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

[Lee Vinsel]

Bastien,

Thanks so much for these fascinating stories and examples. I agree that
OPLC would make a great study, especially if it got into these
implementation issues, including maintenance, and especially if it looked
at different places in the world. Could make a great book or dissertation .
. .

I appreciate you shining more light on it for us.

Lee

On Tue, May 1, 2018 at 6:07 AM, Bastien <bzg at bzg.fr> wrote:

> 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
>



-- 
Assistant Professor
Department of Science and Technology in Society
Virginia Tech
leevinsel.com
Twitter: @STS_News
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