Citing disagreements with the organization, Intel Corp. said Thursday it has abandoned the One Laptop Per Child program, dealing a big blow to the ambitious project seeking to bring millions of low-cost laptops to children in developing countries.
The fallout…comes only a few days before the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where a prototype of an OLPC-designed laptop using an Intel chip was slated to debut.
Intel decided to quit the nonprofit project and the OLPC board because the two reached a “philosophical impasse,” Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said. Meanwhile, Intel will continue with its own inexpensive laptop design called the Classmate, which it is marketing in some of the same emerging markets OLPC has targeted.
Both sides shared the objective of providing children around the world with the use of new technology, “but OLPC had asked Intel to end our support for non-OLPC platforms, including the Classmate PC, and to focus on the OLPC platform exclusively,” Mulloy said. “At the end of the day, we decided we couldn’t accommodate that request.”
Is Intel being unreasonable?
OLPC is a Crock ‘O’ Poop anyway.
Before computers just how did children learn? Well, they had classrooms, pencils, paper, books…and don’t forget teachers. How about that for a start. This is so obvious that this could only be mental masturbation of all those involved in OLPC – a collective “Gee aren’t we fucking great?”
Obviously common sense is no longer common today. 😉
Cheers
Well, the Intel / OLCP brouhaha is one thing – but the very need for the thing in the first place, I agree totally. With the price (whatever it turns out to be) of one of those machines, one fuck of a lot of pencils, paper and books can be had. The PC notion of ‘those poor people being unfairly denied access to Dvorak Uncensored, YouTube and TMZ’ is a hoot.
The OLPC project is simply a method to decrease productivity via the internet in the 3rd world just as it has killed real productivity in the US.
Best way I can think of to keep em occupied and quiet. Ever give a kid a xbox360? right you hear nothing for days, the make little noise, don’t whine, low maintenance. An electronic babysitter.
It’s a supportable premise, although still quite arguable, that a computer can be the single most useful educational tool there is. At its best, it has the capacity to replace the pencils, paper, and textbooks that were absolutely necessary in education 30 years ago. Plus, I’m pretty sure the money that goes to buy computers in third-world countries would otherwise be spent on Creationism textbooks for them 😉
Intel’s ambitions with OLPC are hardly altruistic. Once they realize they can’t make any money they will drop it, leaving people high and dry.
Thats the difference between someone that does it for idealogy and someone that does it only for the quick cash.