One Laptop per Child

The daylight-readable screen was most interesting to me. Not sure anyone has achieved mainstream success with this, though https://daylightcomputer.com/product is trying.

OLPC seems like a good example of spending too many "innovation tokens" at once. Very difficult to succeed when making a new system with unique hardware components and new software all at once.

The displays were readable outdoors by daylight. That was a killer feature right there and it didn't catch on.

My octa-core 'phone' with OLED display is useless in sunlight. I tried using it as a sat nav last summer and there were situations of panic near freeway exits when the screen got illegible.

I remember this at the time, a really interesting idea (for 2006) to try and change the world by getting the next generation in the developing world onto the internet. I saw headlines about the project from time to time and my vague impression from the time was that they got bogged down in open-source purity arguments (lots of arguments about what should be on the device and what not on the device, and creating their own OS/UI rather than going with a common one, some seeing it as a way to conquer Windows for the next generation ) and ever increasing scope-creep or constantly redesigning everything as technology progressed. And so they never really shipped.

I guess with the ubiquity of smartphones these days you could say that 'one laptop per child' more or less happened anyway, but not quite in the way anyone imagined.

Very interesting device, saw this in a small prototype city (below 6k people) that managed to acquire one device per person and setup eletronic versions of the city services at a time much before this was common. The city even had free WiFi for everyone - low bandwidth but still useable.

Worthy dream, despite the critical noise. Pioneers should try adventurous things even if those too fail.

I owned one (g1g1), and visited a rural village participating in the program. Everyone was pretty excited and things were really happening.

The tech was cool. I dreamt of making the software a bit better (I didn't.)

Alas, even dreams die.

RIP OLPC

I have never figured out the causal direction of Yves Béhar's fiascos and flops (OLPC, Theranos, Juicero, Ouya, among many). Was it the hubris of the founders who wanted their products designed by Béhar, or was it the design of the products themselves?

I had one of these as a kid, got it as a christmas present because my dad did the give one get one thing. It was a lot of fun and I remember messing around with Python on there because it came with an interpreter, I think.

Interesting how quickly we went from one laptop per child to “no screens until you are 16”

Different goals and different societies, but still - I’m sure developing countries have screen addiction issues too.

I've still got one that my dad bought with the BOGO deal. Great screen for bright daylight.

There's plenty of critics & inadequacies. And yeah, it was kinda slow as hell. But damn, 10+ years ago this was so ultra ambitious a hardware platform, given the absurdly low price target. Which never scaled into efficiency!

But much more so, the software ideas were so interesting. We criticize the platform readily for being used as just another OS, but who else has dared to try to build a learnable intelligible computer? Who else has better ideas we can talk about?

Taking the already existing DBus that underpins the rest of the FreeDesktop world was smart. Using meshed link-local XMPP to network DBus was a hop switch and jump further, reusing so much, but making an interesting cross-system networked application, one that was learnable & understandable & in reach as well as powerful & networked. Such a smart way to take what already was & go just a little further.

I really wish there had been a longer run of trying to grow into it. Most remarkable to me is that there haven't been any attempts at constructivist systems since. We can pan and dump on this aplenty, but what are we doing to try to give broad views of computing to kids, to make accessible the system itself? Who else has tried? This was a great economical attempt given very little time space and opportunity to grow into itself, and that's a shame.

As has been widely publicized, this project was a total[0] failure[1]. Can anyone from the "developing world" <eyeroll emoji> comment on what has succeeded in its place? Mobile phones? Chromebooks?

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17233946/olpcs-100-laptop...

[1] https://philanthropydaily.com/the-spectacular-failure-of-one...

Here in Massachusetts, USA we're on the One Chromebook Per Child plan. Seems to mostly work OK.