Originally posted on January 22, 2008 @ 1:38 am
I’ve written about the One Laptop Per Child project a number of times in this blog. I truly believe that Nicholas Negroponte’s brainchild to bring affordable computers to children in developing countries is a step in the right direction and a noble cause that could really have a positive effect on these countries in the long term. The mainstream and tech press has also been quite enthusiastic about the program and has given it a lot of media mileage. But a few months after the actual release of the product and a number of things have happened that has put the project in a more critical light.
First was the decision of Intel to back out from the project. then there was CTO Mary Lou Jepsen’s sudden defection to another company, and then to top it off the end of the much praised Give One, Get One program.
I don’t want to think that the OLPC program is going to fail. I would rather see these as minor kinks in a program that will really make a big difference in the world.