Information Management

Most criticism of the One Laptop Per Child PC centers on the cost for what is a low-spec computer. As ASUS with its Eee machine is proving, a low-cost conventional laptop can be pretty powerful. But that misses the point. The OLPC is a fundamental rethinking of the computing experience.

[photo courtesy OLPC]

This child’s review of the OLPC is the first hint that suggests that Laptop.org may have gotten it right. As the 9 year old’s father writes:

So Rufus is using his laptop to write, paint, make music, explore the internet, and talk to children from other countries.

Because it looks rather like a simple plastic toy, I had thought it might suffer the same fate as the radio-controlled dinosaur or the roller-skates he got last Christmas – enjoyed for a day or two, then ignored.

Instead, it seems to provide enduring fascination.

I had returned from Nigeria not entirely convinced that the XO laptop was quite as wonderful an educational tool as its creators claimed. I felt that a lot of effort would be needed by hard-pressed teachers before it became more than just a distracting toy for the children to mess around with in class.

But Rufus has changed my mind.

With no help from his Dad, he has learned far more about computers than he knew a couple of weeks ago, and the XO appears to be a more creative tool than the games consoles which occupy rather too much of his time.

OLPC roots
Even though the OLPC is the only notebook whose industrial design chops rival those of Apple, its real innovation lies in software. Building on educational theorist Seymour Papert’s work – he invented the Logo language – the OLPC’s re-thinks the relationship between man and machine.

OLPC differences
The OLPC has activities instead of applications.

Activities are distinct from applications in their foci—collaboration and expression—and their implementation—journaling and iteration.

The collaboration comes in the form of built-in mesh networking that allows all local OLPCs to talk to each other.

By exploiting this connectivity, every activity has the potential to be a networked activity. We aspire that all activities take advantage of the mesh; any activity that is not mesh-aware should perhaps be rethought in light of connectivity. As an example, consider the web-browsing activity bundled with the laptop distribution. Normally one browses in isolation, perhaps on occasion sending a friend a favorite link. On the laptop, however, a link-sharing feature integrated into the browser activity transforms the solitary act of web-surfing into a group collaboration.

The connectivity seems to be powerful. Young Rufus is conversing with other kids who send him messages in Spanish from his home in England. How does that work?

Expression is the goal of the activities and collaboration. Rather than downloading music, the laptop is equipped to create music. The rethinking extends to the file system:

The objectification of the traditional file system speaks more directly to real-world metaphors: instead of a sound file, we have an actual sound; instead of a text file, a story. In order to support this concept, activity developers may define object types and associated icons to represent them.

Another aspect of the system’s UI is a focus on the Journal. This is more than written documentation of what a child has done.

The Journal combines entries explicitly created by the children with those that are implicitly created through participation in activities; developers must think carefully about how an activity integrates with the Journal more so than with a traditional file system that functions independently of an application. The activities, the objects, and the means of recording all tightly integrate to create a different kind of computer experience.

I’ll be interested to see how children who grow up with the OLPC think about computers. I fear we have a generation of children whose creativity has been permanently stunted by the desktop metaphor.

The StorageMojo take
Negroponte’s biggest mistake is that he did not market the OLPC in the industrialized world first. All the good intentions in the world won’t convince the 3rd world that something is good unless it has been embraced by the opinion leaders of the 1st world.

If I was Steve Jobs, I’d be taking a very close look at this machine to see what I could steal. Michael Dell could learn a few things too.

Comments welcome. OLPC has a beautiful web site.

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Internet video is about where film was 100 years ago
I was talking to a company who will be announcing a video infrastructure solution when the CEO mentioned something he called the “video performance/quality vise.”

Here’s the problem: a video stream requires both capacity and bandwidth. Higher quality video requires more bits per second and more capacity. Bandwidth and capacity both cost money.

So as Internet video quality rises, the financial cost to provide the video rises too. An HD video stream is 4 Mbit/sec.

500,000 channels and somethin’ on
As cute as YouTube, et. al. are, they suck. Movies are small, picture and audio quality awful, and viewing options limited – like films 100 years ago.

Bandwidth limitations are part of the problem, at least here in the US. But those are being addressed, however slowly.

What happens when Internet video becomes competitive with broadcast TV in quality? Popularity will soar. As TiVo has shown, people love choice. And the Internet will have the most choice.

The price/performance/popularity vise
Digital Fountain’s raptor codes will change the Internet landscape for video. High quality video will drive be much more popular, just as long-form movies took film to the next level.

Bandwidth costs are dropping fast to pennies a GB. So infrastructure costs – especially storage – are critical to Internet video’s commercial success. The more popular it gets, the more storage will be needed. It is a huge opportunity.

The StorageMojo take
Massive data storage is still a very young technology. The ultimate cultural impact will be more profound than film because of the many-to-many nature of the Internet and the low barriers to entry. Should be fun!

Comments welcome, please. I don’t think the firm wanted me to mention their name, so I haven’t. If we get that cleared up I’ll update the post. Or maybe wait a while to write about them.

Update: Joe, thanks for catching the 4Mbit mistake I made. I corrected it above.

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