utopian gains. It's easy to see similarities in blockchain-mania, the evangelism machines around certain technologies and programming languages, etc...
Solar roadways and "infinite solar power water bottles" comes to mind. Just absolute rubbish which manages to extract funds from government programs for them to research how to strap a dehumidifier to a bottle and find out it doesn't make any sense.
I never thought of it that way, but I did have a few friends who were very enthusiastic about OLPC, and most of them were very interested in Bitcoin.
There’s a certain similarity in some of the ideas of libre software, self-improvement, etc.
There’s a certain similarity in some of the ideas of libre software, self-improvement, etc.
I remember reading Negroponte’s column in Wired Magazine. In the early 1990’s. I thought much of it could be described as a “precursor to many of the hype-driven internet phenomena that promise utopian gains”
In retrospect, a decent amount of his thoughts came true.
In retrospect, a decent amount of his thoughts came true.
Hi everyone - I'm the author. Apologies that my website host hasn't been able to handle the traffic generated by this - I'm working on fixing that. But I'd be happy to answer questions! I'll be able to check back in a few hours.
What was your opinion of Caacupé? Did the prevalence of Guaraní language among certain families present any difficulties for in-classroom use of OLPC devices? Was there a correlation between Spanish language competency and OLPC uptake/time-to-failure?
As with many projects, there was quite a range in acceptance/uptake! Language was certainly a factor (more rural schools - which were also poorer on average - tended to be more Guarani-centric), but I would say that based on my observations it was not the most significant factor for uptake at school or at home.
In the classroom, bigger factors that limited uptake were breakage, drained batteries (most classrooms had minimal charging capacity, and even that capacity had been installed by Paraguay Educa), uninstalled software, and lack of teacher time/resources to develop curricula and work around all of these issues. Paraguay Educa hired teacher trainers in early 2010 and had a rotating tech support team to help with these issues, and this extra staff made some headway, but that kind of ongoing cost wasn't something the small NGO could sustain, unfortunately. (I have a long discussion about funding for charismatic new projects vs. maintenance/sustainability of existing projects in the book - as with many tech projects, maintenance was certainly a big issue!)
Kids who used them at home did tend to be stronger in Spanish, but relatively few were using them much at all, Spanish-speaking or not. While I didn't see improvements in reading or math among those who were part of the project there between 2010 and 2013 testing (though the testing was really not my focus - the observations and interviews were - we still ran them), it's common in other 1:1 programs to have modest gains in literacy because enough kids are motivated to practice reading to make sense of what they encounter on the Internet.
I hope this helps! Happy to clarify or answer follow-ups!
In the classroom, bigger factors that limited uptake were breakage, drained batteries (most classrooms had minimal charging capacity, and even that capacity had been installed by Paraguay Educa), uninstalled software, and lack of teacher time/resources to develop curricula and work around all of these issues. Paraguay Educa hired teacher trainers in early 2010 and had a rotating tech support team to help with these issues, and this extra staff made some headway, but that kind of ongoing cost wasn't something the small NGO could sustain, unfortunately. (I have a long discussion about funding for charismatic new projects vs. maintenance/sustainability of existing projects in the book - as with many tech projects, maintenance was certainly a big issue!)
Kids who used them at home did tend to be stronger in Spanish, but relatively few were using them much at all, Spanish-speaking or not. While I didn't see improvements in reading or math among those who were part of the project there between 2010 and 2013 testing (though the testing was really not my focus - the observations and interviews were - we still ran them), it's common in other 1:1 programs to have modest gains in literacy because enough kids are motivated to practice reading to make sense of what they encounter on the Internet.
I hope this helps! Happy to clarify or answer follow-ups!
They wouldn't sell to poor Americans and relied on NGOs. If you were an organization in the US with lots of children that were low income, they wouldn't return your calls. The Give 1 Get 1 was not a help to those audiences. I just wish they had given a damn about the forgotten in the US.
Even NGOs were initially blown off - Negroponte initially said they'd only sell lots of no less than one million to governments directly. But when they didn't get any firm takers in the first couple of years of the project, they started loosening those requirements, which is how Paraguay Educa even got their foot in the door (with a project that initially only had 4000 laptops, later increased to around 10,000).
