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OLPC Wins Popular Science Award
paulmac84 writes "Popular Science has released their Best of What's New 2006 awards. In the computing section the One Laptop Per Child project took home the Grand Prize. From the article: 'The goal of the XO is simple and noble: to give every child a laptop, especially in developing countries, where the machines will be sold in bulk for about $130 apiece. But the One Laptop Per Child nonprofit, formed at MIT, didn't just create a cheap computer. In addition to cutting costs — by designing lower-priced circuitry and using an open-source operating system, among other things — it also improved on the standard laptop by slashing the machine's energy use by 90 percent, ideal for a device that could be charged by hand-cranked power in rural villages.' The Innovation of The Year Award went to 'the alpha nail that makes your home twice as tough'. Sometimes the simple ideas really are the best."
For 130 dollars you can probably immunize a child against most contagious diseases.
It'd be nice to see some of the cost cutting ideas carry over to computers sold over here; I'm by no means poor enough or remote enough (or young enough for that matter) to qualify for olpc, but at the same time, the idea of sufficiently upgrading my current system has been well outside my grasp for some time now.
... looks a lot like that (c) Colornagel.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
How about we give them computers, so they can learn how to make their own wells?
Exactly. Hell, laptops don't even seem to help students in industrial nations. One of my cousins goes to a private school (in Sydney) where every student is required to have a laptop, from what he says everyone just uses them to waste time gaming :p. I go to the university of Sydney and suprisingly few people carry laptops around. Nobody in my 3rd year physics classes does, and only one (out of 20 or so) in my computational physics class does. However, USYD has ready access to computing facilities for all the students anyway, perhaps if that wasn't supplied students would feel more of a need for their own laptop.
One of the things we need to realise is that we use computers mainly as tools for dealing with a modern world. We need to do banking, so many of us use internet banking, many shop online because the service is available, we type reports on computers because we're involved in work/studies which require them. None of these things are required by a mostly agricultural society attempting to exist without enough clean drinking water.
OLPC is a great idea, but only because the people who came up with it exists in a world where laptops are a usefull tool. If you want to help their education send them books. I've heard reports form people working on a Christian missionary ship the Doulos and quite often when they arrive in a poor country teachers will go to the ships bookshop and whatever they've got end up being that year's material.
Anyway, there's probably someone on Earth who will benefit from OLPC, and it seems a lot of good engineering was achieved through the project, but I believe it's too early for it to be usefull to most of its intended audience.
A late stage beta system (full display, case and hardware) is being built as we speak. The first 1000 machines will be in hands of developers, test countries and the like before the end of the month.
.. writes a furious letter to Popular Science, complaining that this is giving children access to violent video games and that he's personally go round to each child's house and stomp on their laptops?
Yes, but what do we do for the villages that already have wells? Do we let them wait until our global hunt for the last village without a well has finished?
Ewige Blumenkraft.
Give the laptops to the girl children and point out some websites about emancipation, human rights and birth control!
That would be a big step in solving one of the biggest problems humanity faces.
And it would realy annoy the fundamentalists...
Are these laptops edible? Do they come with anti-theft protection?
I understand and agree with the point that many of the places where these are going already have fresh water, food, etc. and investments in education are absolutely critical to their growth. But how are laptops really going to help at all? Computers are magical educational devices. You need good teachers for computers to be effective at all in the classroom. I don't know how much training teachers in these countries have using computers as educational tools. And then, why not just have a few shared computers? I don't think there's a single Western country that even approaches one laptop per child, and that's because they aren't the alpha and omega of education like some think them to be.
The well and the computer are not mutually exclusive. (Unless the kids in the village decide to throw the computer down the well, of course.)
Actually, I think that's termed inclusivity.
"If you want to help their education send them books."
Isn't something like OLPC the perfect medium for distributing books? Instead of one book in that volume of space, dump hundreds or thousands on it. Suddenly distributing useful books to the world becomes much easier.
People go on about how useless these would be to the average third world person. But combined with some basic education and the proper set of software, these could be the most incredibly useful things concieved of. Health problems? Pull up the medical journals/textbooks stored on the OLPC. Agricultural Problems? Pull up information on farming, wells, animal husbandry, etc.
The way PopSci described the laptops, they're low power tools that don't share a whole awful lot in common with what your average slashgeek thinks of when you say the word "laptop". But as the parent poster alluded to, they make an absolutely perfect way to get useful information to the third world in a very widespread way.
