One Laptop per Child
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The One Laptop per Child association (OLPC) is a U.S. non-profit organization set up to oversee The Children's Machine project and the construction of the 2B1 "$100 laptop". Both the project and the organization were announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2005.
OLPC is funded by a number of sponsor organizations. These include Google, Red Hat, AMD, Brightstar Corporation, News Corporation, SES Global and Nortel Networks. Each company has donated two million dollars, and is providing other assistance. Google included OLPC software development projects in its Summer of Code. Red Hat and Brightstar are donating developer time. SES Global has offered satellite communications capacity to participating countries. The MIT Media Lab began the design of the OLPC Laptop, but is not directly involved with OLPC.
The organization gained its most attention after Nicholas Negroponte and Kofi Annan unveiled a working prototype of the CM1 in November 2005 at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, Tunisia.
The organization is chaired by Nicholas Negroponte and its CTO is technologist Mary Lou Jepsen. Other principals of the company include former MIT Media Lab director Walter Bender, who is President of OLPC Software and Content, and Jim Gettys, Vice-President of Software Engineering.[1]
Participation
Brazil and Libya have announced their intentions of buying a million laptops plus infrastructure, school servers, training, and other necessities for $250 million. Rumors of other countries signing up have proven to be unfounded. OLPC states that no contracts will be signed until production is ready to begin in July 2007.
Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has submitted a bill to the legislature to deliver $100 laptops to all children in the state.Template:Cn Nigeria is the first country to order one million laptop computers.[2]
India has rejected the initiative, saying "it would be impossible to justify an expenditure of this scale on a debatable scheme when public funds continue to be in inadequate supply for well-established needs listed in different policy documents".[3]
OLPC has announced in May 2006 that it was talking with India (which has turned down the program for now), China, Egypt, Nigeria, and Argentina, and has talked about discussions with other countries, notably including Thailand (before the coup). A number of countries have active OLPC affiliates working to get their governments to sign up.
References
- One Laptop Per Child - a Preview of the Hundred Dollar Laptop, WorldChanging, November 3, 2005
- The $100 Laptop Moves Closer to Reality, Wall Street Journal, November 14, 2005
- Making One Laptop per Child a reality, Red Hat Magazine, December 14, 2005
- MIT professor hits back at $100 laptop critics, MSNBC, April 4, 2006
- Nigeria orders 1 million $100 laptops, The Inquirer, July 26, 2006 This turns out not to be the case.
- ↑ OLPC Principals and Staff List Retrieved February 13, 2006
- ↑ Nigeria orders 1 million $100 laptops, The Inquirer, July 26, 2006
- ↑ HRD rubbishes MIT's laptop scheme for kids, The Times of India, July 3, 2006