02/01/2008, originally uploaded by Chris Abraham.
Received, finally, my XO one-laptop-per-child (OLPC) “$100″ laptop.
hardware
The XO is a potent learning tool created expressly for children in developing countries, living in some of the most remote environments. The laptop was designed collaboratively by experts from both academia and industry, bringing to bear both extraordinary talent and many decades of collective field experience for every aspect of this nonprofit humanitarian project. The result is a unique harmony of form and function; a flexible, ultra-low-cost, power-efficient, responsive, and durable machine with which nations of the emerging world can leapfrog decades of development—immediately transforming the content and quality of their children’s learning.
software
XO is built from free and open-source software. Our commitment to software freedom gives children the opportunity to use their laptops on their own terms. While we do not expect every child to become a programmer, we do not want any ceiling imposed on those children who choose to modify their machines. We are using open-document formats for much the same reason: transparency is empowering. The children—and their teachers—will have the freedom to reshape, reinvent, and reapply their software, hardware, and content.
interface
The desktop metaphor is so entrenched in personal computer users’ collective consciousness that it is easy to forget what a bold and radical innovation the Graphical User Interface (GUI) was and how it helped free the computer from the “professionals” who were appalled at the idea of computing for everyone.
OLPC is about to revolutionize the existing concept of a computer interface.
Beginning with Seymour Papert’s simple observation that children are knowledge workers like any adult, only more so, we decided they needed a user-interface tailored to their specific type of knowledge work: learning. So, working together with teams from Pentagram and Red Hat, we created SUGAR, a “zoom” interface that graphically captures their world of fellow learners and teachers as collaborators, emphasizing the connections within the community, among people, and their activities.
Laptop design evolution
As first conceived, the XO laptop display used LCOS (liquid crystal on silicon) in the form of a projector. Nicholas Negroponte demonstrated the concept in early 2005, using a set of black sticks sliding across a frame to convey some sense of how the folding optics would work.
The laptop began to evolve in June of that year, when Mary Lou Jepsen, newly named as acting CTO, began considering a dual-mode display: one a conventional color LED laptop screen, the other a sunlight-readable, black-and-white e-book. The concept made abundant sense for the developing world, where outdoor classes are common and the cost of shipping textbooks is a major expense.
At a July board meeting, Design Continuum presented an array of innovative prototype designs that would lead, by November 2005, to the famous “green machine”, with its distinctive pencil-yellow crank, which was unveiled to the world by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan at the World Summit on the Information Society at Tunis.
The yellow crank, while cute, in the end proved impractical; it migrated to the AC adapter as it also morphed into one or more other types of human-power devices. Its status as an icon for OLPC would be supplanted by the mesh-network antennas, or “ears.” At the same time, Quanta Computer, our ODM, made a strong case for fitting the laptop with a so-called transformer hinge to simplify the machine’s transformations from classic laptop, to game device, to e-book reader. In the spring of 2006, Yves Behar, the noted San Francisco industrial designer, came aboard to complete the final design of the Generation-One XO.
In November of 2006, the first XO test machines, the B1 (Beta1), rolled off the Quanta assembly line in Shanghai.
In early 2007, the B2 iteration of XO, stronger, sturdier, with a slight increase in tilt, was ready for its debut. B3 followed in May 2007, and pallets of B4 machines arrived in OLPC offices on July 6, 2007.
