100 Dollar laptop

MIT is planning to develop a $100 laptop running Linux to market to third world countries. A non profit foundation called One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) has been founded to organize this effort. See also http://laptop.media.mit.edu/ . This laptop is aimed at education, and may replace paper textbooks, maps, and similar resources with the computer. What type of software should be included to help children think? Squeak is an excellent candidate.

 

The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, full-color, full-screen laptop that will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data. These rugged laptops will be WiFi- and cell phone-enabled, and have 4 USB ports. Its current specifications are: 500MHz, 1GB of flash memory (instead of a hard drive), 1 Megapixel display. It will be a color display, but users will be able to switch easily to monochrome mode so that it can be viewed in bright sunlight, at four times normal resolution. One display design being considered is a flat, flexible printed display developed at MIT's Media Lab. Negroponte said the technology can be used to produce displays that cost roughly 10 cents per square inch. "The target is $12 for a 12-inch display with near-zero power consumption," he said. For connectivity, the systems will be Wi-Fi- and cell phone-enabled, and will include four USB ports, along with built-in "mesh networking," a peer-to-peer concept that allows machines to share a single Internet connection.

 

The OLPC wiki provides addtional info on the project.

 

OLPC Squeak Image

 

OLPC Squeak mailing list

 

A prototype version was unveiled on 17 November 2005. Here is a link  to a WSJ article. An earlier preview of the laptop has been posted here.

 

Some more preliminary information.

 

A nice overview of the OLPC and the $100 laptop report

 

Wikipedia entry

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Sugar labs

 

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http://antimega.textdriven.com/antimega/2005/09/29/notes-from-wednesday

 

Here are some raw notes from the first day of the Technology Review Emerging Technology conference at MIT – Wednesday Sep 29, 07:00 am by Chris Heathcote

 

Nicholas Negroponte

the $100 laptop

 

solutions to most problems include education – or may just be education

 

particularly primary and secondary schools

in emerging nations, the problem isn’t connectivity – it’s not a solved problem, but there are enough people working on it, regulatory regimes are changing

 

for education the roadblock is the laptop

 

people often start working for the emerging world as charity or similar, this is fine, but maybe not always the best reason

 

weirdly go into Powerpoint rant?

 

made his first powerpoint for this!

 

Logo, computing for children at MIT (Seymour Papert), 1980s

 

Costa Rica – best, longest use of computers in development

 

built two schools in Cambodia, with computers – 1999 – no water, electricity, even roads

 

told the kids to take home the laptop to use

 

no kids were allowed to open the laptops – parents thought it would break

 

parents loved it – the computer was the brightest light source in the house!

 

in 4 years, 1 laptop out of 50 broke

100% of the AC adapters broke

 

why? ownership. proud to own and use.

families made cases for them.

 

in Maine, kids get a laptop during their education

 

“one laptop per child” – olpc

non-profit – means price will go down

scale – important for mindset. tech cos focus on bigger, better, smaller, not cheaper. sclae gets you strategy in these companies.

countries—free

corporate partners – needed to get this moving

25% MIT funded, 75% others

 

countries pay in advance for a million units

 

“impossible” – means MIT can do it

50% of the price of a laptop is sales/marketing/distribution

display is biggest cost – $35

75% of the hardware is to support the weight of the OS and software – obese and unreliable

 

7.5 inch screen dual-mode, one transmissive, other b&w 4x resolution sunlight-proof display (ebook!)

 

has to be wind-up

 

Open Source

 

Mesh network

2Mbit can serve 1000 kids

Grey market – trying to make them hard to sell, and solve the need for cheap laptops other ways. Make them distinctive, like a post office truck or an Army jeep – unsellable

parallel commercial market – maybe $200

design is important – not cheap, not a toy

 

shows the latest picture of it!

 

personalisable! – case schemes – maybe engrave the kids name on each laptop

AC cord is the strap, several power modules

looking for a 3rd party accessory market to grow

 

rollout – 5 countries plus MA – china brazil thailand south afica (malaysia?)

beta is 15 million

china and india – half of all primary and secondary schoolkids in the world

 

Nov 17th – launch – tethered prototypes

 

year 2 – 07? 100-150 million units

3 times the current world production of laptops

 

haven’t talked about the content side

part wikipedia-style

also have Squeak and Scratch and other projects – tools to be creative

 

will move to flexable and printble displays, e-ink

 

10:1 ratio for handcranking – can do it for ebook mode, at least

eink would give 100:1

 

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questions

 

what about China, and the crackdown on Internet and censorship?

he is clear with heads of state – we are selling you a trojan horse

china spends $19 a year per child on textbooks

he avoids the question

 

what’s it like being on the other side of the fence – making real products rather than just researching for others?

On-the-fence – it’s not a commercial machine

only way to be able to stand next to government

 

how do you break through the education mafia and the dept of education?

Maine was key

no one went from being enthusiastic to the other way, but the others have migrated to being enthusiastic

truancy plummeted

PTA meeting attendence skyrocketed

kids participated more in classrooms

 

is now the time to rethink the entire teaching process?

this is not teaching as we know it

only a small part of learning comes from teaching

this is a tool to make it more continuous and seemless

it’s going to take decades

 

is this a Marxist thing? Well, education is always mainly state funded

curve downwards, $100 is still to expensive, gonna have less memory