Yesterday I had the chance to play with the "XO laptop", the laptop designed by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization. They apparently are giving developing units if they have reasonable belief that the person requesting it is going to develop software for the platform, and it seems one of the graduate students here in Berkeley is trying to get a job in the OLPC foundation, so they gave him a unit and he showed it to us.

The machine is extremely cute and well looking. It is supposed to stand harsh conditions as rain, spilling of liquids, rough treatment and it even has a crank to charge its battery. It has a Linux operating system with a completely new intuitive interface. It comes with several education programs, wireless card, the ability to create ad hoc (mesh) networks, camera, word processor, usb ports etc, and is therefore extremely complete for a $175 dollar product. Furthermore it has important technological features that should discourage people from stealing them, such as activation codes and licenses that need to be renewed every month.

To build an economic computer to be used by developing nations makes a lot of sense to me. I was always frustrated to see how new desktops now a days have settled at around the $400 dollar mark and their price never seems to go down, even if the technology is cheaper. The problem is that computer makers keep including new features every year with the hopes that the consumer will pay the same price every year. However I always kept wondering, that for a lot of poor people it would make a lot of difference if they could buy a cheaper machine, even without these extra features, since at the basic level you only need email, web, and a world processor. Nothing more. And I am sure you could make a desktop and sell it new with those features for less than $100 dollars (I guess without an operating system, or at least with Linux).
Critics of the OLPC laptop say that that developing countries first need to give water and food for people before thinking of anything else. But I find these accusations very obtuse. The laptop is meant to provide opportunities for kids who already have the most essential needs covered, but who cannot afford to have access to a computer.

I spent a considerable amount of time of my childhood growing up in Villeta, a small town in Colombia. Villeta had water and food, and even electricity for most of the time. However there is also a wide population of children who I suspect will not be able to afford access to computers. Even if they finish high school and go to a place with computers (work or university), by the time they first see them, they will feel alienated from the technology. Other "kids" are going to have much more experience with the technology, and the less fortunate kids won't be able to compete with them. Learning about computers I guess is similar to learning a language. The smaller you are, the more time and curiosity that you have for exploring the possibilities of the computers.

My point is that governemnts will be able to choose a balanced investment agenda based on their needs, and I think the OLPC laptop fills a much needed gap in access to technology and innovation for educating competent professionals.

Kids are still going to learn how to multiply (the laptop is not going to replace this). And no, just because when you were a kid you had to write reports by hand and with access only to your personal encyclopedia doesn't mean that kids now a days should have to do the same things. It will be putting them at a disadvantage and the idea is to level up the playing field so they are as competitive as they can be with the rest of the world. I applaud the effort by Nicholas Negroponte. The idea that this foundation originated as a way to help less fortunate nations, and it came from the U.S., gives me hope to see that several people in the U.S. can be extremely selfless and make a big change and impact in the world.

On other news, it is interesting that Bill Gates once denigrated the machine as not being a "decent computer." I guess he likes humanitarian efforts only when they praise his ego:-P Anyways, recently Negroponte mentioned that the machine will be able to run Windows. This coincides with Microsoft announcing a cheap $3 dollar Windows edition for governments who subsidise computers for kids. Putting two and two together it is clear that Microsoft will be trying to convince governments to install Windows in the XO laptops. From a Microsoft corporate point of view it makes perfect sense to deploy a cheap Windows OS to run in XO laptops, thereby preventing as much as they can, a new generation of users from learning Linux and open source software, by driving users back to the Windows comfort level (if everyone around me uses Windows, why should I learn something else?) and creating a new generation of consumers.

In the ideal case I wouldn't complain about this. After all the more options we have, the better. I only hope that the final decision on which operating system is going to be used in education will depend on the user and not on the local government or other controlling agency, since these can be bribed or "enticed" with the appropriate incentives to impose one technology over another... the same way Microsoft "motivates" computer makers not to sell barebone computers without an operating system, or similarly, not to sell computers with competing software.

To end on a lighter note, I noticed one of the diggs of Biogeek: The World's Cleanest Cities. Calgary has the top spot! They mention something about the EIU rankings, but I was only able to find this.