$100 Laptop Project November 08, 2006 ******************* Oversight for this project has been almost non-existent -- unlike what would be the case in a public company, or a government organization. Many aspects bordered on fraud -- notions that would have been refuted by sound physicists (e.g., turning a hand crank to generate power, or harnessing the power from keystrokes for that person). Some countries didn't buy into the idea -- India in particular. Libya, Nigeria, and even some US states are already on board (Maine, Massachusetts). Those who bought into it have had wide-scale deployments (in excess of 1M devices each) without any pilot study of the (preliminary) effects. Much of the effect of introducing laptops -- from the first impressions -- is the increased efficiency of common tasks (typing instead of handwriting, checking resources on Internet vs. at a library, etc.). There is, however, little to show for the big claims of a revolutionary step in education in the developing world. Granted, there is a novelty effect which (at least temporarily) increases student participation. One problem with the project is that it wasn't generated by a real need in the developing world. It is not clear that increasing education necessarily leads to buying machines. Most developing countries could do better with $150M than buying 1M machines for children. In those countries, children don't have desks, qualified teachers, or other simpler needs related to their education. In contrast, the project has been very successful in the PR domain -- largely buoyed by media coverage, supported by businesses. Most publications (none of them with any real project evaluation) come out of businesses and computer science venues. There are other low-cost designs with similar high-level goals, but that actually try to meet a real need: - the "dumm" phone -- where battery life is extended immensely by only drawing power when the screen is changed (so no backlighting) - the Simputer -- a similar, genuine, idea to that of the $100 laptop From a business standpoint, the $100 laptop project makes sense -- it costs them incremental amount to produce large amounts of devices. It is questionable from the point of view of customers (governments that would buy those devices for their children), however. One real concern is that in the developing world, the $100 laptop costs a significant fraction of a family's annual salary -- corresponding to devices that cost several tens of thousands of dollars in the Western world. This generates concerns of safety, maintenance (what if it breaks down?), etc. Another concern is that there is no content ready to go along with those devices. It is simply assumed. A third concern is that there is no technical support provisioned -- which is obviously needed for modern computers. In many places in the developing world, there is no associated supporting infrastructure. A laptop is not necessarily a need of everyone. There may be a faulty assumption that tinkering with a device and figuring things out is something that people (and kids in particular) enjoy doing, just because we -- computer software and hardware professionals enjoy doing it too. Others are not necessarily like us! One potential macro benefit of the project is the (discovery and) development of inexpensive technologies, low-power devices, recyclable components, etc. Among the merits of a deployment of devices on a wide scale are: - use as e-books, where actual content is digitized, thereby saving on printing actual books; - triggering content creation by students.