Most poor do not live in rural villages. Estimates put around 1 billion of them into suburban slums. So they can buy water and food if they have money. But the rampant lack of it means no one has interests to protect against those who thrive from the situation, i.e. gangs. What these people need most is some means of income that doesn't involve crime and, chiefly, is accessible to a larger fraction of the population than just the mobile, young, single males who work as day-laborers downtown. I.e. they need some viable economy, and while they don't need to compete with the big inner-city businesses, they need to be strong enough to warrant some police protection and allow some resistance against gang rule.
I do think processing power is an important part of that, because it makes possible small businesses and social organization (unions, churches, even soccer leagues), thus creating a stable society where it plainly doesn't exist now. Most significantly, masses of laptops are more likely than individual valuable items (like wells) to escape seizure and monopolization by those with the means to just take things. Even if One Laptop Per Child only allowed teenagers to mass-produce copies of current movies and sell them downtown, that's a move into the direction of equal distribution of wealth, and a stable society.
blow your mind already
I am really tired of this argument. Of course its geek thinking the people who thought of it are geeks, so they're using the expertise they have to help out. If your a doctor than stop bitching and use your expertise to help out in some different way.
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
AFAIK, guys from linuxbios (I'm lurking their mailing list) already have it.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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There are "A-test" out in circulation. About 500 in the world. B-test boards are pretty rare (relatively) and are mostly in the lab still. The full laptops betas (case, display, etc) are being assembled for the first time this month.
The A-test board is likely what LinuxBIOS has, because b-test and the new systems are using an OpenFirmware-based solution.
From second TFA: finally, a tape that no hooker can break!
Sorry, I saw Borat tonight, I'm a little punchy.
If all my base are belong to you and I attempt to retrieve my base, does that mean I'm freebasing?
Yup, I understand that some people think OLPC will make for a better world. But this is geek thinking. However for the poor in rural villages, there's much more need for more basic things like clean water and other non-geeky needs.
In the short term, this is true, and those sorts of needs can't be ignored, but things like the OLPC project are aimed more at the long term. If we don't give these countries the intellectual resources to become self-sufficient and use their natural resources well, then the western world will have to keep on supplying clean water and vaccinations for the next couple centuries. Of course, you need to strike a balance in order to make sure there are people left in these countries by the time the long-term charities take effect, but you certainly can't claim that long-term projects don't do any good.
OK, here's a question that occurs to me.
It looks to me like a good deal of money and effort is going into this OLPC project. It's non-profit, but presumably people are being paid for their time, and manufacturing so much hardware must cost a lot.
Was this project preceded by a published study that shows that this is the best way to spend all that money in order to benefit the intended recipients? Or did the people running this project just decide to "do computers" because that was the field they happened to be working in?
Funny how these 100$ systems don't seem like the type to take tons of time loading. I remember 13 years ago watching Doom II install on a mac and take an hour and half more or less. With what a person who has never done computing might do it'd seem blazing fast and like a movie.
This argument is repeated over and over again. Yes, there is no doubt there is a need for clean water in many areas of the world, but there is also a need for education and basic access to information technology. Why is there a problem that some people are trying to mitigate the second problem? It is not like we don't have enough resources to do both -- if we really wanted to, and there weren't a lot of political and sociological problems impeding it.
There are endless other places where we throw away resources that could have been used to help people in need. The OLPC project isn't exactly the first I would complain about.
So, why are these laptops different? Because of two fundamental things. First, no money is being given to Third World governments, only the technology to use the investment. Second, computers give poor people something they need much more than clean water: information and education.
After all, it's not like cheap water purifiers don't exist. With a computer they can buy their water purifier online for the equivalent of less than US$18.
Look at Grameen Bank, whose founder just won the nobel peace prize. It provides micro-loans so people can start businesses, etc. The guy started with 27 dollars but now Grameen Bank has millions and millions of outstanding loans. How did he manage it? He didn't go, "oh, these people need water. Here's 27 dollars, go get yourself some water." He said, "how do provide the poor with opportunities to make more money?" So he gets more money because from the interest on his loans and he is then able to provide more loans. In 20-something years he has helped 40 million people move away from poverty.
That's what this laptop has the potential to do -- give people education, IT training, and access to the world that will allow them to help themselves. There was an article (I even think it was on slashdot) long ago about how a man had setup a kiosk next to his office somewhere in India and, within days, the local kids were proficient in using it. That kind of computer access provides you with computer skills (which are necessary for employment in the 21st century) and with information to feed curious minds.
