Yesterday the OLPC Foundation announced that they would be making the OLPC (One Laptop per child) laptops available to buyers in the developed world; with the caveat that when you purchase one for yourself, you’re also paying for one to be sent to a child in the developing world. Hardly a difficult ethical decision, especially once you see and get a chance to play with, the OLPC itself, which is one of the cutest and most engaging products I have ever used (although it did take me a few minutes to work out how to open the lid, apparently the kids get it every time).
Does this mean that the OLPC project has failed in its original idea; to have governments making massive orders of the laptops to keep prices low and allow for massive economies of scale at the manufacturing end? Unfortunately, the signs indicate that it probably does. Order numbers have been low, and it would seem that there has been minimal uptake from goverments who should be buying the laptop; unsurprising, perhaps, given some thrid world goverments prelidiction for defence, personal opulence and squandering aid money. (alternatively, of course, there is a good argument to be made that if they need the cash to buy food/aid/medicine, the OLPC project should be low down the priority list).
Now, unfortunately, it’s unlikely that the Bill Gates and Paul Allen’s of this world are going to step up to cover this shortfall; they’ve been busy denouncing the OLPC project; presumably primarily for the fact it runs a version of the free operating system, Linux.
I’m not sure if Nicholas Negroponte’s plan was for this to happen, but from what I can see, the OLPC project has spurred great interest in the idea of small, durable and very cheap computing froma number of manufacturers; and these are the people in the position to really make economies of scale work. There are now a number of competing laptop projects competing for the fabled $100 slot (well, at least $175, now), and, hopefully, a rich, heterogenous environment of computers will do far more for the developing world than a ‘one size fits all’, admittedly cute, OLPC.
So I’m refusing to count this step back from OLPC as a fail; they highlighted an important issue, raised the bar enough to get the big PC companies competitive, and now hopefully there might just be one laptop per child, one day not too far away. Although with 3 billion mobile phones (and counting), I know where I’m placing my bets for ubiquitous internet access...
Oh, and if you fancy getting your hands on one of the OLPC's in time for Christmas (potentially), you can sign up here.
