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FOREWORD - Telecoms: vital to education?
The One Laptop Per Child initiative has drawn both great praise, and considerable criticism. Lynd Morley takes an overview of the debate and the role telecommunications can play
The (almost) legendary Nicholas Negroponte was a keynote speaker at TMW in Nice this year. The co-founder and director of MIT Media Lab, and author of the seminal Being Digital, came to talk about another of his brain-children – the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative.
It may not seem the most obvious subject for a keynote address at one of the leading communications OSS events, but Negroponte pointed out in his opening remarks: “I think that a lot of the big problems in this world will all have solutions that include education. And telecommunications and education are intimately tied. I’m very fond of telling ministers of telecommunications that they are, in fact, ministers of education. Because, until the world is really connected, education remains a very narrow phenomenon.
“If we look ahead to a world where children – who are global by nature – have the opportunity to communicate with each other and learn, clearly telecommunications has a big role to play.”
OLPC is a non-profit organisation, set up with the goal of providing children in developing nations with laptop computers, offering – among other things – access to a whole raft of information. As Negroponte stresses, OLPC is an education initiative, not a laptop organisation.
However, this apparently completely altruistic activity has generated an amazing amount of criticism and backbiting; some from the industry itself – including Intel and Mircrosoft - and much of it among the tech-heads and bloggers whose comments – some angry, some well meaning, some passionate about the greater need in developing nations for a whole range of things from fresh water, to food, to healthcare – has provided a huge theatre of debate. Indeed, the arguments came to a head recently when Negroponte effectively accused Intel of damaging the non-profit scheme by launching a competitive product – the Classmate PC – resulting in some countries, previously behind OLPC, now considering their options. Given that Intel chairman Craig Barrett initially described the OLPC laptop – the XO-1 – as a ‘gadget’ and questioned the effectiveness of the scheme, the Classmate is an interesting development. Intel, however, strenuously denies that it is undercutting its own prices in order to push OLPC out of what it has now decided is a lucrative market.
Other giant players in the industry, however, are committed to the OLPC initiative. BT is backing the project. It’s chief science officer, Sinclair Stockman comments: "The project aims, through connecting even the most disadvantaged to the Internet and the web, to provide them with an invaluable tool to build a better and safer future.
"One of the challenges - which is where BT is providing assistance - is how to extend the local net connectivity, which is built into the PCs and allows them to easily form local wi-fi based networks, on to the global Internet.
"This in turn allows Internet protocol access to a much richer source of information - and allows the children to participate in wider global communities.
“The technical challenges are just one hurdle to overcome,” he adds. "Others include language, content delivery, effective community sharing - and also assuring the trustworthiness of the connected community."
So, EC reader, whether you are of the Gordon Gekko school of thinking (greed is good, and b****r the consequences) or the – shall we say – Al Gore school, perfecting the art of ‘caring’, you can join the critics and nay-sayers, and dismiss the whole thing as another example of Negroponte’s supposed egomania (or just simply misplaced good intentions) or you might conclude that it may not be perfect, but at least the guy is trying something, and try to find out just how the telecoms industry can provide additional help.
Details: www.laptop.org
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