Sure seems like there should be. Or a Facebook group to e-blast the cause for a final zap, etc.? I’m thrilled to get mine and dying to test it out in some remote (preferably sandy/tropical) developing country/locale…

I’ve already pinged my fellow GWLN.org delegates at Women Leaders for the World in Africa, but I guess it doesn’t let you designate which country you ‘gift it to.’ sigh…ah, well, plenty of them in need…

This is not a project about parachuting laptops, but about putting in place an education programme…. It is done in conjunction with ministries of education and not in a vacuum.

I think there are lots of people out there who do not know enough about this project and its potential. Perhaps OLPC may wish to carry out an awareness building campaign by providing more background information about the programme so that everyone

Let’s help OLPC make this come to fruition. If you can, donate a laptop.

People forget that this is a completely open project — on a massive global scale. Things change rapidly like on any large and complicated technology project. OLPC is rebuilding and redesigning a laptop computer — with some amazing results.

But rather than hiding behind board room doors — OLPC talks openly about the changes and challenges. They talk about the reality of the moment — knowing full well that things will change. Right now the project is on schedule and we’re hopeful that G1G1 will be a success.

I’m frustrated because I feel like too many people are suckered into the idea that if you just shoot laptops at schoolkids that somehow they will flower into being better learners. I feel like that Negroponte and Co. are well-intentioned, rational, highly intelligent people. But, I don’t think they’ve really thought about, nor have brought in the right people to think about, how this will play out in the developing world. Atanu Dey (who I met with on Sunday at Ethan’s recommendation), argued the point that I borrowed towards the tail end of the piece, which is that all of these consumer tech products (PC, mobile phones, etc) started as products for the developed world and got to the point that now, just about anyone in India can afford a $10 mobile handset and pay $0.005 per minute for a phone call. It wasn’t that people thought that we need to design a handset for the developing world and bring down the cost of the device.

I think that there are a lot of great things about Negroponte’s machine. The technology in there is impressive — when I was explaining the new battery tech in the XO to my 22-year-old cousin, the first thing she asked me was: “How come my laptop doesn’t last that long?” It’s a very salient point. Negroponte is right when he says that computers have a lot of fat in them, and I think if anything, the OLPC has shown that it is technologically possible to make a machine that has some of those technologies and is much cheaper than what’s out there.

Clearly, I think he’s kickstarted a sub-sector of the industry and everyone is better-off for it — and I think he’s using his influence directly or indirectly to show that there is a market out there that these businesses have all but written off.

Wayan, your point about the commitments mentioned in NYT is a good one – Negroponte has certainly referenced firm commitments before. Franklin’s point on NYT factchecking is a really interesting one – it would be a worthwhile research project to see if we can find statements in the Peruvian press, for instance, corroborating commitment. (I’m not volunteering for the job – I’m on the road – just suggesting that someone might want to take it on.)

Nate, I think the reason for the G1G1 structure instead of a straightforward sales structure has to do with partners on the project. Negroponte recruited people to the project with the promise that the laptop wasn’t designed to take over the low-end laptop market. I suspect some of his major partners, especially Intel, would flinch if he announced a low-end, cost-competitive device for the US markets.

I’m very interested in the tone of both the comments and Cyrus’s piece – has Negroponte pissed enough geeks off that people are now rooting for him to fail? Or is this just understandable frustration with something that’s taken too long and hasn’t delivered enough?

It seems like it would make better sense to price them with a reasonable profit and do your best to make it the must-give gift to all American schoolchildren this year. If higher volumes are going to lower the prices in the future, why not get as many of these into the hands of US and European students as you can?

If it’s useful to have computers in the classroom (and I think it is), I think this is best shown by example. Wouldn’t these foreign governments be more likely to commit to large purchases if they saw parents buying them for their own children, and perhaps some well-funded first-world schools buying them for the entire classroom or district?

Why all the games?

This is a rather charitable assessment in this context. I think some people feel upset because they feel that Negroponte has consistently lied about the orders and commitments. You could chalk this up to the perennial optimism of those in the tech sector, I guess, or the simple hype of a salesman. Or the willful disregard for reality of a visionary. Or, less charitably, someone caught in his own reality distortion field. Or maybe just someone who is deliberately not telling the truth (possibly because he doesn’t think the press will call him on it; judging by the uncritical acceptance of most utterances — some of them whoppers — from the OLPC camp by people in the media, Negroponte is right to think no one, at least in the mainstream media, will call him his bluffs).

This is too bad — why does he need to lie about this stuff? He is not accountable to shareholders, and presumably his board gives him a lot of leeway. (If OLPC were publicly traded he couldn’t get away with such pronouncements.)

A lot of people feel passionate about the issue of computer use in education, and feel that the smarmy salesmanship (there is no other word for it) of Negroponte is sucking a lot of the oxygen out of this whole area, and that, when it blows up, it will take a lot of other good ideas and initiatives with it.

Personally, I think this is a bit of an overreaction, but Negroponte tends to engender such overreactions in people.

(My prediction: There will be a $100 laptop for use in education, and soon, but it won’t come from OLPC. It will come from some ruthlessly efficient Chinese or Indian firm looking for profits, wherever they can be found, not part of any ‘movement to save Third World education’.)

On a related note:

Does the NY Times do any fact-checking — or at least corroborate statements? Maybe it is just sloppy writing or editing, and the Lohr piece should have read “Peru, for example, will buy and distribute 250,000 of the laptops over the next year, *according to Negroponte*.” Presumably Lohr would source the fact from someone in Peru, if he had such a source. Despite all the scandals notwithstanding, I still expect more from the NY Times, at least on the simple Journalism 101 stuff.

For all my sympathy for Negroponte’s efforts, I cringe when I hear him saying there are confirmed orders or firm commitments when no government has announced the same. He’s played that card a little too often for me to believe his sales proclamations.

Or I’ll believe it when I hear it from the Peruvians, Uruguayans, or Italians. Carlos Slim announced he’s buying them for Mexican libraries (not schools) and Uruguay is still in mid proposal evaluation. Peru and Italy are still long shots.