The mission of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is to empower the children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child
The concept: if a machine is designed smartly enough, without the bloat of standard laptops, and sold in large enough quantities, the price can be brought way, way down. Low enough for developing countries to afford millions of them — one per child. The laptop is called the XO, because if you turn the logo 90 degrees, it looks like a child.
Applications native to the XO laptop are called Activities. And activities available for download can be found at an activity wiki. What is even more exciting is the social networking that is built into the XO: social and sharing, mesh networks (connecting upto their friends in the area) and Wi-Fi (when Internet is available). It can run on solar and is built to withstand all conditions. Check out a video where this is demonstrated, and makes you cringe a little ;-). The XO has no hard-disk, no CD-player.
While it is booting, the cutest message appears on the screen: “Hello children of the world.” That automatically puts a smile on your face. What OLPC is doing is truly special; for one to say that they want every child in the world to have their own laptop to carry along with their little coloring pencils regardless of race, creed, religion, or background is what true humanity is…..
No I hadn’t Steve. Thanks for the pointer!
Karen – have you seen the security model for OLPC? It’s called Bitfrost and documented here.
A security model designed for five year olds is probably ideal for managers everywhere – especially the principle “Security cannot depend upon the user’s ability to read a message from the computer and act in an informed and sensible manner. While disabling a particular security mechanism may require reading, a machine must be secure out of the factory if given to a user who cannot yet read.”
Can’t read or won’t read – there’s not really any difference in the security required!