OLPC myths

Myths

Separated by "False" and "Falsehood" (inaccuracies) misunderstandings, and other responses where appropriate.

The laptop does not have internal storage such as a hard drive.

False: The laptop has about 512MB of internal Flash memory similar to the inexpensive thumb drives sold at many computer stores. Operating systems can be installed and/or files can be saved on this memory. The laptop also has USB ports for external hard drives; so internal Flash storage can be used for the OS and some file storage, and common external USB drives can take up the slack if needed.

The laptop will be really clunky with a hand crank on the side

The hand crank was there in early prototypes but the actual shipping units will use an off-board human-power system, connected to the power brick. Candidates include a foot-pedal charger similar to the Freecharge portable charger.

You're expecting this to be a magic bullet for poverty.

False: Not at all. It is simply a tool for education and communication and only helps, in part, in contributing to the entirety of aid programs where these laptops are distributed. Nevertheless it provides access to education, health, technology, economic opportunity, and more, and a few children will be able pull themselves out of poverty with no other assistance.

The laptop isn't powerful enough to run modern 3D games and other resource-heavy programs such as video-editing software.

True but irrelevant: That's not the purpose of this laptop. It is designed to be an inexpensive way for people of limited means to use a computer for such things as internet and simple educational software. The choice is not currently between this system and a more capable one. It is between this and nothing. This is better. [What programs the laptop will run well is more about how well the program is written than the functionality of the program, e.g., the laptop will have little forgiveness for programs with memory leaks.]

The proposed $100 machine will be Linux-based

It is true that the first prototypes will run a slimmed down version of Fedora Core (http://fedoraproject.org) with the Sugar user interface produced by Red Hat (http://redhat.com), however other systems have also been considered and could be loaded later.

An old Pentium laptop can do the same thing.

False: The point of this laptop is to keep people connected with the modern computer net-based society. Using a laptop that may be on its way to obsolescence from a second-hand store, or building new expensive Pentium laptops for this purpose isn't feasible. You have to design something specifically to answer all the requirements of the $100 laptop. If we could make a reliable $2 laptop that is modern and can do everything required of it in our program, we would absolutely make such a device. Another problem with the "old- or used-computer" approach is that it doesn't scale. The overhead of deployment and support would overshadow any potential economies in terms of the capital costs.

You're forcing this on poverty stricken areas that need food, water and housing rather than a laptop.

Falsehood: Not at all. Like it was said earlier, this is only a tool and should not be seen as more than that. We agree that other more urgent matters must be attended to before you insert high tech into the situation of poverty. (Not everybody agrees with that idea. Some think that access to the Net is the fastest way for poor people to get the political clout to require their governments to provide services to them. Or to get the education for real jobs that take them out of poverty completely. Or access to innovative technologies for providing food, water, clothing, shelter, energy, etc.) But we believe education and communication with the modern world to be important as well. Food, water, clothing and other necessities come first. Nevertheless, a world view and good education can do wonders for a child's mind and continued health.

This isn't a laptop. This is a gadget.

Falsehood: What does this mean? To call it a "gadget" implies that this is nothing more than a toy or an insignificant object of interest. Can a commercially available PDA do better? Highly unlikely. Can a cell phone do better? Why waste a cell phone that may not have the needed features in an effort to avoid designing something to really solve these problems? This is not to say that others can't come up with better ideas; we encourage it. In the strictest utilitarian sense our hope is that this technology we call a laptop can do much more than mere gadgetry. And we're confident it can.

You can't use a laptop in a place that might not have power.

False: If the laptop comes with a method of inexpensive self-contained rechargeable power, such as wind-up power that lasts a good long time, this is not true. [We are aiming for a minimum of a 1:10 ratio between time put into human-powering and reading the eBook, i.e., one minute of cranking gives you ten minutes of reading.] You might be surprised at the number and variety of energy sources available in poor countries, including solar, wind, water, bicycle, animal, biomass, etc.

It is not made of recyclable components

Well, we don't know about how recyclable it is. Presumably it's made out of similar components as your average laptop. If lost or broken and thrown away it would be preferable that the parts break down safely and non-persistently in the environment. However that brings with it reliability concerns as well. And reliability concerns can contribute to first impressions and bad first impressions can be bad for a non-profit program. However, this is still a very important issue to be explored and may be addressed through announcement or revision. [We are striving to make the machine "green"; many of the details are not yet worked out, but we do know that this laptop will be approximately an order-of-magnitude more energy efficient than the typical laptop.]

It will contribute to the landfills worldwide if made in vast quantities

We hope that is not true. If the program is run well by governments all or most laptops will be accounted for. No doubt some laptops will find their way into trash bins and garbage dumps, where there are strong financial incentives for almost all of them to be reclaimed. Will broken laptops be brought back and recycled or parted out for new laptops (refurbished)? Hopefully. And hopefully distribution and reclamation will be conducted in a responsible manner.

If others are coming up with their own ideas then there must be something inherently wrong with your idea.

Falsehood: Not so. Like mentioned earlier, if other groups and businesses come up with their own ideas then we encourage it. That doesn't automatically put a value judgement on competing ideas. Some ideas or projects may have strengths and weaknesses that others do not. We can only learn from each other to better each other's ideas and we hope we will in the spirit of goodwill towards those who need it. But what we hope this does not turn into is petty rivalry and cutthroat politics in business that is not conducive to a cause we happen to champion.

This laptop will do more harm than good.

How so?: If it's simply a tool as water purifying machines are tools, how will it harm the people it's intended to help? If you're talking about the digital divide in most places where this program may be instituted, think on that a minute. If this laptop does what it's intended to do it can only open avenues to better close that divide. If you're talking about the environment, read the entries on that further up the list. Or do you think that these laptops will, for example, destroy languages and cultures? Hardly. Even now, minority languages that seemed to be dying out, such as Hawai'ian, Welsh and Irish Gaelics, and Yiddish are coming back. Why wouldn't that work for languages of Africa or Asia? These laptops will provide unequalled opportunities for saving once endangered aspects of civilization and bring them to the attention and consideration of the entire world community. This is what we generally mean by "communication" and this laptop can only help, not hinder, in the achievement of this goal.

A technology is never "simply a tool". Technology is never neutral; it embeds within its design the desires, assumptions, and beliefs of its maker. Thus the development of the laptop contains within it a particular Western view of how people learn and how society should be run. Do we want to undertake this form of technological imperialism when, as you've said, there are many languages and cultures that seem to be "dying out"? Given that the laptop, at least in the forms that I've seen, uses an English-style keyboard, I cannot see how its use will help revive dying languages. As well, I would contend that the need to close the "digital divide" is still debatable; can we not imagine another world that is not so infused with technology? Something that is developed from the bottom-up, instead of outside influences coming in with some sort of top-down, imposed program. ---nak

Why this hasn't been done before is because there must be a very good reason against it.

False: All things have a beginning. And not doing things just because others before you haven't done those things is no reason not to do them or make excuses why not to do them. Most likely because possible previous attempts have failed (presumably) is because the right technology just wasn't there to begin with. Now we have technology that is cheap enough and available enough to attempt something of this magnitude. That's how it's always been. We are trying to "stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before us" and learn from their mistakes, and we have had to invent somethings new to bypass some of well-known pitfalls of such a project. This evolution of technology based on Moore's Law. The evolution of the epistomology--recall that this is a learning project--is based on 40 years of research into technology and learning. Eventually the written word spread across the globe and obviously was developed as civilization developed. It had to start somewhere with someone. Same with technology and its eventual seeming ubiquity.