There was a rather badly-managed OLPC project in Birmingham, Alabama. I have a paper co-written with Mark Warschauer and Shelia Cotten on it - once my website is back up it'll be available here: https://morganya.org/research/Ames_OLPC_Birmingham.pdf
There was a rather badly-managed OLPC project in Birmingham, Alabama. I have a paper co-written with Mark Warschauer and Shelia Cotten on it - once my website is back up it'll be available here: https://morganya.org/research/Ames_OLPC_Birmingham.pdf
> They wouldn't sell to poor Americans and relied on NGOs
They wouldn't sell to individuals generally (“poor Americans” weren't specially excluded), because their entire model (and the basis of their pricing) was direct bulk sales (or construction licenses) to public education entities (principally, national ministries of education), for use within public education curricula.
They wouldn't sell to individuals generally (“poor Americans” weren't specially excluded), because their entire model (and the basis of their pricing) was direct bulk sales (or construction licenses) to public education entities (principally, national ministries of education), for use within public education curricula.
Well, they wouldn't return the phone calls of at least one public education entity. I'm still a tad bit peeved at them and Google's Chromebook offer. At least Chromebooks were obtainable later on.
> Well, they wouldn't return the phone calls of at least one public education entity.
Initially, they overtly were exclusively dealing with national ministries of education; later they became more flexible and had some discussions with lower-level US entities, including some deployments.
Initially, they overtly were exclusively dealing with national ministries of education; later they became more flexible and had some discussions with lower-level US entities, including some deployments.
They didn’t just reject selling to individuals, they rejected selling in large quantities to corporations, organizations or governments operating outside their educational mission. I recall thinking they’d never achieve real economies of scale in their production and therefore hit their $100 price point after witnessing a speech in which Negroponte responded to a question and acted as if selling the hardware to somebody like UPS or the USPS was the most ridiculous idea ever.
They initially targeted governments in the Global South and excluded North America, Europe, and other high-income countries (see http://www.olpcnews.com/use_cases/education/childrens_machin... for a summary of their thinking early on). This did shift over time, though.
Negroponte got on 60 Minutes. That was the whole point, wasn't it? "A committee of scholars -- what could possibly go wrong?"
Actually, I saw a OLPC laptop back in the day. It was pretty nice, but you had the feeling that there was nothing there that other vendors couldn't do, and probably would fairly soon.
Is anyone in the Third World saying "Damn! If only we had those OLPC laptops!" No, they're using cheap Android phones and WhatsApp.
Actually, I saw a OLPC laptop back in the day. It was pretty nice, but you had the feeling that there was nothing there that other vendors couldn't do, and probably would fairly soon.
Is anyone in the Third World saying "Damn! If only we had those OLPC laptops!" No, they're using cheap Android phones and WhatsApp.
I still have two of the original OLPC laptops (green/white). I probably should have donated them years ago (to complement the other two that were automatically donated with my purchase). I gave them to my kids, but they were too young to appreciate them, and eventually I got them regular PC desktops. So they are basically unused, but probably need new batteries by now.
Anybody interested?
Anybody interested?
currently returns "Bandwidth exceeded" but here's a snapshot from archive.org
https://web.archive.org/web/20211221041947/https://morganya....
The hardware goal of OLPC seems to have ultimately been solved by smartphones, which weren't even around in 2004. Billions of people live with a phone as their primary or only computing device.
The educational goals seem murkier. Not much has changed in the last 20 years, the plan still seems to be 1. laptops in the classroom 2. ??? 3. education!
The educational goals seem murkier. Not much has changed in the last 20 years, the plan still seems to be 1. laptops in the classroom 2. ??? 3. education!
I have one, and the main takeaway from me is that the software is dog slow.
Other people here have talked about installing debian, what distros are available, and are they peppier?
See reports from the boots on the ground mostly ending in early 2019:
http://planet.laptop.org
http://planet.laptop.org
[deleted]
I used to love reading the Fake Steve Jobs blog back in 2009/2010. He was mercilessly funny when discussing the OLPC project: https://www.fakesteve.net/tag/olpc
The project website is active and they are accepting donations, why is this project a failure when it still active?
This was hugged to death, is there a mirror?
Sorry! I definitely didn't factor in a HN frontpage link into my quota expectations with my webhost. There's an only-somewhat-broken version here: https://web.archive.org/web/20211221041947/https://morganya....
So is the OLPC program still going on? Is it dead?
Hey :)
I gotta say the one thing the OLPC did right was the display. I wish every laptop had a full sun mode, that thing was awesome.
IIRC there were no moving parts (fan? don’t recall), which was another huge plus.
Everything else was pretty bad. Sugar (the UI) was awful and would prepare 3rd world kids for exactly no other computer. The keyboard was borderline unusable. OLPC was severely underpowered when it was released. I only ever had one, so I never got to test out interconnectivity…it seemed like it could have had a lot of potential, but judging by the rest of the marketing embellishments it probably sucked too. I seem to recall having difficulty with wifi — to be fair, at the the time, most computers had questionable wireless capabilities.
