I think that many of the fundamental points about the OLPC XO have been missed in recent discussions, especially if it’s seen as merely Yet Another Laptop.

First, it made some real breakthroughs that, I think, have permanently changed the equation about portable computing devices:
* Price point; no one’s going to be able to make the point that portables inherently have to cost $1000 or more
* Ruggedness - OLPC figured out how to make a laptop that will survive being dropped, for a reasonable price (Panasonic Toughbooks are nice, but very pricey); flash-based (yay!)
* Linux - the leaders of the countries declining OLPC are frighteningly ignorant if they don’t understand the inherent worth of OLPC being based on open-source Linux where a smart, curious student can tinker with it, learn how it works, extend it, change it. In my opinion, you don’t lose anything by training young minds on a GUI that happens to be Linux; if they need to use Microsoft Windows later, they’ll certainly be able to. But with Windows, you’re locked out of learning very much about how it works under the hood, with Linux, it’s all there if you care to look, especially OLPC’s Linux which they designed to be a teaching tool.
* Making the display work in sunlight was a major feat, especially at the price point - that took a lot of effort and time
* Built-in Wi-Fi mesh networking. It simply doesn’t matter that the XO doesn’t have much native memory - it’s easily added using USB flash drives or using the Wi-Fi mesh, accessing the instructor’s or another student’s XO or a classroom or village server

Second, and most important, the XO is a delivery vehicle for instruction. Not only can it be an eBook reader, but also a video viewer for instruction - health education, subjects like physics that can’t easily be demonstrated in a classroom in a developing country, etc. Download the video (or audio), watch it / listen to it, and dump it to make room for others.

The worst hypocrisy I’ve seen in the criticisms of OLPC and the XO are those from the jaundiced view of those in the Western, developed world
- processor not fast enough; not enough RAM, screen not big enough, etc. AT LEAST OLPC DID SOMETHING to address the issue of education, literacy, and communications for the most-disadvantaged people in developing nations. They designed the XO for the least of us that need it the most… not the ones that can afford to pay more.

Thanks,

Steve

while i certainly believe that Wintel & friends are motivated by business concerns in reducing the price of computers, once these have become LDC commodity affordable, the potential for massive P2P is there. i think the criticism needs be more immanent than whether the guys in the white hats or those in the black are enabling the revolution. it needs to concern what the revolution itself might be. What new forms of association, governance, knowledge production and cultural consumption will emerge in this convergence of a mental prothesis (the computer), a copying machine (the computer) and potentially ubiquitous networks — cable, wireless, fixed wire, etc? if the results perpetuate operating systems and computer utilities that assume hub and spoke topology, cognitive and social revolutions will tarry. but can centralization be jettisoned either in operating system or organization, despite the technological possibilities of doing so. The histories of open source and Wikipedia projects might shed some light. the successful ones suggest that at some points, some folks have had to decide what’s in and what’s out, etc. Anyhow, a compendium of such histories could take the as title “Wikipedia and the State of Knowledge,” and the musical could, of course, be called “Wiked: the Back Story.”

This morning, I see that the BBC has just published its own thorough overview of the OLPC project, complete with a set of links to sources for even more detailed background. (“Politics ’stifling $100 laptop’ , http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7094695.stm)
“