The recent dispute between OLPC and Intel over Intel’s involvement with the XO laptop has again brought the issues of the OLPC project much attention.From reading around the topic over the last week, there seem to be several points which are worthy of consideration, many of which have not been clarified by either OLPC or Intel.

The author wrote an article about the XO on 29th November 2007, and this new article aims to take stock of the situation a month and a half later, with the events that have recently occurred.

The Classmate PC

Firstly, a look at the Intel and OLPC debacle.

Intel partnered the OLPC project in July 2007, after months of conflict between the two developers. The addition of Intel to the project meant that the company joined the other 11 companies (inc. google and AMD) who were already partners. From a BBC article in July, it appeared that the intention was for Intel to keep selling the Classmate PC, OLPC to keep selling the XO with the AMD chip, but to have the back up servers using Intel technology, and consideration be given by OLPC to using Intel chips in the XO’s. There was also mention that new software developed would be XO and Classmate compatible. OLPC were quoted in the same BBC article as saying ‘I think we will end up with a family of products that run across a wide variety of needs. Intel will be part of that mix.’

At the very beginning of January 2008, Intel withdrew its support from the OLPC project.

The OLPC rationale, as said by Nick Negroponte, the head of the OLPC project, for this decision was:

‘The biggest single reason was that [Intel] were directly selling their Classmate laptop as opposed to having it be a reference design [for the XO].’ (source)

One of the events mentioned most frequently in support of OLPC, is that a salesperson for Intel in Peru apparently made derogatory remarks about the XO, in an attempt to stop the government buying XO’s and encourage them to buy Classmate PC’s instead.

Therefore, OLPC say that one of their other reasons for having a problem with Intel’s actions is that Intel were criticising the XO to promote the Classmate. If that is the case, it does seem underhand on the part of Intel, and likely goes against the agreement made.

‘OLPC head Nicholas Negroponte has lashed out at the company accusing them of being self-serving and undermining the OLPC programme.’ (source)

However, it appears, and has been mentioned on several articles, that this issue of defamation occurred (or at least has been accepted to have occured) in one case, with one salesperson, in one country. As Negroponte himself said in reference to the boss of Intel:

‘He’s got 100,000 people and he can’t control all of them.’ (source)

So perhaps judgement of Intel’s actual intentions to contradict any agreement in this manner should be withheld, as there appears to be no proof of this as yet.

The XO laptop

Intel’s rationale for the split, as explained by an Intel spokesperson, was that “OLPC had asked Intel to end our support for non-OLPC platforms, including the Classmate PC, and to focus on the OLPC platform exclusively. At the end of the day, we decided we couldn’t accommodate that request.” (source)

Having looked at explanations given by both sides, the issue of the Classmate PC, and competition itself, are seemingly the causes of the problem.

There seems to have been a difference in OLPC and Intel’s views as to how Intel were going to deal with the Classmate PC once the partnership had been made. Without knowing exactly what the agreement stated, it is hard to know what was actually agreed, however it is clear that there was at the very least either misinterpretation, or outright breaking of the agreement on at least one side.

From the BBC article from July 2007 quoted earlier, the impression given was that Intel would continue as before with its sales approach to the Classmate PC. There would be benefits to both sides in terms of cross-compatible software, and potentially Intel chips in the XO as well as the back up servers using Intel technology.

However, Negroponte’s statement quoted earlier, that the Classmate should have been used as a reference design rather than Intel ‘directly selling their laptop’, seems to contradict this.

OLPC’s request that Intel end support for it’s own product the Classmate PC, also appears to directly contradict this.

In summary of this point, the author wonders what OLPC actually thought Intel would do. Did they think Intel would forfeit profit from the Classmate PC and not be ‘self-serving’. Negroponte’s quote mentioned earlier that OLPC ‘thought [they] could move towards [the Classmate PC] being a reference design’, seems significant with the word ‘thought’. Does this mean that Intel never agreed to this for definite? The question seems to be, in short, did OLPC expect Intel to not act like a business?

