MIT Technology Review Cover Story: One Laptop Per Child

Over a year ago, the concept of offering portable computers to expand the knowledge among youth in developing countries was put in play. The initiative, an idea Nicholas Negroponte has championed in the midst both good and highly critical press, is now entering its final stages. MIT’s Media Lab, with the help of several bigwigs (and some small ops too), has kept good on their word for the final end-user price.

Many have poopooed the notion of offering poor kids in third-world countries laptops. A circuit board covered in plastic and a small display is the last thing they truly need now, right? Well, sure, if you’re thinking about now, but there’s always someone that has to be thinking about 10, 20 years down the line too. I think that’s what Nick Negroponte was considering when he first seriously took the thought of delivering modern technologies to places around the globe (that generally resemble nothing of the world we fortunate few have come to know, and hopefully appreciate) to a whiteboard.

I wanted to bring this topic to light after many months of on-again-off-again news coverage, in part because the latest issue of MIT’s Technology Review was made available on Monday, in which the cover story looked at OLPC's current status, but also because I think it deserves to get its own Profy-ized retrospective.

The laptop itself has undergone many aesthetic changes, having discarded its power-generating crank for more simplified operation. But the core idea behind it is still very much the same. It’ll be open source through and through, something many heads of state representing developing countries have promoted since its resurgence in the software industry starting in the late ‘90s. All in all, it’s a bold effort in a world where ‘proprietary’ is king, but when you look at it from a wide enough vantage, you’ll probably see that it’s the most logical move they can make when deciding on the IT moves they intend to make. Don’t be surprised if truly become the next big thing because of this growth spurt it’s having today.

Most important, however, is not the hardware. It’s who’s using these tools. They’re tools after all, right? We boast about our multi-core systems, RAM upgrades, RAID configurations, and our snazzy new 802.11N hotspots, but that stuff wouldn’t mean anything if nothing happened when we clicked our keyboards. That’s where this One Laptop Per Child initiative will make the most difference.

Many of the kids to have these things on their desks and in their laps will be deeply entrenched in poverty. And there’s no doubt that at the start, OLPC will be the least of their concerns. If you’re hungry, you think about that hunger, not the typing lessons you’ll be taking this year at school. But we know that overall number of poor is decreasing, and over time, anything that helps them help themselves will only accelerate that shift. Everyone benefits then.

Who knows, maybe some entrepreneurial teenagers will sprout from this project and lead the charge in moving to Web 3.0 and 4.0 down the line. I say more power to them.

You can check out MIT’s Technology Review cover story here.