Negroponte, OLPC, AAAS, obese electronics

[Paul Lussier]

"Ben Scott" <dragonhawk at gmail.com> writes:

>   It failed?  Did Netcraft confirm it?  ;-)

Perhaps failed isn't quite the right word.

>   I think OLPC is a somewhat ill-concieved idea, but last I heard, the
> OLPC program wasn't dead.

Neither was the Black Knight...

> The investors have deep pockets and lots more money to waste on it.

Waste is probably the correct word :) From Negroponte's speech the
other day, however, he seems to be intimating that he'd like to see
companies like Asus take this project over:

  "Over the next few weeks there'll be partnerships and changes with
  companies that can start rolling this out. What becomes pretty clear
  pretty quickly, you need people to copy it and do it at a larger
  scale. No matter what we do as OLPC or laptop.org, you're not going
  to be able to do the whole world. You want to be able to influence
  efficiently enough to have other people do it."

I see this as back-pedaling:  We told you we could do this alone, but
then we discovered our competitor's could mover faster, we whined
about it.  Now, in order to save face, we want to be known as the ones
who "influenced" this huge, world-wide movement...

I don't think that's necessarilly bad, but it comes across as rather whiny.

> Although I think it's currently the OLP1.7C (one laptop per 1.7
> children), if you compare the present price with the original $100
> target.

So, one child costs ~$170 ? :)
-- 
Seeya,
Paul