Gawker: valleywag, xo

One Laptop Per Child project proves to be about ego, not education

Owen Thomas — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:40:00 EDT

MIT Media Lab director Nicholas Negroponte had a vision: Millions of third-world children lacked laptops and therefore the means to learn of his greatness. He founded the One Laptop Per Child Project with a singular vision: He, Nicholas Negroponte, would bring laptops to these children, so that they could know that he, Nicholas Negroponte, brought laptops to them. An effort founded on egotism has foundered on egotism. Like attracts like; Negroponte brought other narcissists into the fold, only to see them leave to find more room for their self-loving to expand. Mary Lou Jepsen, OLPC's hardware chief, left in January to start a for-profit company, Pixel Qi; now Walter Bender, OLPC's former head of software who left in April, has started a rival for-the-children effort.

Bender and Negroponte are quarreling over open-source software, a subject which one doubts the laptopless of the third world care about, if they have even heard of it. Negroponte wants OLPC's XO laptops to run Windows; Bender wants to adapt its open-source Sugar software to multiple platforms through his new nonprofit, Sugar Labs. Any platform, that is, except an XO laptop running Windows, since it appears that Negroponte's request that Bender adapt Sugar for Windows is what precipitated the dispute.

The OLPC Foundation is looking for a new CEO, Negroponte says. For that role, we nominate Helen Lovejoy of The Simpsons, the one who famously uttered "Won't somebody please think of the children?" At this point, a cartoon character could do no worse.

PC World editor is still waiting for his OLPC

Jordan Golson — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:20:02 EST

PC World's Harry McCracken ordered an XO laptop from the One Laptop For Child charity on November 12. He gave a $400 "donation" — half to buy himself a laptop and half to buy a laptop for a "deserving child" in a developing country. After many emails back and forth and 35 minutes on hold, McCracken still hasn't received his laptop. Neither has a colleague of his. OLPC claims that they don't have a mailing address for him because he paid with PayPal.

Which is nonsensical: One of PayPal's features is that it gives merchants a verified address. And why wouldn't they get in touch to complete the order? Apparently he "might have good news in February." Some customer service that is. Snafus like this prevent the OLPC project from being taken seriously. If you can't ship laptops to a few reporters in California, how can you deliver hundreds of thousands of laptops to developing countries? Of course, the nonprofit has no profit motive to spur it to deliver on its promises. The invisible hand has a way of providing visible results.

For bloggers, the hottest computer at Macworld isn't a Mac

Jordan Golson — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:42:08 EST

We stopped by the Blogger Lounge within the Microsoft booth on the Macworld Expo floor. Inside, it was rather comfortable, considerably more so than the press areas at CES — except the internet didn't work. While we were there though, we found M&M's graced with the Microsoft Office, Word and Excel logos, comfy leather couches. And a computer that everyone in the lounge was very interested in — but not the one you'd suspect.

Yes, it was One Laptop Per Child's XO. The owner, who was being interviewed by some Web publication, told us that he "really liked" the OLPC and thought it had "great potential" to change the lives of children in the developing world. Then he went on a tangent about how the MacBook Air was too expensive and all we really needed was the OLPC because we could all load free software on it and then the world would be a better place. Then he started talking about how great socialism is. Welcome to San Francisco, but really, isn't he at the wrong conference?

Some more pics from the blogger lounge: