Comments from Intel

Craig Barrett, Chairman of the Board of Intel, has made the following comment on the OLPC:

"Mr. Negroponte has called it a $100 laptop--I think a more realistic title should be 'the $100 gadget'," Barrett was quoted as saying at a news conference in Sri Lanka. "The problem is that gadgets have not been successful," added the chairman of the world's largest chip maker. "It turns out what people are looking for is something that has the full functionality of a PC. We work in the area of low-cost, affordable PCs, but full-function PCs, not handheld devices and not gadgets," he added.

This comment strikes me as a fairly superficial remark which begs for more explanation. Intel is one of the early companies to make some serious commitments in the area of device and systems design for the developing world. No one knows what the definition of "gadget" is here, and no one knows how Intel knows that "full functionality" (a term whose definition keeps changing) is what "people are looking for".

Intel is working in the area of infrastructure, with a serious focus on wireless, so I would conclude that it is paying close attention to OLPC, recognizing the damage to the market that could be done by OLPC as currently conceptualized. But stay tuned for further developments - if OLPC looks like it's going forward, Intel will probably negotiate a place in the food chain. After all, OLPC now says that they will require all schools to have Internet access, and this is something Intel is positioning itself to provide.

Of course, one thing no company wants is the necessity to enter a vast new market everywhere at once - this has been the death of many a company that's tried it. Intel is nobody's fool, and one likely outcome of this game would be that they set the pace of OLPC implementation by the pace of their network extension activity. But since the expense of that effort would be significant, the pace will more likely be set by the availability of extra money for network extension.

At any rate, since Intel will be in the best position to control the rate of OLPC introduction, it will be in the perfect position to phase in its own solution in a compatible fashion. This would be perfect confirmation of one of Ted Nelson's many dicta: "Everybody wants to be second".

(My original post on this topic has been pushed below the level of visibility on the menu).

Comments

[Douglas Keachie]

I'd take it as a compliment.

The most famous "gadget" in history was the Atomic Bomb (one of the code names for the bomb during development was "the gadget"). Well, maybe that isn't the nicest thing, but when you make yours go, it will certainly have a cultural impact of similar magnitude.

Here's an idea for a electronic money maker, given the existence of Dialer types of Malware. Most of us are too lazy to disco the telco plugs or cable equivalents.

How about a box that sounds an audible alarm if our machine decides to dial out when we haven't been at the keyboard for awhile ?

Or if our machine turns itself on and then doesn't have keystrokes and then magically heads for the net ?

Just a thought for a possible sellable device that I don't see out there yet, although I haven't looked very hard.

Doug