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A View From Inside the OLPC Project

Posted by kdawson on from the there-has-to-be-a-way-to-scale-this dept.

icknay writes "Here's an interesting rant on the OLPC from someone who worked there, including: 'The core mistake of the present Sugar approach is that it couples phenomenally powerful ideas about learning — that it should be shared, collaborative, peer to peer, and open — with the notion that these ideas must come presented in an entirely new graphical paradigm. We reject this coupling as untenable. Choosing to reinvent the desktop UI paradigm means we are spending our extremely over-constrained resources fighting graphical interfaces, not developing better tools for learning.' I have an OLPC, and the OS itself seems quite unfinished. I buy the argument that it would be better to focus on Sugar as educational software, and let it run on Linux, Windows, whatever."

2 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. Overheard from a reporter embedded in OLPC by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

    "help! I'm stuck! Someone open the case!"

  2. unintended consequences by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Within 5 years, every one of these OLPCs will be a node in a Beowulf-cluster spamming network run by a new generation of Jedi 419 scammers. I have seen the future, and it is a nefarious cloud of ugly green plastic that needs to borrow $2,000 to release its family millions from Mugu National Bank.

    GREAT JOB GUYS