'One Laptop Per Child'
The One Laptop per Child association (OLPC) is a non-profit organization, created by faculty members of the MIT Media Lab, set up to oversee The Children's Machine project and the construction of the XO-1 "$100 laptop".
"The goal of the foundation is to provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment, and express themselves. To that end, OLPC is designing a laptop, educational software, manufacturing base, and distribution system to provide children outside of the first-world with otherwise unavailable technological learning opportunities."
"OLPC espouses five core principles: (1) child ownership; (2) low ages; (3) saturation; (4) connection; and (5) free and open source."
The laptops are intended to be sold to governments, to be distributed through the ministries of education willing to adopt the policy of “one laptop per child”. The operating system and software are localized to the languages of the participating countries.
The initiative is a multi-million dollar pledge by several conglomerates to make this world better connected.
When the scientists and industry giants start having a conscience, OLPC is what you get. :)
Criticisms are expected:
1) Production at such a massive scale will mean there is an unspoken and unfathomable environmental impact waiting to happen.
2) Predominantly aimed at the poor Third-World Nations in Africa and South America to aid in education and connectivity to the WWW for the under-priviledged children. But some have criticised how this 'American mentality' project intiative 'demonstrated misplaced priorities' where in poverty striken regions, normal folks are stuggling just for basic survival needs such as food, water, health problems.
3) A cultural backlash. For people of more developed nations, it took us many years to be where we are when it comes to being IT ready and WWW-Savvy. Just imagine the cultural and social impact it has on people who never saw a television in their lives, to suddenly be exposed to computers and all that the WWW has to to offer.
No matter what,
>"This is an Education project, not a laptop project.",says chairman Nicholas Negroponte.
2 comments:
Check out for more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_laptop_per_child
PS: I just hate the color green.
:-)
OLPC is every Educator's dream and every Environmentalist's night mare.
But certainly every Capitalist's ultimate pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
Sometimes, the way the First World imposes it's ideals to a starving Third World is more sympatheic than emphathetic.
"Give them what they really need" is all I can say.
" People who can't afford shoes don't care if you're giving them Prada. They just need shoes" .
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