IIRC there were no moving parts (fan? don’t recall), which was another huge plus.
Everything else was pretty bad. Sugar (the UI) was awful and would prepare 3rd world kids for exactly no other computer. The keyboard was borderline unusable. OLPC was severely underpowered when it was released. I only ever had one, so I never got to test out interconnectivity…it seemed like it could have had a lot of potential, but judging by the rest of the marketing embellishments it probably sucked too. I seem to recall having difficulty with wifi — to be fair, at the the time, most computers had questionable wireless capabilities.
I attempted to get Sugar running on a computer lab I was teaching in at the time, and it was a fantastic idea, but had enough bugs for it to be effectively unusable.
> would prepare 3rd world kids for exactly no other computer
The point wasn't to teach them how to use computers, otherwise they would have just shipped a Windows device. The point was to make an educational tool; even using it as an ebook reader is a big thing in places where there are no textbooks.
> would prepare 3rd world kids for exactly no other computer
The point wasn't to teach them how to use computers, otherwise they would have just shipped a Windows device. The point was to make an educational tool; even using it as an ebook reader is a big thing in places where there are no textbooks.
They could have just used or written something that introduced them to standard UI metaphors instead of giving them Sugar. Probably would have saved effort.
Is there anything that great about standard UI metaphors? Most of them are descended from designs when hardware and performance was severely constrained, and hand around because it's too hard to change everything for most people (touch devices like smartphones and tables are the main exception, but they were only just getting a foothold at that time). Given the opportunity (in this case, since the audience had little or no prior expectations of a UI), why not try something new?
Because it works wells enough for education purposes and would help prepare them for computers that many of them would encounter eventually. Sugar was well intentioned wankery. You could have had special use case software for off the grid lessons, but giving them all a bizarro UI that wasn’t like anything anyone had ever seen before didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I’d say it was one of the big reasons OLPC failed. Also, had they forked off of existing DE/WM around at the time it would have been less buggy and would have involved less effort on their part. Sugar dropped me to console more than once, and I don’t expect most students or their teachers knew what to do besides reboot and probably lose work at that point.
Interestingly, in Paraguay the kids who did use their XOs much at all generally installed another windowing system. There was a nice easy package that even not-very-tech-savvy kids could install, I think put up by a hacker group in Uruguay (I'd have to check my notes on that one) with instructions in Spanish, that also came with some simple videogames and a video/audio player. Sugar was really not designed for media consumption, and that's what interested many of the kids!
> IIRC there were no moving parts (fan? don’t recall), which was another huge plus.
Didn't it come with a hand-crank for powering the laptop? Surely that should count as a moving part.
Didn't it come with a hand-crank for powering the laptop? Surely that should count as a moving part.
It did not. The OLPC project wanted this feature, but it proved impractical to implement.
And what was the excuse for not including a solar panel on the back of the display to let the computer recharge in the sun?
The OLPC was a small device -- the usable space on the back was roughly 5" x 8". Even nowadays, this would be a very small solar panel; with early-2000s technology, it'd be completely useless. The project experimented with larger external solar panels costing $50 or more (roughly the same cost as the entire laptop!) and found that they were minimally effective for charging: https://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO_Solar
Because when the screen is visible to a user, the back of the screen is pointing at the ground, not the sun.
Here's a video of an external panel running the laptop: https://youtu.be/ITHNbOrPQyM
Here's a video of an external panel running the laptop: https://youtu.be/ITHNbOrPQyM
The idea is, when unused, the laptop could be left in the sun, where the back of the screen could trickle charge it without any user intervention.
Ideal? no. Better than having no power or using a crank? yes.
Ideal? no. Better than having no power or using a crank? yes.
[deleted]
xibalba(1)
I prefer the idea of giving new Macs and PCs to kids in the third world. Computers and the internet are supposed to be a Great Equalizer, but that notion cannot come to fruition if the access tool provided to poor people is nowhere near as able as the access tool available to rich people. Moreover, we technologists understand the sense of identity taken up by a child who has access to devices that excite the mind and capture the imagination.
For me, it was a Commodore 64.
Sometimes, people in the first world take satisfaction in the act of helping, but forget that the impact of the help is the main object of importance. If someone were to give your kid an OLPC, you might say "it's better than nothing," but you might feel deep down that "they keep the good stuff for their own kids but they come to our country's kids with the dregs."
For me, it was a Commodore 64.
