Former OLPC CTO Aims to Create $75 Laptop

theodp writes "Mary Lou Jepsen, who left her One Laptop Per Child CTO gig on Dec. 31st, has reemerged with her sights set on a $75 laptop that will be designed by her new company, Pixel Qi, which is described as a 'spin-out' from OLPC. In a Groklaw interview, Jepsen calls for 'a $50-75 laptop in the next 2-3 years' and says it's time to go Crazy-Eddie on touchscreen prices as well." This is probably good news to Bruce Perens, who thinks that the recent report of Microsoft's dual-boot XO project (with Windows as well as the Linux-based Sugar OS) is a feint driven by Microsoft's fear of "the entire third world learning Linux as children." Update: 01/10 21:22 GMT by T : ChelleChelle adds a link to an excellent interview with Jepsen in the ACM Queue, in which she discusses OLPC and some of the technologies it contains.

Comments

How about a DS?

[sootman]

I think this guy has a lot of good points. (Just skip halfway down past the ranty bits. :-) )

The Nintendo DS...

• It's cheap. ($129... and I'm sure if you order 150 million Nintendo will cut you a deal.)
• It's power-efficient. (Easily lasts 14 hours on a single charge, even with the screen bright enough to be seen in direct sunlight.. there's even a hand-crank charger!)
• It's a computer. (All advantages to be gained by giving a young child a laptop are also gained by giving a child a DS. Just by using a DS they'll become confident and "fluent" in the use of technology, and future "real" computer use will come much much easier. Worked for me!)
• It's got wi-fi. (In fact, it even does ad-hoc networking, and allows downloading content from one host DS to all the others.. just the teacher could have the lesson plan on their DS and wirelessly beam it to all the students at the start of each class!)
• It's rugged. (Nintendo's been making toys for actual children for over 100 years and Game Boys have survived actual wars.)
• It's powerful enough. (If it can handle Mario Kart tournaments, it can handle Multipli Kation tables.)
• It's small and has a touch screen. (Like the iPhone. Just like laptops have replaced the desktop, in the future ever smaller portable electronics will replace the laptop. Why teach on antiquated technology?)
• It's forward-compatible. (Nintendo's portable systems have very long life cycles. Any software you write for the DS will very likely still be runable on the hardware they're selling in a decade.)
• Children love it. (You want a teaching tool that's "fun to use?" You want a teaching tool that's "collaborative" You've hit "the jackpot.")
• It's a world-wide standard. (Over 53 MILLION have been sold already. The platform has thousands of developers. The future leaders of the developed world are growing up playing Nintendo DS.. why give the future leaders of the developing world anything less?)
• It's already used for education. (Millions use their DS to learn a language, develop logic skills, practice cooking, learn math, read books, research, and browse the web every day!)

Unable to imagine does not create anything

[symbolset]

OLPC is good enough to access content like MIT Open Courseware. Expanding access to content like that from what was previously available to these kids is just amazing.

There are a lot of brilliant people in the world who, for lack of access to good education cannot realise their potential. I would prefer that your lack of imagination not prevent them. We are going to need them.

I would also prefer that the next billion people to come online in the digital age not be burning 300 watts each to support Microsoft bloatware. That's a lot of carbon for no real benefit.

Re:If we're going to go that cheap...

[Kadin2048]

At any rate, since computers started to become superfluous in the West I have NOT noticed that people became more educated, happy, employed, etc (I'm sure those ppl still making big $$$ in the IT field would disagree). Yep, a shift in jobs for some people, and easier to do some second-hand research; but overall (unless you are a Gamer) I wouldn't say it has had a dramatic effect (for the better) on people's lives. I'm not sure whether there's been much of a real "happiness" benefit (although I have no idea how you'd really quantify happiness -- "how happy are you, on a scale of 1 to 10"?), but computers have contributed real productivity gains to the U.S. economy, which in general have helped to expand purchasing power. Plus there are a lot of fringe benefits. (Probably far exceeding the real productivity gains, which are difficult to measure and engender lots of argument based on the methodology.)

Joe Worker may not care much about 'computers' either way, but he can now make long distance phone calls for a fraction of what they cost a few decades ago. I suspect within a generation, the idea of "long distance" phone calls being different from "local" ones will probably be lost on the young, if it hasn't been already. And there are cellphones, which except for very rural areas I don't think you can say haven't had an impact.

And even beyond that, there's all the goods that you can buy down at your local MegaMart or even grocery store. One of the only reasons you can buy so much cheap stuff from halfway around the globe is because of logistics and supply chains that have been honed to razor-thin margins by computer models, managed using computers, and operated over information networks. Huge amounts of global trade are only feasible because of computerization. And that doesn't even get into the personal-communication and leisure activities that are only possible because of them.

Of course, some people will always argue that technology and development haven't done anything to promote "happiness," and perhaps we'd all be better off if we'd never developed agriculture in the first place. But to me, that represents a lot of second-guessing (from the very cushy armchair of modern civilization) of decisions made by our long-dead ancestors, who have felt at every step of the way that new technologies were a benefit and chose to implement them.

So: will giving computers to poor nations necessarily make them happier? I've no idea. I also don't know if it necessarily will make them richer or more educated -- that really has more to do with how the computers are used, than the computers themselves. But without computers they're going to be kept out of a vast amount of the economy, and that will almost certainly assure that they're poor. They aren't a guarantee of anything, but they seem quite absolutely necessary as a starting condition to have much of a shot at all.

Re:If we're going to go that cheap...

[Beardo the Bearded]

I'm an Engineer.

I was not allowed to use a programmable or graphing calculator on any exams. I used a Sharp EL-546 for my scholastic career. It was about $25. For that, I got matrix solutions, simpson's rule, algebraic substitution, polar and rectangular vector calculations, stats, function recall (so you can go back) and a bunch of other goodies.

At work, I do not use a "graphing" calculator. I use that old sharp (or calc.exe) for the few minor calculations that I have to do. For anything else, I use the simulation programs on the computer.

Really, who uses a calculator for anything important? You get the right tool for the job. As far as I'm concerned, using a graphing calculator instead of a sim (or RW tests) is the same as using a wristwatch.

Re:If we're going to go that cheap...

[ZorbaTHut]

I've never had my DS, PSP, XBox 360, PS2, Wii, or Gamecube crash. Ever. And I've used each one of those systems more than I've ever used a graphing calculator . . . and curiously enough, I have had my TI-81 crash. Lost all its saved data too.

Modern technology doesn't imply frequent crashing. Modern technology and complex code doesn't even imply frequent crashing. I have no doubt that you could build a cheap graphing calculator on a 400mhz XScale chip, with maybe 128mb of storage, with a full GUI and a hierarchical filesystem, just as stable as they used to be.

Probably based on Linux.