The Verge:
In late 2005, tech visionary and MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte pulled the cloth cover off a small green computer with a bright yellow crank. The device was the first working prototype for Negroponte’s new nonprofit One Laptop Per Child, dubbed “the green machine” or simply “the $100 laptop.”
And:
The $100 laptop would have all the features of an ordinary computer but require so little electricity that a child could power it with a hand crank. It would be rugged enough for children to use anywhere, instead of being limited to schools.
Rugged. Cheap. And powered by a crank. Got it.
Then, Negroponte and Annan rose for a photo-op with two OLPC laptops, and reporters urged them to demonstrate the machines’ distinctive cranks. Annan’s crank handle fell off almost immediately. As he quietly reattached it, Negroponte managed half a turn before hitting the flat surface of the table. He awkwardly raised the laptop a few inches, trying to make space for a full rotation. “Maybe afterwards…” he trailed off, before sitting back down to field questions from the crowd.
The moment was brief, but it perfectly foreshadowed how critics would see One Laptop Per Child a few years later: as a flashy, clever, and idealistic project that shattered at its first brush with reality.
I do remember this moment of idealistic promise, the $100 laptop that would change the world. I remember a thought of how, if this dream shipped in quantity, it would disrupt the entire laptop market.
Maybe my favorite bit of the story:
A Linux-based operating system would give kids total access to the computer — OLPC had reportedly turned down an offer of free Mac OS X licenses from Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs, hedging his bets. Smart.
[H/T Robert Walter]
“I remember a thought of how, if this dream shipped in quantity, it would disrupt the entire laptop market.”
And I remember my thought of, “No way this makes it to market like this…” 🙂
Yes, that hand crank idea was abandoned, as were other features that OLPC touted as fully achieved. Try explaining that to some poor government functionary who’d lobbied his struggling government to fund this boondoggle.
“Thirteen years ago, OLPC told the world that every child should get a laptop. It never stopped to prove that they needed one.”
Tech utopianism strikes again. This is similar thinking to what we saw when some tech weenie in San Francisco trained a homeless man to code and figured that alone would fix everything in his life.
Negroponte was a walking caricature, a delusional academic who’d been sniffing his own farts for too many years. He seemed to think that complex problems such as hardware design and teaching computer skills to third-world children would somehow solve themselves. His skills were better suited to fund-raising from the public sector of poor countries than in crafting a project that would actually merit its costs.
I have yet to hear how successful his constructionist learning philosophy has worked out for any significant number of OLPC’s intended recipients. His own assessments, phrased in glowing superlatives, weren’t backed by genuine data.
This charlatan, one of many, made other non-profits look like Ponzi schemes, if only by association.
If I remember correctly, when asked if Jobs would be willing to donate an OS, Jobs suggested OS 9 might be on the table. Mind this was after OS X had gained traction. It was after OLPC selected Linux that Jobs changed his mind and offered OS X. (I’m not saying there was a direct correlation, just a sequence of events)