Utopian Visions: One Laptop Per Child

If utopia has returned in these cynical times it is the buzz around the technology of this little machine being developed at One Kendall Center in Cambridge. One Laptop Per Child. Of course, cynics would like to say that Western culture technogeeks are looking through rose colored glasses and pronouncing what third world kids "need." What poor kids need, says Nicholas Negroponte, is the OX laptop computer and they will be raised out of poverty.

Aside from the underlying assumption OLPC that this will be good for poor kids, the design challenges the XO computer are formable. The case needs to be very tough. Power consumption must be minimal. It must be water and dirt proof. The hard drive cannot be mechanical - no moving parts. The wifi antenna must be powerful enough to work in a range of circumstances. The goal was to make it for $100 (although they've only been able to get it to $188). And it needs quality software and educational "content" delivered to it every where in the world.

As one employee of Red Hat, the Cambridge based company developing OLPC, said this is not a product it is a global humanitarian cause. In this case, the team in Cambridge is trying to apply difficult design concepts, mesh networks, open source software communities and social networking to solve world problems of poverty. And it should look freaky cool also.