Sometimes, people in the first world take satisfaction in the act of helping, but forget that the impact of the help is the main object of importance. If someone were to give your kid an OLPC, you might say "it's better than nothing," but you might feel deep down that "they keep the good stuff for their own kids but they come to our country's kids with the dregs."
This is great in principle, but in reality is probably over-idealistic.
Funding is always the issue/constraint with these projects, so it’s not quite as easy as ‘just buying every child in the third world a Mac’ (if they cost three times more than an entry level PC, it’s not clear to me that 1 child with a Mac is better than 3 having entry level laptops). Ideally everyone would have the best equipment, but there is always a trade off given available resources and funds.
Furthermore, even if you had the funding to buy every child in the third world a Mac, would it be a good distribution of resources? For instance that’s probably $700 more than an entry level PC, but putting that $700 towards teaching staff for instance rather than a higher-spec laptop might have better learning outcomes.
Funding is always the issue/constraint with these projects, so it’s not quite as easy as ‘just buying every child in the third world a Mac’ (if they cost three times more than an entry level PC, it’s not clear to me that 1 child with a Mac is better than 3 having entry level laptops). Ideally everyone would have the best equipment, but there is always a trade off given available resources and funds.
Furthermore, even if you had the funding to buy every child in the third world a Mac, would it be a good distribution of resources? For instance that’s probably $700 more than an entry level PC, but putting that $700 towards teaching staff for instance rather than a higher-spec laptop might have better learning outcomes.
Your post is basically the logic behind OLPC, and many people share it. However, the logic features two weaknesses.
First, inspiration.
If you give three children $300 PCs, you may not inspire any of them. Give one lucky kid a Macbook Air, however, and they may feel so special at having something beautiful and unusual that it draws them into a lifetime of working with devices and technology. That kid may grow up to generate more utility for his community than the other three kids combined. Additionally, the presence of a Macbook Air may inspire other children or motivate the parents of those other children. Think of your first experience with the most important activities in your life. Often the first blush was a small encounter that sparked an inextinguishable passion (metaphorically). For a musician, it may be a particular concert. For a pilot, it may be a first passenger flight. For an engineer, it may be a first time dismantling an old radio. I suggest that the more nuanced that first experience, the more substantial its impact on the rest of your life.
Second, frustration.
A utility function that overvalues quantity over quality is obviously not workable. For every device costing $X we can imagine a device costing $X/k that could be purchased in greater quantity by a factor of k. However, at a certain level of cheapness, devices will frustrate users rather than empowering them.
My viewpoint is that the resource constraints are not as tight as they have been drawn to appear. Rather, it's a question of priorities. Governments prioritize other things. The US government spends >$700 billion annually on defense. People prioritize other things, too. Many engineers who live in, say, San Francisco (one of many tech hubs) go on vacation in the third world. They could buy a Mac or PC before every long vacation, tuck it into their suitcase, and spend a day finding a poor family that seems deserving. That act would most likely change one or several lives for the better while costing a small fraction of the giver's annual salary.
The resources exist, but we pretend that they cannot be apportioned for certain things while over-apportioning them to other things.
I'm a firm believer that when we want to help someone, we have to help them in light of their needs and potential, rather than our own. Children are typically easier to help than adults, because they readily accept assistance as a matter of necessity, and they are less aware of the possibilities of gaming a system designed to help them. The number one challenge to affecting a child's life positively is not their buy-in, it's our own. We have to commit to helping individuals fully and meaningfully, rather than diluting the help down so much that the likelihood of lasting impact diminishes.
First, inspiration.
If you give three children $300 PCs, you may not inspire any of them. Give one lucky kid a Macbook Air, however, and they may feel so special at having something beautiful and unusual that it draws them into a lifetime of working with devices and technology. That kid may grow up to generate more utility for his community than the other three kids combined. Additionally, the presence of a Macbook Air may inspire other children or motivate the parents of those other children. Think of your first experience with the most important activities in your life. Often the first blush was a small encounter that sparked an inextinguishable passion (metaphorically). For a musician, it may be a particular concert. For a pilot, it may be a first passenger flight. For an engineer, it may be a first time dismantling an old radio. I suggest that the more nuanced that first experience, the more substantial its impact on the rest of your life.
Second, frustration.
A utility function that overvalues quantity over quality is obviously not workable. For every device costing $X we can imagine a device costing $X/k that could be purchased in greater quantity by a factor of k. However, at a certain level of cheapness, devices will frustrate users rather than empowering them.
