Do you want to fight a war on poverty? A war on terror? A war on the senseless waste of the sole source of capital, the human mind? Here’s your chance. For two weeks in November, you’ll be able to buy two XO laptops, the One-Laptop-Per-Child computer, with one coming to you and the other going to a hungry young mind overseas.
From the Boston Globe:
With orders for its rugged XO laptop falling short of its initial goal, the One Laptop Per Child project announced today that it would let consumers in the United States and Canada buy the cute computer for a limited time.
In an interview last week, Nicholas Negroponte, the former MIT Media Lab director and founder of the so-called $100 laptop initiative, conceded that he had not locked in the 3 million orders that he once said were necessary to trigger mass production.
The new “Give 1, Get 1” initiative could be the antidote, he said, by helping to spread the project.
For a limited two-week span in November, people will be able to buy two laptops for $399, one for the buyer and one for a child in a developing country.
My take: Donate both, perhaps with one going to a child in your own home town. Even better:
Starting today, people who simply want to donate a laptop to a child in a developing country for $200 can do so online at XOgiving.org.
I think there must be three billion candidates for this machine, so I can’t imagine how most of them will get one before they are no longer children. But the bounty of the harvest is planted one seed at a time.
Prometheus literally means “foresight.” Because of the gift of mind, the uniquely Hellenic gift, I live in a world of vast abundance. I used to joke that Americans should “count their microprocessors instead of sheep,” but, by now, I can’t get an accurate count of the microprocessors sitting on my desk. When I think about some young Prometheus growing up chained to the stultification of ignorance, indolence and superstition, I could not be more grateful for this chance to share the gift of mind.
More at the BBC and the New York Times.
Technorati Tags: investment
Ron says:
This may be the only way these guys are going to get these laptops sold. Their old approach looked like a pretty sure failure. But, they seem to be doing their best to screw this one up too. If I were the OLPC team, I’d try to target the kind of folks who bought iPhones, not the Prius drivers in Berkeley (and I don’t mean that as an insult to the Prius folks).
In a month, Apple found a million people who paid $600 for a cool tech gadget. Personally, if I could spend $400 and get a laptop to a kid in Zimbabwe AND also get a rugged simple computer for my daughter to try, I’d do it. That’s not a lot of money.
But, there’s basically no useful info on the site. For example, can you even plug this thing into your sockets in the US? There is no mention of it. Instead, there’s a lot of talk about the battery and how power is so rare in developing countries. Will it work with my existing network at home? No mention.
These guys are focusing on the wrong thing. The pitch should be:
“Get your kid started on computers early and safely, and help the world at the same time. For less than you paid for that iPhone…”
September 24, 2007 — 11:37 am
Georgina says:
Ron, you do make a good point about the practicality and logistics that can not be overlooked… Many well intentioned people have blindly thrown money at a problem not to resolve the original well intentioned issue. I think that smart people with the means could really get behind this effort with the appropriate information… and if not… clean up and donate one of the computers laying around all of our homes to a local outreach group and begin by affecting your own community as Gregg suggested.
September 27, 2007 — 1:59 pm