A few weeks ago, my good friend Harper got his hands on an OLPC XO-1. Its a great little machine, and I think very well designed and engineered. On the tech side of things, I like the simplicity and focus of the machine, but I am most interested in the networking capabilities. I think the project is really poorly named though, they really need to ditch the idea that these machines are laptops. They are a learning tool that happens to resemble a laptop, and that word is poisonous to the overall goal of the project.
I think the politics and policy behind the program are much more interesting than the hardware and software of the machines themselves. As with any good design, that should be invisible to the user (and hopefully eventually to the designer). I have a feeling that the program is headed the way of the Segway right now though.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea behind the Segway. To the user, it is an incredibly simple tool. It solves an interesting problem… it is stupid for me to drive my car to go get a cup of coffee. Dan Sturges points out that it is absolutely insane for me to take my car, that weighs 50 times what I weigh, for such a short distance. It makes much more sense for me to take a Segway, that weighs half my weight, to run on short trips. Dean Kamen is not trying to build a competitor to cars. Just as a car doesn’t compete with a plane, the Segway doesn’t compete with the car. It doesn’t make a lot of sense for me to drive from NYC to LA, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense for me to drive from my house 2 miles down the road spending 20 minutes in my massive car waiting in traffic.
The problems for the Segway started with the hype. I remember a lot of big names saying how it would change the world, and cities would be planned around it. I remember hearing it would be hydrogen powered, or it was some sort of flying machine. Then when it came out, it was a self balancing electric scooter. A slow, kind of dorky looking, overpriced scooter that I couldn’t legally ride anywhere. It came across as one of the most over hyped products in my recent memory, and suffered a tremendous loss from this tarnished image. My bike goes faster, never needing a charge, and I only sort of look like a tool riding it. Oh yeah, and it was a tenth of the cost.
I fear that the OLPC program is coming up on a similar moment in history. The hype is enormous, but I am not entirely sure there is anyway the program can live up to it. I don’t see anyway to avoid these machines being sold into a blackmarket to serve more immediate needs of the people they are trying to help, like food, clean water, and shelter. It is an incredibly smart design, but the fault is not in the machine, it is in the supporting systems around it.
If the OLPC program succeeds, it will not be in the third world first. The program needs to leverage the attention of the first world, flood the United States with the XO’s and develop out an incredibly strong infrastructure with a minimized threat of corruption and a black market. Then export that program to the third world.
I would like to see the Google and the City of Chicago team up on the laptop program. Chicago is still in the RFP process of building out their public wifi network. Google is busting heads in wireless spectrum auctions and is clearly looking to expand its networks. The OLPC program has ramped up to the 3 million machine mark to roll out the program full time.
Why wouldn’t the City of Chicago grant Google the wireless contract for the city in return for subsidizing the OLPC program? I think it is a fair question to ask.