My viewpoint is that the resource constraints are not as tight as they have been drawn to appear. Rather, it's a question of priorities. Governments prioritize other things. The US government spends >$700 billion annually on defense. People prioritize other things, too. Many engineers who live in, say, San Francisco (one of many tech hubs) go on vacation in the third world. They could buy a Mac or PC before every long vacation, tuck it into their suitcase, and spend a day finding a poor family that seems deserving. That act would most likely change one or several lives for the better while costing a small fraction of the giver's annual salary.
The resources exist, but we pretend that they cannot be apportioned for certain things while over-apportioning them to other things.
I'm a firm believer that when we want to help someone, we have to help them in light of their needs and potential, rather than our own. Children are typically easier to help than adults, because they readily accept assistance as a matter of necessity, and they are less aware of the possibilities of gaming a system designed to help them. The number one challenge to affecting a child's life positively is not their buy-in, it's our own. We have to commit to helping individuals fully and meaningfully, rather than diluting the help down so much that the likelihood of lasting impact diminishes.
The inspiration a MacBook will give you is great, but it's unlikely to be as important to that child's development as clean water, sanitisation and good nutrition.
And because we are talking about resource allocation with fixed funds - it is absolutely a choice between giving a child a $1000 laptop and giving them a $300 laptop and $700 towards clean water, sanitisation and nutrition.
And if we just say "do both", then we are just talking about solving world hunger. Sure it's easy to point at the money spent on defence and then infer that solving world hunger will be easy, but again that's a little overly simplistic too (and if it's that easy - you can be the person that solves world hunger once and for all!).
And because we are talking about resource allocation with fixed funds - it is absolutely a choice between giving a child a $1000 laptop and giving them a $300 laptop and $700 towards clean water, sanitisation and nutrition.
And if we just say "do both", then we are just talking about solving world hunger. Sure it's easy to point at the money spent on defence and then infer that solving world hunger will be easy, but again that's a little overly simplistic too (and if it's that easy - you can be the person that solves world hunger once and for all!).
Both theoretically and practically, your argument about allocating resources falls short of answering the question about whether to provide fewer excellent devices or many substandard devices.
As a matter of theory, your argument goes "B is more pressing than A, so we should allocate resources to B rather than A." But you present no comparative advantage between the two versions of solution A. Either we give three $300 computers or one $900 computer. Your argument does not help to make that decision. Clean water is important. But if we are to provide computers, what is the most growth-inducing and impactful way to do so?
As a matter of practice, families in the third world tend to prioritize things in ways that make sense to them but may not make sense to an outside observer. For example, I met a family with several children for whom the father had purchased the latest smartphones, but the family home lacked an indoor toilet. Access to internet and social media is a basic social imperative and it ranks as a high priority.
If the governments of the US and Canada really wanted to, they could foster growth and advancement in the rest of the Americas. The resources are available. What's lacking is a desire to help, rooted in a sense of friendship or Pan-American kinship. That defense money could be spent on devices, sanitation, and the other things you mention. We choose to spend it on warfare and cool stuff from Raytheon and Lockheed instead. The resources are available, but we spend them on less fruitful pursuits.
As a matter of theory, your argument goes "B is more pressing than A, so we should allocate resources to B rather than A." But you present no comparative advantage between the two versions of solution A. Either we give three $300 computers or one $900 computer. Your argument does not help to make that decision. Clean water is important. But if we are to provide computers, what is the most growth-inducing and impactful way to do so?
As a matter of practice, families in the third world tend to prioritize things in ways that make sense to them but may not make sense to an outside observer. For example, I met a family with several children for whom the father had purchased the latest smartphones, but the family home lacked an indoor toilet. Access to internet and social media is a basic social imperative and it ranks as a high priority.
If the governments of the US and Canada really wanted to, they could foster growth and advancement in the rest of the Americas. The resources are available. What's lacking is a desire to help, rooted in a sense of friendship or Pan-American kinship. That defense money could be spent on devices, sanitation, and the other things you mention. We choose to spend it on warfare and cool stuff from Raytheon and Lockheed instead. The resources are available, but we spend them on less fruitful pursuits.
Assuming there were 90 million children who needed laptops, I would rather give all of them a pretty good Acer or a decent Chromebook that gives them all access to the information they need, than give 30 million of them a Macbook and the other 60 million of the children nothing.
I'd argue that the externalities of giving Macbooks to the 30 million children have a positive impact on the children who receive nothing. This is especially true if you look for variables that correlate to success, rather than instituting a pure lottery. For example, a child who has already demonstrated an interest in science or mathematics may be primed to make greater use of a device.
More generally, there is a certain equilibrium point where dividing up the treatment no longer provides as strong an individual benefit. Even the collective benefit may be less. A pretty good Acer may make a great impact, but what about the following?
