MIT suffers hubris over $100 PC idea
No hard drive, however. Power is going to be provided through a wind-up crank and other sources. The actual display technology is up in the air depending on the day of the week, ranging from "electronic ink" to a rear-projecting image device.
There's been a lot of media fawning over the idea, but nobody's really asked how a non-profit organisation is going to go from mockups to hardware in about two years, especially when you're talking about minimum quantities of five to 10 million machines "paid for and ordered in advance."
No amount of hype makes MIT $100 PC a reality
Even before the hardware has moved out of mockup design phase and into reality, Negroponte says that the price per laptop won't be $100, but has drifted upward to around $115. And this is before the never-before-mass-produced dual-mode LCD display has been finalised, much less cranked up to any quantities in prototype form. Don't be surprised if first run units end up arriving not in late 2006, but sometime in 2007 and costing closer to $135 to $150 once the smoke clears.
By marketing the idea to governments and large corporations, the OLPC project adopts a top-down structure. So far as can be seen, no studies are being done among the target user populations to verify the concepts of the hardware, software and cultural constructs. Despite the fact that neither the children, their schools nor their parents will have anything to say in the creation of the design, large orders of multi-million units are planned.
He said, "There's a hierarchy of elements, each of which is harder than the other. There's the hardware and that's easy - that's just engineering (I don't take that wrong - LF). Then there's software, and that's harder. Then user interface, and that's even harder. Then there's courseware, which is harder still. And finally there's mentoring, which is really, really hard."
That got me thinking about how the digital divide was in fact a design failure. We should have been able to design computers and their software so that everyone could use them. Then Alan set out his hierarchy, and I was thrilled. "He's made my case," I whispered to Bab Marsh, sitting next to me.
Clockwork radio inventor rubbishes MIT $100 PC
Baylis, who invented the clockwork wireless radio, was recently invited to MIT Media Lab to meet Negroponte and see the prototype, but said that it "could have put together with a Lego kit".
"Nothing worked. I was expecting him to show me the screen in action or the wind-up feature, but I saw nothing but a basic prototype," he said.
"If Negroponte has done it, full marks to the guy, but I am not 100 per cent convinced. It was all something of a PR stunt."
But Baylis said he came away from Boston feeling non-plussed. "Negroponte did not ask me to provide the technology," he complained. "He was more interested in looking at my wind-up torch, which I didn't develop anyway. I bought it in China for £3."
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