It does not become apparent from researching around this topic, how exactly OLPC and Intel thought that the partnership could work. The mix of business and not-for-profit is unusual in a situation where both are competing. If we consider what would happen in a business to business situation, the partnership would never have happened. If we consider two not-for-profit enterprises, they would probably collaborate, because they could help each other. However, in this case, OLPC seem to have expected help from Intel, and expected to not only give nothing in return, but also that Intel would sacrifice their aims (of profit) for the OLPC cause.

In terms of the competition between the two, this issue again proves extremely contradictory. Firstly, the two clearly are competitors, otherwise this problem would never have arisen in the first place, and the reasons given by both sides for the split, whilst somewhat different both acknowledge that it was because of competition.

Negroponte again contradicted himself after he stated a few months ago:

‘From my point of view, if the world were to have 30 million” laptops made by competitors “in the hands of children at the end of next year, that to me would be a great success. My goal is not selling laptops. OLPC is not in the laptop business. It’s in the education business.’ (source)

This appears to be in contradiction to his recent approach of asking Intel to stop selling the Classmate PC.

As Negroponte said:

‘When I questioned [Intel] about selling laptops directly, Paul Otellini himself would say that one size doesn’t fit all. And we agree with that, of course. That wasn’t the issue. They cannot compete with OLPC and be a partner.’ (source)

So, although there appears that there was no part of the agreement that stated that Intel could not promote or sell the Classmate PC, OLPC knew they could not be both a competitor and a partner. So exactly what was Intel’s approach supposed to be?

In terms of this issue, perhaps the comment from Paul Otellini that one size doesn’t fit all, was misinterpreted by Negroponte when he stated that it meant that they were not competitors. Whilst consumers clearly choose products for different needs or wants, it does not mean that the products are not competitors. Just because the XO has an ideology of constructivist learning, does that mean that consumers will put the two in different categories? Or does it actually mean that consumers will still look at the product and it’s tangible benefits, over the intangible and theoretical education differences.

It seems to the author that perhaps one of the problems with the OLPC is that whilst they are correct that their approach (constructivism) would be beneficial especially in developing world countries (as it emphasises the users particular social situation (culture, language, logic etc) and encourages collaboration), they are not selling an idea in reality, they are selling a product. And they are selling a product that resides in a hugely competitive market (as discussed in an interesting nextbillion.net article), ruled by giant corporations, ruled by profit. What the author means by ‘in reality’ is not that OLPC are not trying to sell an idea, they clearly are, but that markets are ruled by consumers, not sellers, and maybe an idea that is not status quo in terms of education is not going to feature as a priority when considering one laptop versus another in a society where bridging the digital divide is generally considered a priority. Intel clearly supports the bridging the digital divide initiative, with its World Ahead program of Accessibility, Connectivity, Education, and Content, and it’s clear update and support system for their product.

In conclusion, it seems that the partnership was destined to fail, and that there are just too many differences in the way the two developers work. However, the author does sympathise with Intel (apart from the alleged underhand defamation of the XO), and considers that maybe the OLPC’s ideology based approach needs some sort of reality check on its integration of ideology into reality, without which it seemingly will not reach it’s potential.

If OLPC want to help education through their ideology, that is a good thing and the author does believe that the approach of constructivism could work. However, perhaps OLPC need to consider that the product first needs to be able to compete with the existing products in their market, to allow infiltration of their product. This would allow people to actually understand through first hand experience why the approach is beneficial, rather than OLPC relying on people to trust the theory of constructivism, and the XO interpretation of it, neither of which the buyers or users likely have experience or knowledge of.

Related articles of interest:
Wiki on Constructivism theory
New York Times article ‘Intel Quits Effort to Get Computers to Children’
Nextbillion.net article ‘Next Billion Customers? Intel’s Already a World Ahead’
Nextbillion.net article ‘Reality Check for the $100 laptop’

The impact that both slavery and then colonisation have had on Africa is still evident today. There are many issues with respect of this, but the ones I am considering are the stifling of innovation, forced migration, and lack of self-esteem.
Firstly, pre-colonial trade has been recognised as stifling innovation, which was perpetuated by the subsequent colonisation, as described by Kyambalesa in his book ‘Socio-Econonic Challenges: The African Context’:

‘There is general consensus that pre-colonial trade in both goods and humans… seriously undermined Africa’s potential for indigenous-based technological advancement…European industries contributed to the weakening of the indigenous skills, expertise and know-how of communities in Africa…It is widely held that…[this] partly led to the creation of conditions for persistent technological stagnation, retrogression and protracted dependency…

European colonialism…further suppressed creativity and innovation among indigenous African’s… [which] effectively precluded the potential for further improvements in existing indigenous technologies and the generation of new forms of technology.’