Assuming there were 270 million children with no mobile devices, I would rather give all of them a Samsung Galaxy A01 that gives them all access to the information they need, than give 90 million of them a pretty good Acer or decent Chromebook and the other 180 million of the children nothing.
From an individual donor perspective, one factor I haven't mentioned is that it's easier to get one Macbook Air through customs in a foreign country than it is to get three identical Acer Aspires. Some countries are more permissive than others, but at a certain point all customs officers have to make inferences about you and your intentions to sell goods without paying import duties.
More generally, there is a certain equilibrium point where dividing up the treatment no longer provides as strong an individual benefit. Even the collective benefit may be less. A pretty good Acer may make a great impact, but what about the following?
Assuming there were 270 million children with no mobile devices, I would rather give all of them a Samsung Galaxy A01 that gives them all access to the information they need, than give 90 million of them a pretty good Acer or decent Chromebook and the other 180 million of the children nothing.
From an individual donor perspective, one factor I haven't mentioned is that it's easier to get one Macbook Air through customs in a foreign country than it is to get three identical Acer Aspires. Some countries are more permissive than others, but at a certain point all customs officers have to make inferences about you and your intentions to sell goods without paying import duties.
> I'd argue that the externalities of giving Macbooks to the 30 million children have a positive impact on the children who receive nothing.
Yes, investment in better education equipment for some of the population will inevitably have externalities on the others. This doesn't necessarily mean that it's money well spent - but it will have positive externalities.
> This is especially true if you look for variables that correlate to success, rather than instituting a pure lottery. For example, a child who has already demonstrated an interest in science or mathematics may be primed to make greater use of a device.
My scenario was that 90 million need laptops, so I don't think it's useful to say "well I will assume only 30 million actually need laptops" - That's just a get out of jail card.
But even accepting your scenario - there is a bigger question - why are 60 million children getting nothing, when the government could just give the 30 million kids adequate laptops and spend the difference (54 billion dollars) investing in education for the remaining population.
The idea that it is a good idea to spend money on macbooks while some of the population still doesn't have access to primary schools, and where the difference between buying a macbook and an adequate laptop for one child could pay for another kid who can't go to school at all (and is working in subsistence agriculture), is crazy to me...
> Assuming there were 270 million children with no mobile devices, I would rather give all of them a Samsung Galaxy A01 that gives them all access to the information they need, than give 90 million of them a pretty good Acer or decent Chromebook and the other 180 million of the children nothing.
I don't think that's a useful comparison - it's like comparing an expensive pick-up truck ($30k), a lower cost pick-up truck ($10k) and a car ($3k). The expensive pick-up truck can do the same job as the lower cost pick up truck (hold c1000kg of cargo) but maybe doesn't have the same quality, while the car cannot hold 1000kg of cargo so can't be used in the same way.
Similarly, while I can write an essay or write software approximately as easily on a macbook as I can an entry-level windows laptop (I own both, and the difference is fairly small), I cannot do either of those in a practical sense on a mobile phone.
> From an individual donor perspective, one factor I haven't mentioned is that it's easier to get one Macbook Air through customs in a foreign country than it is to get three identical Acer Aspires. Some countries are more permissive than others, but at a certain point all customs officers have to make inferences about you and your intentions to sell goods without paying import duties.
Customs is not usually an issue, all laptops share the same commodity codes and customs fees are on a per-container basis managed by a freight forwarder. You will need to pay the same import duties on both (probably on WTO terms) because they will have the same commodity codes. (My day job is logistics consulting and I do some work in East Africa!). One exception to this is China which can be more difficult to import into and operate in.
One peculiarity of parts of Africa for instance though compared to the west though that does make an impact is theft. Theft of high-value items is very common, mainly because $1k in America is worth $10k-$20k in Africa relative to earnings. Stealing a few laptops from some kids, and stripping them and selling them for parts, is something that will happen with higher priced laptops. There is a good chance that this will also be done by organised crime.
Yes, investment in better education equipment for some of the population will inevitably have externalities on the others. This doesn't necessarily mean that it's money well spent - but it will have positive externalities.
> This is especially true if you look for variables that correlate to success, rather than instituting a pure lottery. For example, a child who has already demonstrated an interest in science or mathematics may be primed to make greater use of a device.
My scenario was that 90 million need laptops, so I don't think it's useful to say "well I will assume only 30 million actually need laptops" - That's just a get out of jail card.
But even accepting your scenario - there is a bigger question - why are 60 million children getting nothing, when the government could just give the 30 million kids adequate laptops and spend the difference (54 billion dollars) investing in education for the remaining population.
