Moving forward

On my way back from Tunis, laying over in Amsterdam, I have occasion to reflect on events, my writings and other peoples' reactions to both.

This blog is not about rubbishing the One Laptop Per Child project. There are some good and valuable aspects to it and I applaud the effort that is being put into it. I would not try to convince anyone not to work on it. Something like the laptop will be needed as infrastructure develops and it will be good to have the results of a lot of engineering effort put into reducing costs and setting new specifications appropriate to the new IT market in developing countries.

I cannot, however, suspend my critical faculties as I see how the project is presented and marketed. There is a real problem with the assertion (which I have had confirmed) that research is not being pursued - supposedly because MIT has done educational research for 30 years. I do not accept that  everything is now known about the world and that the challenge is to act quickly and decisively. Such assertions have been heard before and usually lead to far different outcomes than intended, at which point those who drove the process throw up their hands and blame the technology or the technologists.

The outcome in this case to be avoided is the perception that "you can't give computers to those people - it won't work for them". I can see this as a very real possibility if we all keep our mouths shut and act as if the laptop is the culmination of computer tehnology as far as the developing world goes.

In my view, design matters a great deal. Measuring computers by tonnage or disk size is illusory - what matters is what happens when people use them. Design places constraints upon how people can use computers. We need to have a critical conversation about the issue of design of products which are intended to have great consequences. Not having seen much in the way of such conversation, I have tried to lay out the issues as I see them in the hopes of fostering one.

I do not expect immunity when it comes to my own design work in this field. No one should be immune from criticism who leads a design and development effort intended to affect people in the millions. The offering of evidence, argumentation, and the appropriate adjustments in the project goals and definitions are what we need more of, not something with which we can dispense in the rush to implement.

Lee Felsenstein

Comments

[anon]

OLPC is one of the craziest ideas I've ever heard of. Luckily for us Negroponte is from the Media Lab; if he'd been from Ford he be pushing the $1000 SUV as a panacea.

Lee, Alan Kay left out the item at the top of the hierarchy - the objective. Surely that is to educate children. Yet you all seem to see it as an engineering problem. If you can figure out a way to distribute textbooks very cheaply, that would be of some use. Everything else is a criminal waste of money.

[kevin lyda, co. galway]

There comes a time when you put studying asiade and you just do. The folks at MIT have done loads of research on a whole host of ways people use computers.

I think it's great that they're putting that knowledge to a real world test.

Meanwhile you keep setting up strawmen. I highly doubt any person in this project thinks they know everything. From what I've read they feel they know enough to put their knowledge into physical reality.

Hopefully the tangible results of the research they've done will get in enough hands to get a real test. And hopefully it will be useful for many people. But likewise I hope that for those it fails to meet their needs one of two things will happen: a) they'll come up with software solutions and they pass them up to the rest of us or b) they'll give feedback that will allow the OLPC group to make a better version in the future (or some other group, whatever).

It's great that you have a lot of experience. I hope someday you'll put your research to the test like the Media Labs are putting their experiences to the test. And keep in mind that MIT pulls in students from around the globe. Believe it or not, their experiences are not exclusively "western" or part of the developed world.

However I think you're being a bit silly. There are hundreds of thousands of people with IT experience in the developing world. You're one of them. The MIT group didn't get to you. That's too bad. But eventually they have to stop reading about other's experiences and start doing things.

[Louis Horvath]

An interesting thing about computer power ... I once had an Atari 800, which by today's standards is hum ... just below some wristwatches ;)

But I did learn loads of stuff with it (most notably assembly language). So given the right set of circumstances, I am convinced at least SOME users will find it worthwhile.

But then I guess they'd rather be lodged and be fed first ...