Maybe it could turn out to be a new take on Sugata Mitra’s Hole in the Wall experiments?
The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project has devised a bizarre plan for deploying its new XO-3 tablet. The organization plans to drop the touchscreen computers from helicopters near remote villages in developing countries. The devices will then be abandoned and left for the villagers to find, distribute, support, and use on their own.
The article in arstechnica.com doesn’t mince words with the title, The sods must be crazy, but then Negroponte himself says that he got the idea from the 1980 movie, The Gods Must Be Crazy.
Negroponte, commander-in-chief of One Laptop per Child, told the Open Mobile Summit event recently in San Francisco:
We’ll take tablets and drop them out of helicopters into villages that have no electricity and school, then go aback a year later and see if the kids can read…
The new tablets will be preloaded with 100 books, and will be able to connect to the Internet wirelessly.
It’s hard to dispute the notion for inventiveness and imagination, but I can’t help but see a few potential flaws: how will they know for sure that people cannot already read in the places they decide to drop the tablets? how can they be sure it will be children who will make use of this bounty from the skies? presumably they will drop the tablets where they know there is some connectivity available, free?
And, while not a flaw as such, he is now looking for funding from Governments willing to see this happen.…I wonder. For me, there’s an arrogance, a distinct hubris, sitting at the heart of this idea, whereas Sugatra Mitra’s experiments have exemplified the antithesis of hubris.
Technorati Tags: olpc, arstechnica.com, nicholas negroponte, sugata mitra, hole in the wall, XO-3 tablet