The idea that it is a good idea to spend money on macbooks while some of the population still doesn't have access to primary schools, and where the difference between buying a macbook and an adequate laptop for one child could pay for another kid who can't go to school at all (and is working in subsistence agriculture), is crazy to me...
> Assuming there were 270 million children with no mobile devices, I would rather give all of them a Samsung Galaxy A01 that gives them all access to the information they need, than give 90 million of them a pretty good Acer or decent Chromebook and the other 180 million of the children nothing.
I don't think that's a useful comparison - it's like comparing an expensive pick-up truck ($30k), a lower cost pick-up truck ($10k) and a car ($3k). The expensive pick-up truck can do the same job as the lower cost pick up truck (hold c1000kg of cargo) but maybe doesn't have the same quality, while the car cannot hold 1000kg of cargo so can't be used in the same way.
Similarly, while I can write an essay or write software approximately as easily on a macbook as I can an entry-level windows laptop (I own both, and the difference is fairly small), I cannot do either of those in a practical sense on a mobile phone.
> From an individual donor perspective, one factor I haven't mentioned is that it's easier to get one Macbook Air through customs in a foreign country than it is to get three identical Acer Aspires. Some countries are more permissive than others, but at a certain point all customs officers have to make inferences about you and your intentions to sell goods without paying import duties.
Customs is not usually an issue, all laptops share the same commodity codes and customs fees are on a per-container basis managed by a freight forwarder. You will need to pay the same import duties on both (probably on WTO terms) because they will have the same commodity codes. (My day job is logistics consulting and I do some work in East Africa!). One exception to this is China which can be more difficult to import into and operate in.
One peculiarity of parts of Africa for instance though compared to the west though that does make an impact is theft. Theft of high-value items is very common, mainly because $1k in America is worth $10k-$20k in Africa relative to earnings. Stealing a few laptops from some kids, and stripping them and selling them for parts, is something that will happen with higher priced laptops. There is a good chance that this will also be done by organised crime.
The $125-ish Samsung Chromebook 4 is pretty darn good as an entry-level device. I got one as a throwaway device to not have to carry my heavier MBPro around. Even with that intention, I use (and enjoy) it more than I expected. It surely has way more than 5% the utility of the Mac.
I feel a little arrogant even proffering an opinion about what the Third World needs, but I would prefer giving books and meals to kids in the Third World. I think it is simply education that is the "Great Equalizer", computers have little to do with it.
That was the whole failure of the project in my mind.
That was the whole failure of the project in my mind.
You can't dynamically solve a problem without acknowledging your own capacity to identify the problem. In my view arrogance comes in when there is inflexibility or a lack of attention to the problem. If anything, it takes some courage to proffer an opinion about how to really help improve a problematic situation.
Books are important. Undeniably, so are meals. A laptop can provide both books and meals in the long term. Speaking for myself, laptops were the most important (physical) tool in my educational and professional development.
Nowadays, it's tough to get a first-rate education without a computer...especially in (for example) Latin America, where physical access to informational resources can be challenging but data infrastructure tends to be present wherever you go.
Books are important. Undeniably, so are meals. A laptop can provide both books and meals in the long term. Speaking for myself, laptops were the most important (physical) tool in my educational and professional development.
Nowadays, it's tough to get a first-rate education without a computer...especially in (for example) Latin America, where physical access to informational resources can be challenging but data infrastructure tends to be present wherever you go.
But two really significant issues are maintenance and repair - those are, unfortunately, very expensive problems to address!
It seems true to me that the easiest way to maintain a device is to build it well in the first place. This is quite challenging if your primary concern is cost. Most people who have ever purchased a Sony Vaio laptop can probably attest that they got great specs at a reasonable price, but every Sony Vaio laptop that I have purchased ended up with parts (the charger port, the power button, etc) falling off or minor components failing.
You probably noticed that in Paraguay at least, the problem you describe has some cultural roots. Disadvantaged communities have at times received free stuff that they either rejected, failed to care for, or altogether destroyed. It may be due to a sense of resentment for having received the gift, or perhaps they lacked sufficient buy-in to understand the market value of the free items. Sometimes, the free stuff does not actually fit the needs of the recipient. And usually, there is a sense of contempt from Paraguayan society at large no matter how the recipients respond (a la "look at these ungrateful paupers who don't dance for joy as we spend resources on them").
Furthermore, in Paraguay a gift given without strings attached is often doubted anyway, because it may be viewed as a means to manipulate the recipient by making them feel indebted. The smooth way to give someone a thing of value in Paraguay is to make them believe that they have somehow earned it due to preexisting factors, or alternatively to state an innocuous and clear expectation for how the gesture will be reciprocated in the future.
