One Risk Per Child

Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project is skewered by few, lauded
by many. It's certainly impressive.

The project is to develop a laptop costing approximately $100, and distribute it to chidren in developing nations. The proposed machine will be a Linux-based, with a dual-mode display—both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white reflective and sunlight-readable at 3× the resolution. The laptop will have a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have four USB ports. The laptops will have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network. The laptops will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data.

Negroponte is requesting 100 million laptops, at $115 or $130 or $150 each from six developing nations to participate in the program. Developing nations have a lot more critical things to do with $100 million than to participate in a program which might work, but might not.

Yes, the brilliance of this vision is breathtaking. If Negroponte's project would succeed, what a fantastic gift to mankind.

From the project wiki:

The choice is not currently between this system and a more capable one. It is between this and nothing. This is better.

Why does this remind me of Google's justification for censorship in China -- it's between allowing the Chinese to have our product or to have nothing. The above statement was made in reference to a question about limiting what software the laptop can support, but I find it's just as applicable to the "my way or the highway" approach of Negroponte. Why insist that countries make a profoundly reckless $100+ million investment in an experiment, when the country's leadership needs to be focused on health care and helping their people get out of poverty? Why insist on one laptop per child when the model of shared technology (such as one mobile phone per village) has worked much better in microfinance experiments?

The issue I have is not the vision -- it's the execution. Imagine if we were talking about a company, instead of a government. What corporation, in dire financial straits, would invest that much money they don't have, betting the farm on an unproven concept, payment due in advance? It starts to look as reckless as your perpetually broke brother, "investing" his entire unemployment check in lotto tickets. Even the few corporate partners, such as Google and Red Hat, have only invested $2 million each in the initiative, which is paltry compared to the investment he's expecting unstable, corrupt governments to make. In a corporate environment, an initiative using unproven hardware, unproven software, unclear distribution and international involvement would require comprehensive risk planning.

Requirements need to be validated, prototypes need to be driven. At the bare minimum, cultural assumptions need to be verified every bit as much as hardware and software assumptions. How will illiterate families use the computer? How will this new object be treated by the family? What is the problem we're trying to solve? These questions are much harder than the technical problems, such as power management, software efficiency and who is going to provide technical support. Prototypes should be deployed in different sizes of villages in each country which wants to participate, and observations can be made about the appropriate number of laptops per child, the applications which need to be developed in order for this tool to be useful, etc. Due diligence needs to be performed to demonstrate that this proposal actually solves a problem, and is a sound investment. The risks of such a bold experiment should lie with the side that has the money, until it can be proven that this is a good use of extremely limited funds on the part of poor governments.

Yet, by his own admission, he has gotten no negative press on the project.

Many thanks to Eric Brewer, UC Berkeley prof and Inktomi founder, whose discussion at the last 106 Miles provoked many of these thoughts. Professor Brewer has been leading up the TIER project, Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Nations. TIER impressed me because it starts with the problems first -- microfinance needs and health care -- and looks to see how technology can help solve some of those issues.

However, it's just not as sexy to be methodically working through real problems....