The XO

So I see that Nicholas Negroponte's XO project (the "One laptop per child" or $100 laptop as it was billed) has finally come to fruition.

In a comment to one of my previous posts, one of my friends asked what I thought. Having never touched one it's difficult to say. As a toy for affluent western geeks like me it's obviously cool. As a means of spreading information technology know-how around the world I'd say: it depends.

If the laptops are as rugged as they've been billed, and if they can survive the heat, dust, humidity, and unstable power that most poor countries present for a few years, they could be a valuable educational tool for some of the kids who get them. Technically it seem like a neat project.

Heck, given my power problems I wouldn't mind having one.

However, I see some potential problems:

• Many people won't have a clue how to even turn them on at first. You'd have to have people charged with distributing them and providing some minimal level of instruction for how to use them or they'll just sit and gather dust.
  
• Lack of technical people to maintain them if things go wrong. They'll be nice until they break down, or start having virus or driver problems (although not running Windows may save them from some of the virus problems.
  
• Who is in charge of distributing them? How are recipients selected? If a corrupt government (the kind they find in, oh, I don't know, some place like Cameroon) is in charge of handing them out, many or most will go to the children of government officials or their friends (or for that matter the officials themselves).
• What will they be used for? I can see people using them primarily for entertainment - movies, music, games - but that won't really change much in terms of international development. A poor village with no electricity, no running water, dirt roads, and a generally uneducated population may have trouble finding other uses for them.

For all of these reasons I have a suspicion that things may not work out quite the way they've been planned.

Another approach might be to donate or sell them cheap to adults or institutions in poorer countries. Just looking at my own village, there are hundreds of students just at my university who could use a low-power laptop like this to do work during the weeks when we don't have power. Students could bring their own to the lab and I could teach computer classes and not have to worry about power.

Aside from students, teachers and staff here could also use them to keep the school running when we lose power.

And everyone can use them for diversion at night - a rural African village at night with no power can get real boring.

So, for students, professionals, and other educated types who may have some level of technical knowledge, or at least interest, and who are in rural environments where cyber cafes and the like are not available something like this could actually be a great resource. This might bring a quicker return on the investment than only giving it to school children.

Maybe I'll write Negroponte a letter suggesting that he explore this possibility. If I had an XO I could even write it in the dark.