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This is Tom Lineke with Mikhail Blesses from the MIT Media Lab, and we're talking about

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the $100 laptop for child project. And we've been talking about this on some other video

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blogs, by the way. The question I have, it has to do with the difference between good

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intentions and the net benefit that's delivered. And if I were a woman in Nepal living on $50

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a year, would I want other people to invest in a $100 laptop for my child? And my concern

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is Nicholas Negroponte is a very powerful and charismatic leader. His brother is the

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UN ambassador, John Negroponte. He knows Kofi Annan. And there's a tremendous upsurge of

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top-down technology and funding and political power behind this, which can be very positive.

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And the MIT Media Lab is developing some very innovative technology here. But when it actually

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gets into the field, what's the feedback loop to know that this is a net beneficial activity?

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First of all, the laptop is not a top-down. We hate top-down. The thing that we are not

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going to do is go to a poor country and try to use any kind of political connection that

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says, you know, we think that the laptop is the best for you. This is a poor laptop.

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We chose, pretty much, a pile of cows from the beginning just to be geographically diverse,

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to be big. So the expense for the laptop, it was made a big impact. It's a different

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thing talking about Nigeria, which has 120 million people and lots of coins. It's a different

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thing talking about Nepal. Very few people and very few natural resources. We don't think

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that the laptop is by itself a panacea or it's going to solve a lot of problems unless

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it goes into a more holistic, if you want, framework. You can't use the laptop in, you

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know, Niger. I mean, you can use it in Nigeria. We think that we can use it in Nigeria and

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it's going to make a big difference in Nigeria. It's about time for Nigeria to be known in

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the internet for other things than Nigerian spam. But yes, putting it in Niger is going

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to be a lot more challenging. That's why we are not trying to do it immediately because

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we don't know exactly how to do it. On the other hand, we do believe that access to information

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does improve lives. We do believe that giving kids a platform on top of which they can practice

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instruction is learning, will improve education, whether the teachers are trained or not. It

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will do immensely more good if the teachers are trained, definitely. But it is a way also

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to get away from not having good teachers, good libraries, good materials, educational

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materials in a lot of places. Just the e-book mode is what gets industries of education

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solved completely. We also think that in order to get yourself into the new era, you don't

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have to go through all the evolutionary stages. You don't have to go through everything that

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the western world went through. So the laptop is a way for some of the kids to leapfrog

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into the new era. Now, are we absolutely positively sure that the laptop is going to have a positive

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effect on each and every one of the kids that it's going to get that? No. And I can't tell

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that. But we think that it is going to have a positive effect to the majority.

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What's your feedback mechanism? How you evaluate this and know if you're going in a positive

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direction or not?

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That's a hard question. This is an educational project. And as an educational project, you

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either have to do testing at the end of the year, which we don't think that it's going

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to measure the qualities that the laptop is trying to instill on kids. And it's also driven

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by governments. And governments also have to show results in four-year periods in the

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good places of the world. In the bad places of the world, usually they don't care. So

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it is a hard question. And we're trying to put localized measures in place by the government

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itself. This is not something that we are going to go and tell them. Measure this.

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Now, I can give you some examples from the state of Maine. The state of Maine is probably

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the world's largest, not largest anymore because it's Marseille and other places, but it's

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a large one-laptop-per-child experiment. It has not been done in our ideal way. It's only

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been done at grades six and seven. But one thing that is immediately obvious is that

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language skills have improved, dieting skills have improved, because the kids have a lot

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more enticing ways to practice that. Truancy has gone up dramatically. And that's not something

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that has been rare.

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Up or down?

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I mean, people don't drop out.

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Don't drop out, okay.

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Sorry, my English is not perfect. So those are not things that are measured by the standardized

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test. If they are measured, it takes time for that to seep in. So those are the things that

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we want government to learn. And also the laptop at the end of the day, if you really

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want to be successful, it's not about teaching kids what they should know. It's teaching

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them how to learn what they don't at the end. And that's what the piece that we are trying

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to fill, that has not been filled by traditional education.

