kip/bot/blog

I had no idea of the controversy surrounding the XO until I started twittering, flickring, and FBing my excitement at receiving mine in the mail. The range of reactions (and going-in assumptions) to it are wild:

- it’s a patronizing toy
- these kids need anything but a computer
- it should be windows and run like other computers
- it should be part of a guided curriculum
- it should work better without any teacher present
- it’s too complicated
- it’s too childish
- it’s too innovative and gratuitously so
- it’s not innovative enough
- WTF is this? and this? and this? and THIS?

One designer at Behavior, wrote:

We installed the OLPC Sugar emulator (via VMWare) here at Behavior and laughed our asses at it for about 20 minutes. It really is a shining testament to the disastrous effects of theory-driven- and designer-driven-design. You’re not missing much, but if you need to satisfy you curiosity and/or have a few lulz you should try it.

There is an almost gleeful delight in trashing the XO.  I’ve shown my XO to dozens of people (most of them willing observers, though I have been a little aggressive with strangers in the subway) and a significant number are ready to pronounce it an arrogant failure after moments, or, to be fair, minutes of interaction.

Perhaps that’s the right litmus — aren’t interactive designers taught that we have mere seconds to win an audience? On the other hand, don’t games, handhelds, new OSes, and even the iPhone require several minutes, or even hours of acclimation?

Many of the criticisms above are against the concept itself, some of them are about the implementation. The Economist ran a review that seems pretty even-handed. The reviewer respects the concept:

Indeed, Mr Negroponte’s vision was brilliant. He planned to blanket the developing world with tens of millions of $100 laptops for kids. The low cost would come from a tripartite “perfect storm�. First, economies of scale: sales would be directly to governments, who could only buy quantities above 1m. Second, the machines would bypass Intel’s processors and Microsoft’s software in favour of open-source stuff. Third, commodity parts would keep the price low.

He also respects the innovations (the screen, flash drive, element-resistance, PC to tablet factor). His final reasons for criticizing it are that: 1) they were naive about dealing with educational ministries; 2) naive about distribution and how quickly they would achieve scale; 3) that the final implementation stinks (his machine crashed frequently and he found the OS impenetrable); 4) that the folks were arrogant to the point of not listening to any criticisms legitimate or otherwise.

OLPC folks respond on their wiki, in a tone that is as respectful as the Economist’s critique. Their main points can be summarized: 1) a few facts in the article are wrong; 2) yes, the flaws exist, but these are flaws (crashing, slow load times) that are true to all computers, so the question is ‘by what standards are these flaws too severe?; 3) some bigger picture factors that may be overlooked, such as the rhythms of educational software, the tradeoffs needed in such an ambitious design. The closing of the wiki post is great. It includes the last, praising, line of the Economist’s review, and the OLPC response:

“Ultimately the OLPC initiative will be remembered less for what it produced than the products it spawned. The initiative is like running the four-minute mile: no one could do it, until someone actually did it. Then many people did.�

Not a bad obituary, but our work is not yet finished.

I bought mine, partially cuz I love the idea, and partially out of professional interest in the design.  Initial thoughts from the first day of play in a Flickr photoset.