I am listening to Nicholas Negroponte, telling his story about the
computer
that will change the world.
He has referenced the beginning of the ideas , back from Seymour
Papert's
ideas of teaching children to think, and how we could use Logo
programming when
it was a new initiative.
He said, that , back then in the seventies, that it changed the way that
children using technology to think.
Thirty years forward, he is describing the way it works in developing
nations
and the difficulty of getting there , the location, the place, a person
with
old pc's with a generator.. and they are teaching the kids Word and
Excel....
in various countries all over the world.. with the misconception that
learning these programs will change the world.
He is describing to us the three basic principles
Use technology to learn learning not to learn something
teaching is one but not the only way to achieve learning
Leverage children themselves
some
50 percent of the children in this world live in rural , poor, part of
the
world and many of the children have barely a sixth grade education, and
go to
school in shifts in huge groups.
More peer to peer teaching has to happen, and the children have to help
with
the learning.
He showed various pictures of children around the world who were being
introduced to technology from Dakar to Costa Rica... There are pictures
of children
from India, to ..Kashmir... and they showed use of wifi to connect the
various
groups of children. But connectivity is not the thing
the truth is that this technology is unfolding, the problem is not
telecommunications
it is the laptops.. the LAPTOPS
He sent his son to Cambodia to create a project, and they had
connectivity,
laptops, and created a
infrastructure in villages with no electricity, no roads, no resources,
no
lights..
the computers go home, and the light from the computers was the only
light at
home. ( as long as the batteries lasted)
Story in the US
Angus King started the laptop initiative in Maine and it was
revolutionary.
He states that the initiative creates a new way of looking at technology.
He
described the initiative.
What is One Laptop Per Child?
1.A non profit entity of $30 M funding for non recurring engineering
costs
2. About scale, scale, being global is crucial launch 5-10 million in
2007
50-150 million 2008 , in five large diverse countries.
3. To provide to children, to own, to take home to use seamlessly.
There are partners
Google, Ebay, AMC, News Corp, Brightstar, Marvell, Nortell, Red hat, 3M,
etc
A lot about laptops
This is an education and a learning project.
Getting to a hundred dollard is sales, marketing and profit. the costs
can
be 60 percent.
Eliminate half of the cost by not doing these things.
No Sales, Marketing, Distribiution, first purchase order, 5-10 M units,
Linux, reduce display cost leveraging backlight innovation.
75 percent of the cost is to support the software and the features and
these
features cost us.
Don't need a little dog pawing its foot while the thing is searching. We
must
skinny the computers down.. Geez. Get a real computer. reality it will be
so
fast it will be like a bat out of hell. It will be fast.
500 Mhz AMD and x86 processor
128 DRAM
512 Flash
2 w Nominal
can be human power ( you can crank, power, pedal to get the power)
50 percent of the children in the world DON'T have power
3 USB Ports
Stereo sound with 2 audio out
WIFI mesh Network
Mesh is the way to the Internet
rugged
Dual Mode display
Camera under consideration
* information about boosters and shared memory
20 kids in a classroom .. ten gigs..
CL 1 M/B Configeration
He showed the diagram, but the United States Justice Dept did not let it
in
from customs yet
Dual Mode Display
Spatial Color, backlike transmissive
3 pixels
olpc LCD display Sunlight readable, reflective
Open source has to be open source
Skinny Linux
Instant On
will be faster than your laptop
parallel commercial channels
white box and brands
private labels
Maintenance by the kids
Design
Not cheap, not toy
One broken in Cambodia in 3 and one half years.
the children take them HOME.
Yes they will get used, they will have testing , to be dropped, to be
broken,
to have icecream dripped over them and so forth,
The version that was introduced in Tunis was the first of a variety of
computers. The colors are the way we refer to them and know which
prototype they are
the green machine, the blue machine etc.
Ok the crank did not work in the first machine. the crank is now on the
ac
adapter.
Dog energy can be used to run it.. he made a series of jokes.
Seed A-Pivot screen, e book shown
Blue, book, side with crank out,
Orange ( the one in customs, with the rabbit ears allows the mesh network
to
work.
Red more detailed features, larger display, Bill Gates said get a real
display, the one on the red is
bigger than Oragami..
Also part of the package
$100 server with 300 GB
Interschool wireless connections
Satellite back haul, where needed
Keyboard is rubber in every language ( first language,
About launch
Global
simultaneoue, in quantities of one million each.
It is launching outside of the US
He shows a world map
the green ones are the ones where the launch is starting. Brazil,
Nigeria,
Thailand and Argentina and some states in the US. IADB is talking about
doing
Central America, he is talking to India and China. This has to launch
globally
it is critical.
Why not in the USA
Buy the $400 Intel Laptop
We do not treat malaria here
too many school districts
Reverse chains
OLPC
no power, no telecoms, no teachers
Timeline
Nov 17 announced WSIS
Dec 12 Quanta agreed to build
May 06 developer boards
Nov 06 final country commitments
(Missed some of this)
Laptop price commitment
$100 target price end of 2008
Price will float based on currency, memory, price of nickel, cobalt
$138 anticipated in 2007
$50 target price in 2010
Keep the features constant
Gray Market issue
There may be a secondary market, used the example that no one steals the
US
postal service trucks, because there is no market,
Economics
Initial and launch
Central government fundined
Single order
Subsequent order
Philanthropic Organizations
Child to child funding
Commercial subsidy
Peer to peer funding
Side Effects
Linux on the desktop
no cap locks key
power consciousness
more human power
no bloated softeare
stop featuristis
Viral telecommunications
peer to peer everything
learning by doing
what is the purpose of the caps lock key, the inventor should be put in
jail
and the position.. well
The people here are
Nia Lewis OLPC
Stephean Michaud OLP
Barry Vercoe MIT MEDIA Lab
Shicam Schampijer.MIT MEdia Lab
What can you do contribute your ideas to wiki.laptop.org
if you are personally interested or want a developer board, send email to
:
iste@ laptop.org
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