A thought experiment - give an XO to an American kid and the question will be "what does it do?" The answers will have to be "No, it doesn't run Windows programs. No, you can't run games on it. And it looks like it's for kids because it IS for kids".
This seems to be a setup for most kids to reject it. There will be a few, however, who discover they can get into it and mess around, as well as communicate sending pictures without having to deal with the mobile phone bill and its consequences.
A whole lot more adult geeks will buy it and play with it, which is not a bad thing - I am all for play as a means of exploring the possibilities of technology. And, like the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons of the '60's, which were written to include some jokes with adult appeal so that kids would get the message that it was funny to older folk and thus not "just for kids", there will start to be leakage to lower age levels.
This will not result in an educational revolution. I believe that it will realize my previously published prediction that the XO will become a new form of television embraced by adolescents and pre-adolescents and exploited by megaliths like News Corporation.
This will provide a relatively benign denoument to the OLPC drama. Instead of a campaign to "straighten out the backwards areas" of the world (odious rhetoric from fifty years ago, not a direct quote from this decade, though the degree to which it applies to the OLPC worldview should be considered), it will create an early-adopters' market in the industrial world and will seed some previously unseen forms of media software.
I think any "buy one send one (or two) to the needy abroad" program will function more as a propaganda (oops, marketing) advantage rather than as a serious distribution strategy. I would expect some would-be Bono to organize rock concerts to push the process along, with seas of XOs waved by the audience while they exchange pictures by mesh network.
And best of all, the technology will gain an economic toehold, which is all it needs to survive, providing that its name is not besmirched by failed attempts to replace the educational system.
The developing world certainly needs the benefits of what Wayan persists in calling "clock-stopping hot technology". It will have a home in many a village and town providing the functionality of a telecentre, the local internet cafe, and an educational resource.
It will be introduced there not by the technological mandarins of
Cambridge, Mass., but rather by members of the various diasporas who
have made it to these wealthy shores and who never forgot where they
came from, as I predicted in a paper presented in 2005.
In the British comedy film "The Horse's Mouth" Alec Guinness plays an obscure artist whose works are lionized for all the wrong reasons once he is thought to be dead. In the end he wanders away, obscure as ever, muttering "It's not the vision I had".
This will not be the vision that Nick had, but it will be the beginning of something else - something that we can all put our hands to and that will mean something different to each of us. I think I've seen something like this before.
(Hats off to Mary Lou Jepsen and all those who worked on the technology, both hardware and software).
Of course, communication infrastructure is one of the first targets of any invading military force to control or destroy. Therefore, one may say, a nationwide cellular network would not survive the depredations of any military force.
Posted by: cheap cigarettes | November 10, 2010 at 06:40 AM
Mark Simpkins note struck a chord, but perhaps not what he meant. My first system was a TS1000, and the XO has reminded me since I got it of that one, and what I hoped it could have been, with a screen! It even uses the 'chicklet' keys similar to later sinclair models, and it was also targeted at the 'magic' $100 price point.
This was where I really dug into learning programming, and other aspects of computing. I took my G1G1 XO to a family reunion in Texas recently, and the half dozen kids in the XO target age range kept it tied up by themselves for about 4 hours, exploring -without- internet access.
Lee, your attitude is just a variation of the 'food instead' pundits... Just because NN's vision is not yours does not mean it will not work in many areas. These XO's may not fulfill NN's vision completely, because he also thinks in his version of one-size education fits all, but if it makes a significant difference in even 1 of 10, or even 100 kids given one, OLPC's efforts will have been worth it. Once they are out there, local teachers that are interested can use them, bolstered by others, to work up locally relevant lesson plans, mentoring aids, and emergent methods of teaching and learning.
Lee, with your history of helping folks interested in learning make connections to network with each other, YOU should be right in the middle of the OLPC wiki, or someplace similar, pointing these teachers, educators, tech interests, volunteers, sponsors, etc. toward each other to make this work -RIGHT- now, from the grassroots up.
Pilot programs need some real evaluation, first gen Gov programs are in place, Haiti NGO sponsored program is starting, City of Birmingham, Al program should soon be going in. GET TO WORK!!!, Help make this work from here, leverage these tools NOW in place, or else you are just trying to help fulfill your predictions by your inaction. Your talents can make this work. Synergize this with your OLPV effort... whatever it takes.
BTW, this was written on that G1G1-07 XO, with the orig pwr plug cut to an adaptor to RadioShack M size adaptor for alt energy source experiments, updated to 703, several added activities, with 1gb SD card in the slot.
Posted by: Tinker | July 01, 2008 at 11:39 PM
I was thinking something similar. At the BBC we have a set up called the 21st Century Classroom (http://www.bbc.co.uk/21cc/). It has a set up of computers (mostly windows based) to show how they can be used in classrooms (creative uses, video, music, radio etc).
I was thinking that running an experiment where the kids were given access to the classroom and then also OLPC's. Lets see how they engage with it after using the kit that is closer to the media desktops that staff at the BBC use?
I think it will be a significant problem, kids today play on PS2/PS3, XBOX, Nintendo DS (my 6 year old wants his own DS). Will they be interested in something that to me is closer to my old Sinclair ZX81?
Posted by: mark Simpkins | March 18, 2008 at 03:33 PM
As a slightly older American kid, I chipped in on the Give-One-Get-One program and have been having great fun for a couple of weeks musing about how kids 45 or 50 years younger than I am would use the thing -- IF they were in a community of users with that "mesh" networking... assuming it works.
Paperless collaboration with text editor, e-book reader, a camera, audio recording, a couple of programming environments: It just seems like a very powerful educational mixture, especially if you leave the distractions of the Internet and entertainment industries out of it... and add some inspired teachers.
A good "teacher's guide" library seems to be the most-needed "feature." But then I'm old-fashioned. :-)
As for games, there's a "SimCity" copy for the XO, but for me it's "eyestrain city" -- opportunity to rebuild San Francisco after the Quake or not...
Bob
(OsborneI owner 1982-88)
Posted by: Stepno | January 10, 2008 at 02:12 PM
I just wanted to say, that "No,you can't run 'World Of Warcraft' on it" might be clearer.
Posted by: Heng | January 09, 2008 at 07:53 PM
> No, you can't run games on it.
Minor correction: http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?board=43.0
Lee replies: "Admittedly, games can be played on the XO. I was making the point that high-powered graphics won't run on XO as they do on the kind of machines gamers use (usually not laptops anyway)".
Posted by: Heng | January 03, 2008 at 06:41 PM