How altruism could reshape IT

I recently I had the extraordinary experience of hearing MIT professor and project leader Nicholas Negroponte explain what the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project will mean. It’s obviously going to transform the lives of children living in developing countries. It may also directly affect people like you and me running businesses or working in IT.

In Negroponte’s words, the goal of the project is to bring the maximum number of laptops to kids in developing countries, on a one-to-one basis, for the purpose of education. This means that each child owns their laptop, which Negroponte said was a crucial part of the plan as it will motivate them to care for and repair their laptops themselves.

These ideas are based on 40 years of research by Negroponte and others, plus experience from two similar projects – one in Costa Rica that began in 1988 using desktop computers, and a more recent initiative with about 50 laptops in Cambodia.

The Costa Rica project was successful and now nearly all the children of that country have access to desktop computers. This seems to have transformed the country’s economy – 51 percent of its exports are now integrated circuits.

The OLPC project is set to change the world by helping to educate some of the half billion or so children living in developing countries. It shifted from a grand plan to an imminent reality last December when Quanta, one of the largest laptop manufacturers, said it would build the laptops.

Brazil, Thailand, Argentina and Nigeria have placed orders and are likely to receive the first deliveries next year. China, India and Egypt are expected to be the next recipients. Initially each device will cost about $130, and the price should drop to $50 by 2010.

OLPC aims to sell 100 million units a year by 2008, and each unit will use processors made by AMD. This will revolutionise the economies of scale for AMD, which could be good for you and me. Likewise, a few years from now Linux will be the dominant desktop operating system in many of the developing countries around the world.

The Costa Rica experience shows recipients of OLPC devices are likely to become economically significant in their own right, and a percentage will likely migrate to the UK and other countries for work. The laptops will use peer-to-peer wireless mesh network technologies to provide internet access with the minimum of infrastructure, particularly useful for people living in remote locations.

This is a hugely significant project. It will reshape the future of many developing countries, and in doing so it could reshape IT in the developed world as well.