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 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.