OLPC - "eaten my homework"

[Ben Scott]

On 5/30/06, Jeff Kinz <jkinz at kinz.org> wrote:
>>> The cost of producing a good textbook, even if the licensing/royalties
>>> are zero, is very high.
>>
>>   Source?  Numbers?  Hard data?
>
> Family in the biz.  textbooks are a very different market that any other
> printed matter.  They have stringently high costs because their
> construction and content is different than anything else except coffee
> table books., and yet their printing runs are tiny so the one-time costs
> must be amortized over a much smaller number of volumes than regular
> books.  That raises the per unit cost.

  By "content", it isn't clear if you mean physical materials or
subject matter.  If it's the later, the costs are the same for both
printed and ebooks, as I already pointed out.  If it's the former,
printed matter is not so expensive if you do it in volume.  Recall
that one of the fundamental assumptions of the OLPC project is a very
large volume to achieve new economies of scale.  If we apply those
same assumptions to the dead tree methods, you get similar savings.
The OLPC project isn't using $800 Dell laptops; don't assume a TTPC
(Ten Textbooks Per Child ;-) ) project would use $50, small-run,
high-royalty, US-style textbooks.

> >   While I've never printed a text book, per se, I have been near the
> > production of other printed matter, and with sufficiently high
> > volumes, costs go under a dollar, even with hundreds of pages.  Of
> > course, I would expect a durable text book to cost more.  But even if
> > it costs *ten times* as much, we're talking $10.
>
>    Source?  Numbers?  Hard data?  :-)

  As I said, I've never printed a text book.  But I have been involved
in support of efforts to produce low-volume copies of local manuals
and brochures, and if you do it in volume, prices can get very low.

  Let's assume, for the sake of discussion, ten "books" of 200 pages
each, and 500,000 copies of each.  That's a total of 1,000,000,000
(one billion pages).  This is probably a big underestimate, but it
gives me some numbers to work with.  Based on the price progression
seen at http://www.nationalcolorcopy.com/ (first vendor found via
Google that published prices), we can expect 0.005 (one-half cent) per
page.  (I'd actually expect a better deal for a project of this
magnitude, but I wanted to cite a source.)  That works out to $1 per
book before binding.

  Again, this isn't what it would actually cost to print a text book,
but a demonstration of how quickly prices get low if you print in
volume.

  None of this is intended to be an argument for or against
manufacturing textbooks *or* laptops; just information intended to
paint a more complete picture.  I don't have enough information to
hold an opinion on either option (but I have enough information to
know when others aren't presenting enough information).

>>   And, in most ways, 500 megabytes.  The mesh network is a nice
>> concept, but I don't really see it spanning the continent of Africa
>> any time soon.
>
> http://www.green-wifi.org/

  Um.... yah.  I notice there doesn't seem to be anything about going
beyond a community-sized network.  To get to the net, it assumes
there's a nice, big, wealthy university nearby providing you the net
feed ("RoofNet")

  Again, this is merely reality check.  Community wifi mesh networks,
a definite possibility.  Contient-spanning ad-hoc networks, not so
much.

  How much of the target audience has enough netfeed to enable even
the community network model of Internet access?

> 100 text books, composed, printed, bound, distributed and delivered for about 1 dollar
> each.

  Composing the text is *AGAIN* the same cost regardless of printed or
e- book.  Likewise, distributing and delivering those laptops.  Plus
the costs, both capital and reoccurring, of running the netfeed out to
everyone (for your infinite storage).  It seems that it's a popular
myth that if you sprinkle a little "digital" or "electronic" on
something, all your costs just disappear.  It ain't so.

  Printing and binding are valid cost concerns.  See above.

>> Or maybe the laptops just end up being used as light sources.  ;-)
>
> Worlds most expensive Lamp!  :)

  While that remark was tongue-in-cheek, it's not entirely facetious .
 There are various cases of similar misuse or misunderstanding of
technological gifts to "less developed" cultures.  Hell, in *this*
culture, I work with people who print every customer email they
receive, for their records.  >sigh<

-- Ben