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So where is the content for this coming from? Is it being generated by the kids themselves?

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Do you have curriculum? Where is that coming from?

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You have to have curriculum. You have to have software. My favorite one, just because of

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my experience going through school, where I went through physics class, which was my

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favorite class, having done three experiments my whole school year. By having the virtual

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lab, the laptop, I think will do tremendous things for that kind of teaching.

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You also need multiple books, and we need to work on royalties there and things like

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that to get the content in place. And that solves the lack of materials to a large extent

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in the developing world, where most of the cost is actual distribution of physical books,

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which doesn't happen. And the third, my big hope, is make the kids develop content. I

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think that is really fundamental. That's the big win.

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Do you have any ideas for peer-to-peer learning models, a Lancaster method, or online where

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kids teach each other? Or you could have a tutor or mentor from MIT teaching a high school

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kid physics in Nigeria or whatever.

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That's tele-teaching, if you want. What I'm mostly concerned is the kids doing their homework,

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for example, in an apartment building or in a village somewhere, and being able to talk

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with each other and ask questions with each other. I think that teamwork is really important.

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I think it's also very important getting bigger assignments, that none of them can tackle

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one by one, and the laptop being the platform by which they collaborate.

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I see. Through a wiki-type model. And are these wikis shareable? Are they networkable?

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Yes, yes. That's the one piece that actually we are putting a lot of effort as OLPC, as

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a non-profit. We are actually putting resources into getting a nice, easy-to-use wiki platform

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on every laptop, so that 50 kids can actually publish immediately without having to go through

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special servers, special publishing software, or anything like that.

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Do you have a video camera at all?

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That's the big fight, the internal fight right now. It's a bill of materials issue.

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We want to have a camera exactly for that reason. We have very good audio support, and

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we'll have voice over IP built in immediately.

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You do already?

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Yes, we have that.

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So are you just adding video or not?

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The video piece is something that we banked. We had a lot of internal fights, and it's

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not even resolved yet. It's just that we don't have $4.

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$4 after the video?

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To spend for the video. I mean, when your total bill of materials is, it's about $120

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right now.

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I see.

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We are already over budget. $4 is a lot. And there are various trade-offs that you have

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to do. So one of the things that is, do we do double injection molding to put soft plastic

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around the edges so when the laptop drops, it becomes more durable, or we do the camera?

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Personally, being an engineer and being a geek, and Walter Benders, who is the president

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for software, the idea was to put the camera in there. It seems that the design people

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and the durability people are willing to argue. We had that specific idea.

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Yeah. Well, I guess part of me wants to say do both and start with a higher cost prototype

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that the cost will come down for the next generation.

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Yes, exactly.

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But open up the video channel so that you can talk about video conferencing.

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Not only video conferencing, but doing exactly what we have been doing right now.

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Yeah.

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And letting kids from each part of the world having these things available to other parts

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of the world. For that, we have the solution. I mean, Google is going to take care of that.

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In the Uplift Academy, we've had a number of people very interested in the educational

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model. Peer-to-peer teaching, mentoring programs where women can learn, can teach Spanish lessons

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over the web, for example. The classroom connection, global classroom connection is another theme

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that's come up, just connecting classrooms. So a northern classroom could talk to a Ugandan

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classroom or something like that. So there's a whole lot of interest in that. Are you opening

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this up? Would this be open channels for people to contribute?

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Yes, it's totally open. And whatever lack or perception of lack of openness exists right

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now has to do with the fact that we are 12 people working full-time on that. So our web

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publishing right now is not where it should have been, but we are doing it on our spare

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time right now. But this is by definition an open program, and this is open for everybody

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to come in and contribute. We definitely have a few dogmas of our own. One of them is the

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One Laptop per Child principle. That's why we named the foundation One Laptop per Child.

