It’s a little bit like McDonald’s competing with the World Food Program
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/techno…
SAN FRANCISCO – A frail partnership between Intel and the One Laptop Per Child educational computing group was undone last month in part by an Intel saleswoman: She tried to persuade a Peruvian official to drop the country’s commitment to buy a quarter-million of the organization’s laptops in favor of Intel PCs…
But the saleswoman’s tactic was the final straw for Nicholas Negroponte, the former Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer researcher and founder of the nonprofit effort.
He demanded that Intel stop what he saw as efforts to undermine the group’s sales, which meant ceasing to sell the rival computer. Intel chose instead to withdraw its support from One Laptop this week…
If Negroponte cared about getting laptops to poor kids, instead of his personal ego agrandizement, he’d have no problem with the Intell saleswoman.
The fact that he does tells me that he’s concentrating on the wrong things.
Even after Intel joined the One Laptop board, in country after country, the two organizations competed to make government sales, Mr. Negroponte said yesterday in a telephone interview. The relationship first frayed seriously in October, he said, when an Intel salesman gave a Mongolian government official a side-by-side comparison of the Classmate PC and the XO.
Mr. Negroponte said he was infuriated…
Those stupid third world peasants can’t be given free access to information and be allowed to make their own decisions!
“They played another dirty trick in Peru,” he said. “It’s a little bit like McDonald’s competing with the World Food Program.”
Interesting analogy.
I wonder who has done more to end hunger among the poor, McDonald’s, or the World Food Program?
I note that where there are lots of McDonalds, the poor are obese…
January 6th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
If Negroponte cared about getting laptops to poor kids, instead of his personal ego agrandizement, he’d have no problem with the Intell saleswoman.
I can’t believe you’ve pushed me into the position of defending Negroponte, but here goes…
There is a real distinction here, and it is one that people committed to trying to improve the lives of poor kids (note, not “getting laptops to poor kids”) should and do care about. It’s the same reason they get upset about Microsoft offering Windows for $1 in poor countries.
It has nothing to do with wanting to help those countries by providing them Windows and Microsoft Office at what is surely a loss (considering labor in distribution, etc.). It has much more to do with keeping them locked in to the “company store”.
If you get kids in poor countries with cheap laptops running Windows and Word, well, that’s probably better than no computer at all. There’s educational software for them, they will learn basic computer skills, and at worst they can use it to break open nuts. Some of them will download free development tools and learn how to program, but a very small portion, I’d wager. Most of these kids, if they grow up to be successful, will continue to buy Windows PCs.
If you get kids in poor countries with cheap laptops running open software, a much larger percentage would actually learn about how the computers actually work. This may be in the interest of the kids, but it’s not in the interest of Intel and Microsoft, because they’re less assured of having those future customers. They have a motivation to offer loss-leader systems to protect future market share. This might be good business, but it’s not necessarily good for the kids.
It’s the same argument of why corporate sponsorship at schools is a bad thing, an improper level of influence on children who haven’t yet developed the skills to reason about corporate ulterior motives. For example, suppose Microsoft went to schools and offered to provide them a complete Microsoft-branded Computer Science curriculum, at no charge. Sounds like a great deal! Wouldn’t you be a little bit concerned about the bias that might emerge in such a program, though?
January 7th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Have you seen a OLPC laptop? I have. They’re a pile of steaming, slow-as-molasses, crashing-a-lot, crap.
January 10th, 2008 at 10:30 am
[quote comment="114834"]Have you seen a OLPC laptop? I have. They’re a pile of steaming, slow-as-molasses, crashing-a-lot, crap.[/quote]
Really?
A non-profit idealistic project comingo ut of the Media Lab is useless?
I’d never have guessed!
:)