[Themaintainers] One Laptop Per Child's $100 Laptop Was Going To Change The World — Then It All Went Wrong

[Bastien]

Hi Lee and all,

Lee Vinsel <lee.vinsel at gmail.com> writes:

> I was just looking into OPLC nostalgically a few weeks ago and
> thinking about it as a clear example solutionism.

I worked for OLPC as a contractor in 2008 for a few months, helping
Haïti to implement its OLPC program.  I helped the local OLPC team
writing contents and activities for teachers and children, designing
workshops to let teachers know what to do with the XOs, translating
the Sugar platform into haitian creole, etc.

Then I started OLPC France (https://olpc-france.org) toegether with a
few friends and we still exist today as a small and friendly group of
teachers, developers, researchers, hardware hackers, etc.

The article is quite balanced, but let me insist on a few facts.

The first one is that XO laptops from 2008 are still working.  Yes,
the article says it, but I think its deserves a lot more of attention,
especially on this list.

The second fact is that OLPC programs were mostly led by governments,
most of them well aware of maintainance problems.  Thus, all sort of
maintainance solutions were invented for and I'd love to see someone
getting out there on the ground and listing them.  For example, in
Uruguay, they had a bus traveling the country to fix laptops, with a
mix of paid employees and unpaid volunteers.

The third fact is that OLPC brought small changes in many areas, most
of them really invisible because they are just "cultural".  E.g. OLPC
programs were often a unique opportunity for ministries of education
and ministries of [transport/electricity/[infrastructure]] to work
together, which brings all kind of political problems but which also
encourages collaboration in places that are strategic.  For example in
Rwanda, they first failed to anticipate the needs for electricity then
worked on it and fixed this.  Same in Uruguay for connectivity, where
the government agencies worked with local cooperatives to ensure the
Internet connection was used for schools and other local activities.

Also, OLPC grassroots in many countries were a unique opportunity to
have teachers discuss with hackers and free software developers, as we
continue to do at OLPC France, developing https://sugarizer.org, or at
OLPC San Francisco, where they recently held a hackathon on "open data
for education" (https://www.olpcsf.org).

All this was made possibile by two things: OLPC being "open source"
since the beginning and OLPC encouraging grassroots organizations.

So, I don't argue that OLPC did not have its share of solutionism but
I would say that this was not "by design".  Negroponte was trying very
hard to sell his ideas and he probably relied too much on solutionist
expectations of his audience -- but the ones who implemented OLPC on
the ground were confronted with real maintainance problems on a daily
basis and solutionism is not an option here.  Collaboration is.  And
many kinds of collaboration were possible thanks to OLPC being open
and Sugar being a free software.

Anyway, I don't want to defend a program that's now history, just to
expand the views on its diversity, and the diversity of its outcome.

All best,

-- 
 Bastien