Neo-Colonialism or a Peer to Peer Power Society?
On November 24th, the Wall Street Journal ran a page one story called:
A Little Laptop With Big Ambitions
How a Computer for the Poor Got Stomped by Tech GiantsCambridge, Mass.
In 2005, Nicholas Negroponte unveiled an idea for bridging the technology divide between rich nations and the developing world. It was captivating in its utter simplicity: design a $100 laptop and, within four years, get it into the hands of up to 150 million of the world’s poorest schoolchildren.
World leaders and corporate benefactors jumped in to support the nonprofit project, called One Laptop Per Child. Mr. Negroponte, a professor on leave from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, hopscotched the world collecting pledges from developing nations to buy the laptops in bulk.
But nearly three years later, only about 2,000 students in pilot programs have received computers from the One Laptop project. An order from Uruguay for 100,000 machines appears to be the only solid deal to date with a country, although Mr. Negroponte says he’s on the verge of sealing an order from Peru for 250,000. The first mass-production run, which began this month in China, is for 300,000 laptops, tens of thousands of which are slated to go to U.S. consumers. Mr. Negroponte’s goal of 150 million users by the end of 2008 looks unattainable.
Why am I not surprised that the premature death notice of the OLPC project was published in the Neo-Colonial paper of record? Simply put, they had to do it. The old guard knows their days are numbered. They have sworn not to go gently into that good night — at least not until they cash out. The new guard is still young and has yet to take over. We are, consequently, in the midst of a very messy but interesting transition - one ripe with opportunities.
The entrance of the old regime cartels into this very thin, as in zero, margin territory of One Laptop Per Child is more about protecting their business and social models of citizens as one dimensional consumers than anything else. They are fighting against the tide of the rampant Open Source and Peer-to-Peer alternative reality to their world view.
In the end, OLPC will win simply because it puts the power to “fix it” and “grow it” in the hands of the users at the edges — NOT in the hands of a centralized “expert other” from away and NOT on the edge. Two questions: 1] Is the platform “good enough” to motivate users to change and take responsibility; and 2] Will the young people be given enough time and support so that they are in fact empowered to prove the power of this new model? Will the support package promote peer-to-peer independence or will it reinforce the old colonial notion of dependence on “other experts”? Will, in the end, the support function insist on imposing the gross limitations of the old economics of every transaction a billable event — ala the cell phone cartels?
This will be an intreresting proof of concept that each of us being a Producer, Distributor, and Consumer is more powerfully advantageous than each of us merely being a consumer. If I am right, OLPC will seed the Peer to Peer Power revolution in politics, economics, and much else — hopefully including spectrum management.
For more on this, see my post: Framework for a New Economics & a New Politics: The P2P Power Economy
In the end, the OLPC could be the anti-Colonial model. Microsoft and Intel, with all of their faults and imperfect knowledge, surely represent the neo-colonial model of power. They have become the 20th century re-incarnations of the East India Company we fought a revolutionary war against.
This is going to be very interesting to watch.
permalink | Jock Gill | Civil Rights and Equality, Community, Democracy, Economic Justice, Empowerment, Politics, Technology
Larry Digner (who writes the Between the Lines blog with Dan Farber) has a very detailed history and analysis of the OLPC project. He takes the WSJ apart, but doesn’t ignore the problems that have beset the program. He points out that the success of this project can be measured using more subtle metrics than just the number of units sold or delivered overseas. The title is: OLPC: How do we gauge success? Will 490,000 units do? (http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=7135&tag=nl.e539)
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)
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you remind me that the Oxford Union used to, perhaps still does, have an annual debate entitled “who has done more for humankind: Marx and Engels or Marks and Spencer”
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 comment was originally posted to Dewayne Hendrick’s list. — JPG]
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
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