The diasporas created by slavery can be analysed in comparison to the migration in the Western world from Europe to Australia, Canada and the USA. However, the significant difference between the two is that the western migration took place after the countries had implemented and developed a strong economy. Africa on the other hand, had not, and the migration created many problems such as:

‘…Coercion and violence, and, as such, was disruptive to the existing, as well as the potential transformation of the, political, economic and technological facets of African life.’

This problem was only made worse by the subsequent colonisation, which did not allow for the problems to be addresses, and they therefore became further ingrained.

My last point is that of self-esteem, by which I mean the faith that a country’s leaders have in their own people. The era of colonisation has arguably left its mark through the pre-conceived notions of local people that foreigners are more proficient at their jobs than locals, which leads to dependence on foreigners for development, particularly in areas such as technology.

This appears to be made worse by the lack of education and training of the local people in the present. Moreover, it appears that it is largely this lack of education and training, which can be blamed on the governments of the countries, that is causing this lingering problem, and if the governments dealt with the issue of education and training, they would also solve this one.

‘[There is]… unwanted preference of some government leaders in Africa for foreign experts, particularly those leaders who have… claimed that locally trained experts are half-baked… But if this state of affairs is true, then it is the government leaders themselves who are to blame for not having [enabled]… training of citizens.’ (Kyambalesa)

One of the hot topics of debate within African development over recent months has been the budget laptops created for the educational purposes of the poor, specifically within emerging market countries.

This article is going to focus on the ‘XO’ also referred to as the ‘$100 laptop’, developed by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative in the US.

Firstly, I want to give a brief overview of the product ideology and specification.

The XO vision is, as quoted from Professor Nicholas Negroponte the project leader (who is on leave from MIT, where he co-founded the famous MIT Media Laboratory):

‘It’s not a laptop project. It’s an education project.’

It is stated that the aim of the project is not to provide computer literacy, but to improve education. Computer literacy will come as a by-product of this, according to the laptop.org site.

The project is not-for-profit, and was funded by multiple corporations including Google, Inc.

An excerpt from the laptopgiving.org website defines the project mission as:

‘…To provide a means for learning, self-expression, and exploration to the nearly two billion children of the developing world with little or no access to education. While children are by nature eager for knowledge, many countries have insufficient resources to devote to education—sometimes less than $20 per year per child (compared to an average of $7,500 in the United States). By giving children their very own connected XO laptop, we are giving them a window to the outside world, access to vast amounts of information, a way to connect with each other, and a springboard into their future. And we’re also helping these countries develop an essential resource—educated, empowered children.’

The XO laptop itself is light and around the size of a textbook with a long battery life. The screen can be swivelled around, which is designed to optimise use for traditional laptop work, gaming and e-books. It can be charged by a variety of means, for example car batteries, solar, foot or the traditional power source. It is designed for durability, with features such as a rubber-sealed keyboard, extra thick casing and ‘bumpers’, and is estimated to last at least five years, after durability testing. Also, the screen is designed to be visible in direct bright sunlight.

Other built-in peripherals apart from the keyboard (which is available in multiple languages), include a game pad, touch pad, speakers and microphones, wireless networking and video camera. Connectors built-in are USB, microphone, headphone, memory card slot and obviously power.

It does not have an internal hard drive, as this was assessed to be the most likely part to break.

The software provided is all open-source, uses a Linux Operating Systems, with support for multiple programming languages, which is designed to allow developers and users the maximum amount of freedom and ability to develop as possible.

It sells for around US $188 plus shipping, although currently they have a ‘give one get one’ campaign.

Now, in terms of the success of distribution of the product, the XO is not doing well so far.

However, the first mass sale of the XO’s was confirmed recently, when Uraguay signed up to buy 100,000 of them. But, Nigeria, Libya and Pakistan, all of whom had pledged to buy the XO on mass have instead turned to the Classmate PC, developed by Intel and Microsoft.

