[OLPC India] More "evidence" for the £7 or $20 laptop

[Sameer Verma]

On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 3:11 AM, Ron Penny <ronpenny at kastanet.org> wrote:
> For those skeptics among us here's what FORBES has reported today:
>
> http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/04/laptop-cheapest-india-markets-faces-0202_technology.html?partner=alerts
>
>
> All the major UK newspapers also reported VERY POSITIVELY one the same
> "challenging as well as exciting" news.
>
> I still wonder what the impact will be on people like me who want to
> provide the poorest with the education they need, providing the
> technology now available in this fast moving 21st century.
>
> The XO's pricing has to change, DOWNWARDS, rapidly, or be left behind
> ...  surely. Or am I wrong?
>
> Ron Penny
> _______________________________________________
> India mailing list
> India at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/india
>

Hi Ron,

I guess you are wrong on this one (hey, you asked the question ;-)).

The real trouble with all these speculations including what Intel does
with the Classmate or Microsoft wants to do with XP on XO is that they
are all missing the holistic perspective. Its not just the computer
that makes the difference. The end-user at the end of the value chain
is a child who has tremendous capacity to learn. The delivery of
information to her and creation of knowledge by her in conjunction
with what's available "out there" is a holistic package, for the lack
of a better term. This "package" is the content + delivery. XP by
itself on the XO will take us only so far. The same goes for GNOME or
KDE or any other eye candy.

Will matching swatches of 2+4 and 6 help the child learn more about
math? If so, then Memorize (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Memorize) is a
terrific activity. If playing Memorize with others on a network will
encourage learning, then the mesh network approach becomes
additionally valuable. Charging in one hour and 10 minutes and then
running for three to four hours is valuable in places where
electricity comes in for two hours a day. Each component of this value
chain by itself does not mean much. Its value lies in the entire
package as a whole.

That's where the $10 laptop (Sakshat) or whatever we are calling it
now, becomes yet another cog in the system. We will need more cogs,
and every cog will cost us something.

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/