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

[Edward Cherlin]

On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 3:11 AM, Ron Penny <ronpenny at kastanet.org> wrote:

> 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.

I can point you in two directions here. There are, in fact, a number
of 8-bit computer projects in the $10-15 range, such as Playpower.org.
They are rather similar to an Apple II or Commodore 64, with similar
processors, and also requiring an external monitor or TV for display.
None of these systems is suitable for taking home from school, for
working outside, for storing even one full day's homework or any
meaningful amount of content or digital textbooks. They do not include
microphones or cameras.  We can do good work with such systems, but
they cannot deliver a full education, particularly not for younger
children. I led a project to put APL on such systems long ago (in
29K!), and there are a number of good math textbooks using APL as
executable math notation.

The other direction is being defined by a number of partners of OLPC,
including OLE Nepal (olenepal.org), Alan Kay's Viewpoints Research
Institute (vpri.org, and my NGO, Earth Treasury (earthtreasury.org).
Various of us are working on the necessary infrastructure for
electricity and Internet access; teacher training; more software; and
a new architecture for digital textbooks, taking advantage of existing
quite powerful software, and able to be integrated into curricula. We
propose to combine a stream of volunteer textbook projects, where
people can tell us what they would like to do, with a stream of paid
projects, where governments, aid agencies or NGOs tell us what they
think is most urgently needed, and what they are willing to pay for.
Some of them might even ask teachers and children what they need. ^_^

> The XO's pricing has to change, DOWNWARDS, rapidly, or be left behind
> ...  surely. Or am I wrong?

The XO is currently less expensive than the alternatives in quantities
of 1,000 or more. It is a far better design in hardware and software
both, but is not nearly finished in the sense of a commercial product.
Even so, it already produces spectacular results in changing the
culture of education in target countries, with no more than a tiny
fraction of the software and content it ultimately needs.

There are two designs for a second-generation XO, one at OLPC, and one
at Pixel Qi (pixelqi.com), Mary Lou Jepsen's screen technology
company. She led hardware development for the current XO. Her plan is
to make a ton of money on radically better screens for everything, and
to put some of it into creating a $75 laptop with greater capabilities
than the XO. The target date is mid-2010. I expect that schedule to
slip, but I expect Mary Lou to be right on the price, based on my own
experience in high-tech market analysis.

Cost trends for known technology are the easiest part of the market to
predict. What gets built when is harder. What version succeeds, and
how it is used, are beyond anybody's ability to predict in any detail.
Steve Jobs has an admirable record at Apple, but he has shipped some
legendary duds. What is most important for the user community is not
the specific company or product, but the creation of a new market
category. The XO market, at one million units so far, is for real, no
matter what it turns into next. There are supposed to be about two
million other computers running Linux ordered for the schools in
various countries.

Sugar Labs and the various Linux distros are making sure that whatever
Linux a country likes, they can get Sugar with it. Windows, no.
(http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-April/013242.html A
technical assessment of porting "Sugar" to Windows, by
C. Scott Ananian) We know how we could put a crippled subset of Sugar
on Windows, which would still be better than the educational
shovelware M$ provides, but full Sugar would require access to Windows
source code. Microsoft says it won't do it for Windows XP, and it
certainly won't allow us inside.

> Ron Penny
> _______________________________________________
> India mailing list
> India at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/india

--
Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name
And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Mokurai (Ed Cherlin)