The Classmate PC is the closest competitor to the XO, but has many differences. The most significant ones appear to be that it runs Windows (or can run Linux), has a hard drive, and therefore has ‘real PC’ capabilities (as the Intel website puts it), does not have features such as cameras or gamepads, and has been developed as part of Intel’s World Ahead Program (World Ahead Program website), which also runs other projects such as teacher trainings, digital inclusion programs, the Skool technology development (an online digital learning tool to improve teaching and encourage collaboration between parents and children and teachers and pupils). The Classmate PC costs between US $230- US $300.

There have recently been other low-cost laptops released, in October Taiwan’s Asustek released one priced at £125 and MITAC (also from Taiwan) has announced intentions to release their equivalent soon.

The reasons stated by Libya and Nigeria as to why they are buying the Classmate PC rather than the XO are that they were affected by the increased cost from the promised $100 to 188, and there were concerns over servicing, teacher training and future upgrades of the product.

Due to problems such as this, the XO sales strategies have had to change significantly to attempt to increase sales. The minimum number allowed to be bought has been lowered, and the ‘Buy one get one’ concept was introduced.

When these facts are considered, it is no wonder really that Intel is winning. Now that the cost of the two laptops are so similar, countries are clearly going to buy the version that they trust, with big names such as Intel and Microsoft, where they feel secure that the long-term issues with the purchases are covered. There are instantly other issues with the XO that spring to mind, such as - Why are a video camera and gaming pad essential? Surely removing these would have brought down cost. Why does the screen really need to swivel? Most laptops don’t, and they are used for a multitude of purposes. Why are they only expected to have a lifespan of 5 years? To emerging market countries, they would be investing a lot of money, why would these products not be upgradeable and serviceable to make them last longer? Why is gaming considered important, when educational gaming in the developed world is still not particularly successful? And this argument of why there is no hard drive seems to not really hold up, surely a better process would have been to design a hard drive that was more durable (which could perhaps have been dealt with cost-wise by removing other features) .

To go back to the issue of the XO versus the Classmate PC, somewhat ironically, Intel and Microsoft only began development of their low-cost laptop due to their fear that the OLCP project would corner an area of the market before they did. As said in article ‘A Lesson for BoP Technologists: Put the Business Model First’, it is due to OLPC development that there is a focus on lower-cost technology. So, credit where credit is due, there is no doubting that this is a positive step forward. Professor Negraponte does also state that he is not concerned about the fact that the Classmate PC may outsell his XO, because, as mentioned previously, his aim is to improve education, and as his version is non-profit, he won’t really lose out as a profit-driven product would.

However, all this discussion about which laptop is selling better, and what exactly they do is really beside the point. Whilst all these factors are important in terms of the technology itself, perhaps the issues of the environment surrounding, and users of the product, are the crucial considerations needed for a development project of this type.

This leads me to a recent article from the BBC entitled ‘Politics stifling $100 laptop‘ where a spokesperson for OLPC is quoted against Nigeria’s education minister. The culmination of reading the article was that it made clear the fact that the foundation for the OLPC project, and therefore it’s potential for success, is poor.

To summarise the article, the OLPC has blamed politicians for the lack of sales of the XO, which they put down to a fear of change on the part of governments, due to high risk factors. The project spokesperson, Walter Bender, also stated that there is a need for ‘dramatic change’ in education within countries where education was poor. Apparently, the OLPC think that:

‘…Change has to be dramatic. You’ve got to be big, you’ve got to be bold. And what has happened is that there has been an effort to say ‘don’t take any risks - just do something small, something incremental.’

Nigeria’s answer is to question whether putting laptops into schools where there is a lack of even basic equipment such as tables and chairs is the most appropriate step towards education improvement. They say that:

‘We are more interested in laying a very solid foundation for quality education which will be efficient, effective, accessible and affordable.’

At this point, the author has to wonder where there has been any evidence with development in emerging market countries, where jumping ahead past the immediate issues and attempting to solve them by other solutions has ever been proved to work. In fact, it would appear from looking at evidence of technology projects, and also economic projects such as those dictated by the IMF (International Monetary Fund), that this approach has been proved many times over to be unsuccessful.

