[Olpc-open] How to be radical

[John Kintree]

Michael Tobis <mtobis at gmail.com> wrote: That's the problem. Winning Burkina Faso is great, but winning Burkina
Faso while conceding Europe and America just seems confused.
 Talk of conceding Europe and America seems premature.  It takes time to ramp up production.  

Those of us who are fortunate to participate in the current G1G1 initiative will have to live with XO laptops that do not play YouTube, flash-format video very well.  It takes time to optimize software, and to find and fix bugs.  People who get XOs six months from now will have a superior out-of-the-box experience than those who get XOs this month and next.  

Let's take being radical to the extreme.  Suppose that over the next few months, the XO demonstrates itself to  be so superior that nearly everyone on the planet wants one.  Let's go for a One Laptop Per Person project.  

If we mobilized the manufacturing capacity not only of Quanta, but other laptop and PC manufacturers as well, how many XOs could be made each year; 10 million in 2008, 100 million in 2009, 1 billion in 2010?  

That's not an idle fantasy.  Yes, the OLPC project is about education, and about technology, AND it is also about politics.

The most commonly expressed argument against the project is that the money should be spent on feeding hungry people, not on computers.  Why are there hungry people in a world with more than enough food for everyone?  It's politics.  It's power.  

What will happen if a peak and decline in the world's production of oil converges with global climate change and an increasing population such that there is not enough food for everyone?  Our best hope for keeping that an "if" instead of a "when"  may be as Buckminster Fuller used to say, "to get people in the know as quickly as possible."  IMHO, the XO laptop is exactly the tool at exactly the time to accomplish that.  

I apologize to Ivan and others for such a long message.  What I really want to say is how deeply I appreciate what you are doing.  

I've read every one of the weekly updates for the project since Walter started writing and publishing them.  I have great confidence in the OLPC team.  We just need to be patient, and let the universe unfold a bit more.
Regards,
John Kintree






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