Technology

OLPC Lesson Part 2: Don’t Take Negroponte Seriously

Continuing on the theme of the last post, here is another lesson from the OLPC XO-1. Don’t believe anything that Nicholas Negroponte says. If you had doubts, look at the latest concept to come out of OLPC – the XO-3.

Forbes is all praise for this new design: “Take a look at the designs for what could someday be the world’s cheapest PC, and you may start to wish you were a third-grade child in Burundi.” This magical device is thinner than an iPhone, all-plastic, touchscreen, durable, and backlit. And all that for an amazing USD 75.

Forbes may be fooled, but the somewhat more tech-savvy folks at CNET remind us to take everything coming out of the OLPC Foundation with several grains of salt:

Remember, this is the organization that didn’t just scrap the XO-2, but couldn’t even tack a touch screen onto the current XO-1 laptop, which isn’t anywhere near the $100 that Negroponte once dreamed of.

Wired calls it “vaporvare”, pointing out that “CG mockups and philanthropic promises aren’t the same as real, shipping hardware.” Then again, perhaps it doesn’t have to be. As Mr. Negroponte himself says, “We don’t necessarily need to build it. We just need to threaten to build it.”

That must be code for, “You should know I cannot do this, and if you don’t then the joke is on you.” Or perhaps Mr. Negroponte believes he is the design center for the developing world’s computers. But at a sticker price of several billion dollars, that is a very expensive center indeed. He could get away with it once, but the real question is will media continue to pander to Mr. Negroponte’s self-gratifying dreams?

Finally, if there is any doubt left in your mind that the OLPC is a good idea, here’s another hint. Mr. Negroponte concludes by saying, “Sure, if I were a commercial entity coming to you for investment, and I’d made the projections I had in the past, you wouldn’t invest again, but we’re not a commercial operation. If we only achieve half of what we’re setting out to do, it could have very big consequences.”

To paraphrase: “I cannot do what I promise and at the price I promise. But that doesn’t matter, because we are not a commercial operation. And you being a government could not possibly be bothered by such things as expenses, forecasting, and budgets. Just throw your money my way.”

Any OLPC believers still out there, please cling to your faith.