So, in support of Nigeria’s response to the issue, it is generally acknowledged that much of the education needed within emerging market countries, and especially Africa, is the very basic requirements, such as reading and writing. And obviously, these can be done with paper, pencils and books, all of which could be provided at a much lower cost that laptops.

In conclusion, the author would argue that the approach the OLPC has taken is clearly wrong, (which is being proved already by the lack of sales), and that there is no excuse for why they have done so, as there is so much evidence against this process of making a big change without consideration for the enabling, or disabling factors surrounding it. In short, nothing exists in isolation.

Relevant Links:

White African blog post - Nigerian eLearning Program for OLPC and Classmate PC
African Loft article - Novel Concepts Are Great, But…
nextbillion.net article - The Tradeoff Between Growth and Innovation at the BOP
Ashhie.wordpress.com blog post - Low cost Laptops for emerging markets: OLPC, Classmate and others
Info on 2 Taiwanese low-cost laptops
Article from San Francisco Chronicle - Emerging markets in BRIC nations are focus of technology firms
The Classmate PC portal

Following on from my recent post titled ‘What is appropriate development?’ I decided as promised, that I would take a broader look at the issues surrounding appropriate development, specifically the environment for which, or within which, they are being developed. As I discussed in the aforementioned post, one of the issues is whether the development is profit-led or not. Now, whilst this blog is all about whether development is needs-led - specifically how the concepts of user experience design apply, nothing works in isolation in reality, and I think it is equally important to know your subject area, and to know of the interlinking issues that surround it, to allow for more balanced assessment and opinions.

The issues I am going to cover are:

Education and Training
Research & Development and Data Collection
Slavery, Pre-Colonial Trade and Colonisation
Internal Infrastructure Investment
Lack of Communication Infrastructure
Power of IGO’s in global economy
Foreign investment
Patent protection
Debt burden

However, as there is quite a lot of detail required simply to overview these issues, I thought it better to start a mini-series of posts, under the title ‘An Enabling Environment’, where each separate post will look at one issue. So, for this first post, I am going to look at education and training issues.

Education and training

To begin, education in general should be defined as having two benefits in respect of creating an enabling environment. The first is that people need education to be able to invent or innovate. Secondly, people need an education to be able to make use of those inventions or innovations.

In regards to this, Africa certainly falls down. The lack of primary, secondary and tertiary education systems, or the poor quality that are provided, is a widely acknowledged problem. I am not going to delve here into the issues of why this is, suffice to say in general it is not happening.

The subsequent issue with relation to education is consideration of what happens to the people who do get educated successfully.

Two problems prevail here. The first is that they leave to work abroad, where they aspire to a better lifestyle. Ironically, it has been demonstrated that often these people end up working in jobs which are not equivalent to their professional qualifications, but their standard of living is still improved on if they stayed in Africa working in higher level positions.

The second point, which was something I was unaware of, and I have to say took me by surprise, is the issue of AIDS in respect of African educated males employed in high level positions within Africa. This information was provided to me by a retired Managing Director of CDC, who informed me that when he worked within Africa, approximately 25% of CDC’s African managers in countries such as Zambia died every year from AIDS. Whilst evidently it comes as no shock that AIDS is prevalent in Africa. What does however make the issue even more concerning in terms of development, is that the percentage of educated men dying of AIDS is much higher than uneducated due to the conceived status symbol of having lots of girlfriends, which is enabled through having money, which is enabled through training and employment.

In reference to this, I just read an interesting article on mthandenisoracle’s blog, entitled ‘Aids rises among SA’s rich!!!’, which reports on a study undertaken within South Africa which has shown that AIDS amongst the employed/educated people is growing. A spokesperson for the survey said:

‘If we thought the AIDS epidemic was having bad economic effects already, this could take us to the crisis point.’

It is clearly a good thing that this issue is being recognised, however, I would say that considering the retired Managing Director I spoke to knew about this issue from over 15 years ago, it seems that perhaps the ‘crisis point’ has been happening for years, and we should be asking why it was not recognised or acknowledged earlier and what effect this problem has had on development already, as well as looking at how to tackle the issue now. Maybe by analysing past mistakes, we can learn how to avoid them in the future?

Next section coming soon…