March 2008

Installing xo activities is a snap, up there with OSX's .dmg install process. Installing anything else can be a bit of a pain, as it's command line installation using RedHat's yum system (which at least has fixed dependency checking since last I used it (I started with RH5.2, then left Linux, then got back into it with Debian and have been a Debian/ubuntu user mostly ever since).

I predicted in January that Facebook would "hit its limit. I predict some more ad snafus a la Beacon, and the 3rd party apps become overwhelming and all-too-reminiscent of MySpace.", and today the Sillicon Alley Insider predicts a Facebook decline: For some early users, the thrill is gone.

What would a "base of the pyramid" approach for the OLPC look like? While the OLPC vision is bottom-up and child-focused, their actual deployment has been top-heavy. There's occasional discussion about releasing the One Laptop Per Child XO laptop into the market to achieve a more bottom-up development, and the OLPC's original selling point to its manufacturers was that even though the profit margins would be slim, the market would be the next billion users (WSJ). So why not go all-in and focus on this record of success in the technology creation/diffusion realm, and apply it in the international development context?

Where the OLPC Project has intersected with the market; it has created new and valuable intellectual property (Mary Lou Jepsen, former CTO of OLPC, believes so strongly in the new technology that she's created her own for-profit company licensing the OLPC technology). The buzz around the XO has invigorated the ultra-mobile/small/low-power/low-cost laptop market; with Asus' Eee PC, the new Elonex, Fujitsu's newest LifeBook series, and of course Intel's already-existing ClassMate has received much more attention of recent.

Naturally, it failed. Nothing is that independent, especially an organization [...] staffed by highly individualistic industry visionaries from around the world. Besides, altruism has a credibility problem in an industry that thrives on intense commercial competition.

By the end of the Center's first year, Papert had quit, so had American experts Nicholas Negroponte and Bob Lawler. It had become a battlefield, scarred by clashes of management style, personality, and political conviction. It never really recovered.