Negroponte On OLPC's New Path, Plans For XO 3

waderoush writes "After laying off staff and splitting the organization in two, Nicholas Negroponte and the One Laptop Per Child effort may be hitting their stride again. In an interview with Xconomy, Negroponte says he has a new model for getting XO laptops to kids in Gaza and Afghanistan — and reveals more ideas about the planned XO 3 tablet and the future of books. 'Paper books are really dead — they're gone. And they're not being killed by tablets, they're creating tablets,' he says."

Comments

I like paper books

[Nursie]

And seeing as I have no tablet or kindle or iPad or nook or whatever the hell, I shall keep reading them.

From my cold dead hands Mr Negroponte.

Re:I like paper books

[DeadDecoy]

I actually like both for aesthetic reasons. If it's for leisure reading a book can be cheap and easy to pack away. If it's for art, having a giant-sized coffee book with glossy pictures is nice too. However, if it's for work, I find it's useful to have both. The computer can keep track of the pdfs I accumulate better (citations, sorting, categorization, searching, etc) while printed-out paper offers a nicer form-factor for writing notes and really digging into the text. I'm guess though, that I'll start using ereaders, as opposed to laptops, when the newer generation of devices comes out: lighter, with color, capacitive touch, and a very good battery life.
I imagine though, that this is how the apocalypse starts: we all convert to ereaders, and a galactic EMP knocks out all our electronic literature.

Re:I like paper books

[arth1]

I like both too, but for technical reasons.

With an e-book, I can tap a word and get a dictionary entry for it. And I never run out of bookmarks. And I can read in the dark.
Not to mention carry 250 books in my pocket.

With a real book, I most of all never have to worry about whether the format it's in will be supported ten or twenty years down the road. The only hardware requirements are eyes and hands, and the only software requirement is a brain, neither of which will go out of style in my lifetime.
And I can lend it to whoever I want, or even sell it.
Finally, depending on the paper quality, it has other uses too, which an e-book never will be able to help with.

a visionary

[RapmasterT]

"'Paper books are really dead — they're gone. And they're not being killed by tablets, they're creating tablets,' he says.""

He sounds totally rooted in reality to me.

Focus!

[WrongSizeGlass]

OLPC needs to reel in its ambitions and focus on something it can deliver as promised. These guys are starting to corner the market in low cost vaporware and pipe dreams.

Re:Focus!

[cgenman]

To be fair, when the OLPC program was announced, a laptop less than $600 was considered absurd. But the threat of the OLPC program lit a fire under Intel, and created their low cost platform initiative. Negroponte, in many ways, is responsible for the $200 netbook that I'm typing this on right now.

He seems aware of this phenomenon, when he says that threatening to build a $100 tablet may be enough to spur private industry to build a $100 tablet. He's learning.

I don't know. The OLPC project is basically founded on dreams and whimsy, but has become very real very quickly. They seem to be much more savvy now than when they started. I'm willing to give them a learning curve, especially with how grounded the XO 3 project seems compared to XO 2 or XO 1.

delivery by cluster bomb

[name_already_taken]

Seriously, why doesn't paste work in this stupid box any more? (Google Chrome 6.0.472.63, btw)

Anyway

Negroponte says he has a new model for getting XO laptops to kids in Gaza and Afghanistan

Now you see why the US didn't sign on to the treaty banning cluster bombs - they are planning to use them to deliver XO laptops.

It's cheaper, faster, and much safer for the delivery person.

I used a book today

[Mprx]

First I had to get up and retrieve it from its special storage shelf. I was surprised at how heavy it was. It didn't have any search functionality, so I had to manually find the index, and then find my search term in the index. The pages didn't have any backlighting, so I had to move it to face the light so I could read it easily. The contrast ratio was rather poor. Most of the words in the book were not indexed at all, but luckily my search term was present. I couldn't click it, and I had to manually find the correct page again. There wasn't any highlighting either, so I had to manually search the page too. I read my information, and them put the book back onto its storage shelf where it uses a ridiculously huge amount of space.

On the plus side, the resolution was high, but that's not enough to make up for all the other annoyances. Books are obsolete.

Re:I used a book today

[oldspewey]

Another large annoyance with paper books: when Amazon goes out of business (or changes their T&C), they will send squads of armed goons into your home to rifle through your bookshelves and remove all the books you ever bought from them.

Re:Exactly: Paper books are like vinyl records

[Coeurderoy]

Well, my first reactio was similar, but living in a 3rd world country where access to book is diffucult and "piracy" normal (including on books) I think he might be "righter" than we think.

Currently there are "roughtly" 1 billion people living in countries where the majority reads at least "some" and 5 billion who live in counties where only a minority reads.
(nb: of course india, china, etc have great literature, and la hogera in santa cruz is trying very hard to get good interesting local writers to the local market, but the realitly is that the wast majority of people in emerging countries do not read for "fun", they read if they are ordered to by their employers...., because:
If you are poor and a "cheap low quality pirated book" cost 4 to 5 hours of work you will not offer 100 hours of work every year to your child, so the child will not connect "reading with fun" (exept the statistical "lucky" one outlier)).

Moreover there is little avaiability of recent outside book (a hard cover foreign book can cost about 50% of a basic montly salary).
So execpt the pirated copies of some blockbusters made popular by pirated copies of foreign movies, you do not read recent foreign books (softcover classics are about the end of it).

But "everybody" has access to computers (mostly of course in cyber cafés)
and most students use pirated PDF's of school books, not just because they cannot affort the 30..40$+ * 10..20 they would need, but because:
Amazon do not deliver in many 3rd world countries
and other providers can take up to 2 month to get the book to you (assuming you have an internationally valid credit card)
and the local bookshop are not very efficient (or just would not bother because they know you will hassle them when they ask 3..4 time the "amazon" price because they have to pay: the book, the transport the customs (40%)..

So ebooks are the best way to get books to these 5B people

And in 10..15 years we might see that 80% of the population reads about 50% with a 90/10 cut for ebooks and 20% will have a 30/70 cut because they only use it for brain sugar and techno books, but at the end ===> more ebooks than books, and more "influence"

   

The machine that never was

[Ranger]

As long as Negroponte remains in charge of his baby the OLPC will never really take off. Eventually iPad technology will become cheap enough for the Third World. Too bad we have to wait for that to happen.