What's really exciting is that it's a piece of technology that is built with the underdeveloped world in mind. It doesn't depend on the kinds of infrastructure we're used to, like having system admins available and having reliable power. That's why it has automatic ad-hoc network setup and a foot pedal to provide power when the power goes out. For too long people have assumed the rest of the world needs the same exact technology we need. Or, if they need something different, they need some junky crap from the past. The reality is that they need just as modern stuff, just with different considerations. Look at Motorola's Motofone -- uses e-ink to keep power usage down (since power is unreliable around the world so you can't charge your battery as much.) Even has an accessory to attach to your bike wheel to charge it.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
You can ...you're aware that vaccination is centuries-old technology, right?
-immunize 100 children against those diseases
OR
-give 100 people the ability to access, share and store enough information that they can learn how to develop vaccines themselves, and immunize as many as they need to, not only against currently-known diseases but many others that could crop up...
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
- on the PopSci.com website because they're encoded with proprietary codecs... When will web designers decide to publish using open formats? I'm straying from the topic, but is there a favorite video format for us to rally around? Flash is nice, but also proprietary - has anyone used the Democracy Player http://www.getdemocracy.com/?
Yes, Children need housing, food, water, medical care, parenting, etc.
Nobody has ever argued against this.
But children also need an education.
They need it, their communities need for them to be educated, as a global society we need them to be educated.
Furthermore, not all developing nation children are starving refugees in camps. Many are rural children living in stable housing, going to school part of the time. Or urban children in comparable circumstances, with water & food but facing little upward mobility.
The OLPC projct is a way of getting these children tools. Electronic texts. Texts that they can download for free. Text in their native languages. Reference texts, ones they can use to apply to their, and their families, lives. It's about providing them with spreadsheets and a basic mathematics curriculum. The latest news in their communities, in their languages. It's about them communicating with their peers. It's about browsing the web and learning about the world beyond their immediate view.
The budget for educating these children is typically small, often less then US$20/year.
The OLPC project is a way of stretching that money, by delivering a tool that can read many things, updated, freely, throughout a community. It will focus attention on children and education in their communities. The children will have, for the first time, a tool they can use to make their own materials, to share with their peers & parents & teachers, and to pass on to the children after them.
I'd have thought the /. community would understand the importance of access to tools one can learn with, build with, get into and interact with, finding other folks passionate about the same areas of interest. What has driven /.'ers also drives developing world children.
It's an experiment. But it's an experiment based on solid research that has gone on before it. The goal is not usurping funds for other priorities but building on local and international resources to provide the children with a multiple use tool that can they & their communities can use to directly address their educational needs.
I know it is asking a lot of some /. posters, but before mindlessly posting with complaints about what you think the OLPC is about how about investing 5 minutes into going their websites and learning about the research that has gone before it and the thinking that has gone into it.
Oh, and this isn't only for developing world children, also the children of Massachusetts.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:EToys_-_new_displa y.jpg
Logging in and running X (or equivalent) as root.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
The children of Massachusetts need food, clean water, and shelter before they need $100 laptops! Many children on the mean streets of Wellesley, MA die of starvation or exposure every day, or join local warlords as child soldiers so they can get a few scraps to feed themselves. How are these laptops going to help them?
-A MA resident
Obviously if they have electricity to charge and use the laptops they are gonna have Water. Most of you people think most 3rd world countries dont have food/water. Well they do, or they would be dead. You got this image in your head from what they feed you on TV. Donate to X chartiy to save Y kids from dying due to lack of water. Im not saying that everyone does have access to clean water. But im sure if they have televisions and microwave ovens then they got water. The next step is to boost these kids education through the use of computers.
The point is that they'll be able to read slashdot and be just as ejumacated as YOU!
No sig today...
A couple of things to remember:
It's powered by a hand crank. That's why they had to cut the power consumption by 90%.
Nobody in the so-called 'developed' world would buy one of these. Read the specs.
One of the concurrent avenues of program development was in open-source e-textbooks. The recipients of these machines will be getting an ebook reader with a whole scholastic curriculum and then some. It can hit the net, but most of these places won't have net access for quite a while.
Incidentally, packet radio is seeing an upswing in Africa. Since the machines are using Linux, they have kernel support for such devices. Thanks, Linus, for having the foresight to not throw out any useful bits of code.
-1 raving lunatic; +6 subGenius... Things even out...