OLPC:Mission

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Why do children in developing nations need laptops?

Laptops are both a window and a tool: a window into the world and a tool with which to think. They are a wonderful way for all children to "learn learning" through independent interaction and exploration.

What is the alternative for education? The laptop is cheaper than two or three ordinary textbooks, but gives access to the entire wealth of information on the Internet. This is for children who cannot walk to a library, and are out of range of any kind of television, educational, commercial, or otherwise.

This assumes, however, that the "wealth of information on the Internet" is of the same quality as a textbook, something which has yet to be proven (the interesting but problematic case of the Wikipedia/Britanica comparison aside). So the question is: does the creation of a library, money to train/pay teachers, and the development of a physical education infrastructure provide a better environment for children to learn? Given that results of laptop use in schools in the West are inconclusive at best, I fear that this is a massive experiment, costing millions of dollars and thousands of person-hours, that should not be undertaken. What are the economics of creating a physically-based educational infrastructure? How far could one go in that direction with the funds and time that are being put into the OLPC project? Let's perform that experiment first, since the results are at least more conclusive. ---nak

What is the $100 Laptop, really?

The proposed $100 machine will be an innovative hardware design, based on Linux, with a dual-mode display—both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white reflective and sunlight-readable at 3× the resolution. The laptop will have a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have three USB ports. The laptops will have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network. This is a special low power, extended range wifi with its own CPU that allows data transmission to continue while the main CPU is sleeping, i.e. during transport in a backpack. The laptops will use a wide range of DC power inputs (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data. We expect that some units will be adapted to special uses by adding USB peripherals.

Isn't this project just a techno-Utopian dream? A band aid when more serious surgery needs to be done?

Neither band aids nor serious surgery work. What is needed is evolutionary, done in fast time. The basic assumption is that education is at the root of any solution.

On the other hand, they say, "those that can't do, teach." As you're probably realizing, education is our primary goal.

It should be mentioned that a common criticism of the project is to say, "What poor people need is food and shelter, not laptops." This comment, however, is ignorant of conditions in improvished nations around the world. While it is true there are many people in the world who definitely need food and shelter, there are multitudes of people who live in rural or sub-urban areas and have plenty to eat and reasonable accommodations. What these people don't have is a decent shot at a good education.

It's true, people don't have a "decent shot" at a good eduction. What are the provisions of the project for the training of teachers and the community on educational use of the laptops? I have heard nothing about this vital part of the project---in fact, this is more important than the technology itself. Who are the people developing the educational software, and do they have experience in schools in the third world? Do they know the needs and desires of the people who the laptops are targeting? Or are they Western-trained, imparting our way of schooling and teaching into places where it might not be appropriate? While you say elsewhere on this page that this is not a "laptop project", all of the talks I've heard so far focus entirely on the technology to the detriment of the educational tools. I need to hear plans for how this will be used, concrete plans, even if those plans might change, in order to be convinced that this project will succeed. For the easy part is the technology; the social implications, and embedding of this new technology into an existing system, is the hard part. ---nak

In Canada for many years, the Unitarian Service Committee ran public service announcements on television soliciting donations to help feed hungry people in the Third World. The slogan of these commercials was Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. The OLPC project follows this philosophy that you can feed more people, more effectively by providing effective educational tools to the people. This is based on the experience of Bangladesh's Grameen Bank and similar Third World investment projects. The OLPC project is really a special type of microfinance project that supplies a tool rather than cash.

In one instance, a poor Bangladeshi villager borrowed enough money to purchase a mobile phone. He sold phone-calling services in his village for a fee. This was the first time that villagers had access to a telephone at any price. They quickly realized that they could offset the cost of using his phone by phoning to nearby towns to find out where their produce could get the best price. This gave them a higher earning ability, which led to better life all round for their family. The extra money that they earned was partly spent inside the village further increasing other villagers quality of life.

These events were repeated a thousand fold as Grameen Bank loaned money for mobile phone purchase in villages across the country. The OLPC is expected to have a similar multiplier effect by increasing the educational level of disadvantaged people which will, in turn, increase the number of teachers available to the next generation.

How will the success of the project be gauged?

This is really a very broad ranging question because different parties to the project will have different standards. In the end, the success will be measured by an overall rise in educational outcomes in the countries where the OLPC is used.

Is this project really about getting computers to kids?

The answer is an unequivocal yes! But it doesn't stop there. We also want to get millions of textbooks to kids and give them an excellent education as well. This is an education project, not a laptop project.

Child is a nebulous term; what is the exact age range you are targeting?

We are hoping to reach elementary and secondary-school-age children: ages 6 to 18 years.