Anywhere you go, the recipient of a gift values the gift based on his or her own understanding and needs.
Look up the construction of houses in Itaguá for residents of the Chacarita for one example.
https://www.cronica.com.py/2015/07/23/cartes-les-regalo-una-...
I can't find the text right now, but I recall reading about houses built for indigenous folks in the Chaco. When representatives of the organization that had built the structures returned the following year, they saw that the recipients had dismantled the wooden doors and burnt them for warmth during the winter.
There's also the factor of theft, and sometimes the stolen items are surprising. The school in Cateura where the famous Recycled Orchestra came to be is one such case. At a certain point in time, they had been gifted many instruments (think Yamaha and Vincent Bach) but someone had broken in at night to uninstall and steal the school's only toilet.
There does exist some parts and repair infrastructure in many Latin American countries, as well as a secondary market for devices. There are challenges in finding parts that are neither counterfeit nor stolen, and in my experience the most capable technicians (in terms of tools and knowledge) tend to be located nearer to affluent communities. Traditional devices have a better chance of tapping into that extant marketplace than do purpose-built devices designed intentionally for the economically disadvantaged.
You probably noticed that in Paraguay at least, the problem you describe has some cultural roots. Disadvantaged communities have at times received free stuff that they either rejected, failed to care for, or altogether destroyed. It may be due to a sense of resentment for having received the gift, or perhaps they lacked sufficient buy-in to understand the market value of the free items. Sometimes, the free stuff does not actually fit the needs of the recipient. And usually, there is a sense of contempt from Paraguayan society at large no matter how the recipients respond (a la "look at these ungrateful paupers who don't dance for joy as we spend resources on them").
Furthermore, in Paraguay a gift given without strings attached is often doubted anyway, because it may be viewed as a means to manipulate the recipient by making them feel indebted. The smooth way to give someone a thing of value in Paraguay is to make them believe that they have somehow earned it due to preexisting factors, or alternatively to state an innocuous and clear expectation for how the gesture will be reciprocated in the future.
Anywhere you go, the recipient of a gift values the gift based on his or her own understanding and needs.
Look up the construction of houses in Itaguá for residents of the Chacarita for one example.
https://www.cronica.com.py/2015/07/23/cartes-les-regalo-una-...
I can't find the text right now, but I recall reading about houses built for indigenous folks in the Chaco. When representatives of the organization that had built the structures returned the following year, they saw that the recipients had dismantled the wooden doors and burnt them for warmth during the winter.
There's also the factor of theft, and sometimes the stolen items are surprising. The school in Cateura where the famous Recycled Orchestra came to be is one such case. At a certain point in time, they had been gifted many instruments (think Yamaha and Vincent Bach) but someone had broken in at night to uninstall and steal the school's only toilet.
There does exist some parts and repair infrastructure in many Latin American countries, as well as a secondary market for devices. There are challenges in finding parts that are neither counterfeit nor stolen, and in my experience the most capable technicians (in terms of tools and knowledge) tend to be located nearer to affluent communities. Traditional devices have a better chance of tapping into that extant marketplace than do purpose-built devices designed intentionally for the economically disadvantaged.
The project placed excessive emphasis on nonessential high-effort software initiatives, like developing their own BIOS replacement, desktop interface, UI framework, and nonstandard file manager. Developing and supporting this software consumed a lot of time at the Foundation. Additionally, the project placed a lot of emphasis on unusual, experimental hardware features which they were unable to fully utilize, such as the infamous hand crank (never fully shipped), an unusual hybrid capacitive/resistive touchpad (resistive features were never used), the Pixel Qi display (monochrome mode was poorly utilized by software), mesh networking (software was never fully implemented), hardware buttons for software features that were never implemented (particularly "view source")... the end result was that a lot of time and effort went into designing/redesigning unique features which didn't provide a lot of value to end users.
However, the project placed very little emphasis on the development of boring-but-practical end-user software for the device, like educational games and tools, media viewing tools (like book readers and audio/movie players), or course management software. While they did thankfully ship an office productivity suite, it was literally just OpenOffice; it looked completely different from the rest of the OS, and was poorly integrated. The same was true of the web browser, which was a thin shell around Firefox. Given that these were probably the two most useful apps on the system, the system felt pretty disjointed overall.
Overall, my impression was of a project whose participants treated it as a vehicle for promoting their personal "pet" projects, rather than as a means to a specific educational/humanitarian goal. This severely compromised the effectiveness of the project.