Negroponte's Talk at Emerging Technology Conference

xacting writes "The video of Nicholas Negroponte's talk about MIT's One Laptop per Child (OLPC) research initiative was just posted to MIT World. In it, he discusses the challenges of tripling the world's laptop production, dealing with China's policies towards free speech and the problems of grey markets." From the article: "The key to churning out these cheap educational devices is volume -- and the more countries that join the bandwagon, the sleeker and less expensive the computers are likely to be. Negroponte casts a wary eye on the potential grey market appeal of the machines, and is determined to make them so distinctive as a government-distributed, educational tool that taking one would 'be like stealing a post office truck.' Negroponte concludes, 'Changing education on the planet is a monumental challenge,' taking decades. But OLPC will 'seed the change,' and help 'invent the future.'"

Comments

So... wait a minute, this sounds familiar

[Servo]

Give an infinite number of poor kids an infinite number of cheap laptops and given an infinite number of time typing randomly they will recreate the works of Shakespeare?

Just because someone is smart and comes from a top engineering school doesn't mean everything they say is golden. This guy is a serious liberal crackpot.

hey needs early adopters and a support base

[Yonder Way]

We need a first wave of these devices ASAP in the hands of the free software community to sort out the capabilities of the device and then create a software base for it that will be useful for its intended purpose. It's going to be a tough sell until then.

I can just see some gummint beauracrat in Turdistahn trying to figure out why he should spend a billion dollars on these things when his country's GDP is half of that, and he won't know what to do with these things once he has them.