Thursday, September 27, 2007

One Laptop Per Child : Give One Get One

1 comment:

John Powers said...

"We sincerely hope you'll join our growing community..." So says Negroponte. I suspect he really is sincere, but the word "community" always makes my head spin when it's used to refer to diverse and geographically dispersed people. It's the ready metaphor for the peerosphere, yet doesn't quite fit.

This buy one give one idea has great potential, but something seems strange about the approach; it seems they're missing something about how the peerospheric "community" really is.

Beth's Blog raises the issue about whether or (probably) not being able to designate recipients. Without the ability to do so it makes dispersed fund raising unlikely.

I can't remember where, but someone else was talking about how the exciting part of getting a quantity of OLPC in the hands of people in the developing world was the creation of curriculum materials specifically designed for them.

So much of the design of the OLPC is all about enabling networked cooperation. Perhaps the focus on getting governments to commit has blinded Negroponte to the ways that networked cooperation--different from governments--can empower this effort.