Could One Laptop Per Child Be Too Many?

You may have seen the 60 Minutes episode last night in which Nicholas Negroponte, leader of the One Laptop Per Child effort, took on Intel's Craig Barrett. Negroponte claims that Intel is trying to undercut OLPC by offering its own cheap laptop, the Classmate.

The spat reminded me of a conversation I had last year with Wayan Vota of the agency Geekcorps, which sends volunteers to developing nations around the world to help locals solve technology problems. Vota called the OLPC plan a "The Gods Must Be Crazy" solution, referring to the 1980 movie about a group of Kalahari tribesmen mystified by a Coke bottle thrown from a passing plane. While Vota praised the intentions behind the effort and the attention it's given to improving technological resources in poorer nations, his point was this: How educational will a laptop be if a student's teacher hasn't been trained to use it? What if there's no network to get it onto the Internet? What happens when the equipment malfunctions and there's no one trained to fix it?

Negroponte's group has gone to great lengths to try and engineer around some of the issues the devices may face in the third world: they can be hand-cranked for power, the hard drive can't crash because it doesn't have one, it's made with particularly thick plastic. But it does still feel a bit like a magic bullet solution: We'll design a solution here that will solve lots of problems for people overseas.

It's interesting to contrast that with the way Geekcorps works: People in developing countries figure out what problems they'd like to solve and Geekcorps volunteers stay for a few months to help them come up with a solution. That approach led one college student in Mali to come up with Wi-Fi antenna built out of a water bottle, wire mesh and a motorcycle tire valve stem. And that's what Geekcorps aims for: solutions that use materials people already have and can afford and that local people can maintain.

Comments

I'm no expert on leaders of the technology world, but I have paid attention to politics and recent history, and when I watched 60 Minutes, I couldn't help but notice a large and dangerous Elephant in the room. That last name. Negroponte. Iran Contra. Death Squads. UN Ambassador building pressure in the lead up to the 2003 pre-emptive attack on Iraq. Director of National Intelligence. A lesser known memo from the President in May 2006 authorizing Negroponte to waive SEC standards for corporations supporting national security.

And the fact that John Negroponte hibernated between Bush presidencies at McGraw Hill, the greatest profiteer from "No Child Left Behind."

Yep. Nicholas is John's baby brother. I'm amazed he can even go by his own last name when he visits countries in South America, after John's support of the cruelest, most violent efforts to overthrow governments there.

I worry deeply about what we don't know here because of what we can easily know.

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May 21, 2007

5:10 PM PT