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We think that's really important for this thing not to be a shared resource, to be given

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to the kids. That is going to solve the maintenance, most of the maintenance issues. Everything

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else is pretty much built from the beginning to be open to participation. There's nothing

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to lock anybody from loading their software on it. I'm pretty sure that as soon as we

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come out and this thing gets deployed in large numbers in the immediate future, Microsoft

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will come out with an operating system to run on it, and we are perfectly fine with

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it. And we are perfectly fine with people contributing at all levels. We think that

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it's more important for this contribution not to happen at the LPC level, although we

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certainly will do anything to our abilities to consult with the government on how to use

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that, but to happen at the school level.

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Okay. And is there a platform that we can get started on and just kind of prototype

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some stuff? I mean, could we cobble together a wiki and a...

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You can go and contribute to our wiki right now.

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Okay.

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For people who want to port software and things like that, we have developer boards that we

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are making available already.

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Okay. Can you define any architecture at all to design to?

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We have defined what the software stack looks like. Again, we want to avoid obesity.

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Sure.

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So we are not trying to exclude anything from running on the laptop, but we have certain

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guidelines.

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That's on your website?

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That's on our website. So to give you an idea, we think that Python is the language that

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we are putting there. We are not putting Perl. We had talks with...

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Python. Yes, Python.

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We had a discussion. We said Python is the way to go. If we want to teach kids the programming

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language right now, that is going to be there. Certainly for younger kids, Lego and its derivatives

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will be there.

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That will be broken?

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Yeah. Scratch and Squeak and the stuff that Alan K.

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Alan K is...

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Okay.

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Open Croquet?

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Yeah, things like that.

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Croquet?

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I've heard the term. I'm not going to say that I know exactly what it is.

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Oh, it's a three-dimensional Squeak.

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Okay. Yes.

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But high-end graphics and visual three-dimensional virtual space.

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I don't know that. The reason is that I'm not sure how good we are in 3D graphics. There

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is no 3D.

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So, you're going to support Smalltalk and Python natively on the machine?

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Yes.

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Interesting. And what wiki format?

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The wiki format, again, is an open question right now. It seems that we will probably

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have to develop something ourselves so that it can be integrated.

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Yeah.

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So, it's the web server and the wiki.

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Okay.

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It's one and the same thing.

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And e-book format? Have you decided on that at all?

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Open document.

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Open document.

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PDF, unfortunately, from the beginning.

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PDF? Okay.

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I mean, PDF is much better than talk, word, format, etc., etc.

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But we are trying to be pretty adamant about doing things in open ways that it's not going

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to exclude anybody from playing.

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Okay.

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We are not going to support open office.

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Okay.

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We are not trying to turn kids into office workers.

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Yeah.

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Probably, I'll be worried.

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Yeah.

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It's going to be the world processor of choice.

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Okay.

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Well, it's a very exciting project.

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The more that I talk to you, the more interesting it sounds.

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And if there's anything I can do to help with you, I've got a meeting coming up right after

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the Wikimania in Boston, another workshop.

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Are you going to be there at Wikimania?

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Yeah, I'll be at Wikimania.

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Probably, we are going to host half of Wikimania at LBC.

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Okay.

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So, it's going to happen at our offices.

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Okay.

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And I'm going to talk to all of these people.

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Okay.

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Rolando, do you want to say anything real quick before we retire here?

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Well, I had just one thing that I wanted to say.

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I think besides the odds against this project and your...

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Is it centered?

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I don't know that.

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Yeah, it is.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, yeah.

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So, besides the odds against, as you pointed out, there are some question marks, I think

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the real value of this project is that it breaks a spell.

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It's the first real example for a project that tries to reverse a trend.

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And I think industry will somehow have to follow.

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Certainly, there's a trend, a natural trend towards lowering costs.

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I think this buys us maybe five years.

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I don't know.

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So, that's the real value.