Blog - Olpc

BLOG – One Laptop Per Child (OLPC): an appropriate concept? The OLPC concept proved to be an interesting and challenging topic to write about. It is a story with many twists and turns, a swamp of technological 'gobbledigook' to wade through and many ethical issues to consider – too much to adequately address in this blog. How can the OLPC concept be understood in terms of permaculture principles? Can one confidently conclude whether or not the OLPC concept is 'appropriate'? 'In January 2005 the MIT Media Lab launched a new research initiative to develop a $100 laptop—a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world's children. To achieve this goal, a new, non-profit association, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), was created, which is independent of MIT'. (OLPC team, 2007) The OLPC team claims that the concept is primarily an 'educational' agenda, not a laptop one. In short: It [the 'educational' agenda] can be implemented in more than one way, by no means limited to the embodiment of the OLPC non-profit association’s so-called “$100 Laptop.” The argument for OLPC is simple: many children — especially those in rural parts of developing countries — have so little access to school — in some cases just a tree — that building schools and training teachers is only one way — perhaps the slowest way — to alleviate the situation. So, the argument goes, that children in this situation will 'engage themselves more directly in their own learning.' which should run parallel with efforts to increase more schools and teachers. (OLPC team, 2007) A quick overview of the OLPC project development In a nutshell, the OLPC concept was conceived by Nicholas Negroponte who founded MIT's Media Lab. He announced the idea at the Davos 'World Economic Summit' in January 2005 to a generally critical response – the idea that you would produce a laptop for under $100 was unpopular to the tech world's main supermoguls such as Craig Barrett, Michael Dell, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. (Rothman (3), 2008). Negroponte got a project development team together, struggled to find a manufacturer given the cutting edge nature of the technology proposed and the not-for-profit ethos but eventually found the world's largest laptop manufacturer (based in Taiwan), Quanta, to support the project. Many technological and business compromises were made along the way, however the project has remained on track and the first generation 'XO' laptop is being manufactured on large scale. For example, the Indian Government recently announced that it would purchase 250,000 laptops from the OLPC organisation. (Nosowitz, 2009) This will undoubtedly boost the project's R & D as well as accelerating the current counterrevolution of low-power computing that is currently underway and is also consistent with OLPC's agenda. For example, most if not all laptop manufacturers are now producing 'mini-PCs', such as the 'Eee-PC' made by ASUS (an idea poached from Quanta), that are designed on low-energy computing principles but have so far failed to meet the $100 price point. So, onto the analysis of the OLPC concept. PERMACULTURE PRINCIPLES

There are number of perspectives, or principles, you could take when analysing the OLPC concept. I'm going focus on what I consider to be the most relevant principles from Holmgren (2002). -Produce no waste: A stitch in time saves nine; Waste not, want not According to Wikepedia.org, 'Rapid technology change, low initial cost, and with planned obsolescence have resulted in a fast-growing surplus of electronic waste around the globe', also known as e-waste, escrap, or Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), and is further defined as 'a loose category of surplus, obsolete, broken, or discarded electrical or electronic devices.' Here are few statistics that I have unscrupulously plucked from Anon (2) (2009) and should highlight the urgency of the ensuing global e-waste problem (using computers as a relevant eg to OLPC)... *Within Australia, 500,000 computers were recycled in the year 2006. Compare this to the 1.6 million simply thrown away, 1.8 million in storage and 5.3 million simply sitting unused on shelves and gathering dust. Add to this the estimated 2.4 million new computers Australians are estimated to buy each year. Considering electronics in general, Australian homes each contain an average of 22, including appliances, video game consoles, telephones and computers. Within the United States in 2005, 30% of consumers replaced their computers. Of those 30% half did so as they wanted to upgrade to newer technology and the other half because they felt their computer was too slow. 20% of consumers simply threw their old computers in the bin when replaced. 240 million computers are estimated to be disposed of in the United States each year, only 10% of which are recycled. Finally, The Consumer Electronics Association says that U.S. households spend an average of $1,400 annually [sic] on an average of 24 electronic items, leading to speculations of millions of tons of valuable metals sitting in desk drawers. (Anon (1), 2009) My basic point is that in the United States and Australia alone we consume huge numbers of computers (as well as many other electronic devices) and don't reuse and recycle very much of the subsequent ewaste produced. Furthermore, most of that e-waste gets exported to developing countries which although has some 'economic benefits' to the host nation these benefits are arguably more than offset by the various environmental (human and ecological) costs resulting from the high amounts of nonrecyclable toxic substances that are embodied in most electronic devices and are disposed into the local environment during or after processing, eg. Atmosphere, landfill and waterways. The current consumer computing paradigm clearly fails to achieve the 'Produce no waste' principle i.e. Many unused outputs or waste streams are not reused as inputs into manufacturing processes used to create the computers. Will the OLPC laptops change the consumer computing paradigm? According to the OLPC team (2007), the XO is 'the greenest laptop ever made' and is rated very highly by EPEAT, an organisation that rates the green credentials of laptops. However, the OLPC team does not state explicitly that all components in the XO are recyclable. Maybe a future generation of the XO will achieve 100% recyclability... Keep it in mind too that recycling is not always as energy efficient as creating new components from scratch eg. Glass, so a design goal should be to use hardware components that can be efficiently used, reused, repaired and recycled. -Use slow and small solutions: The bigger they are, the harder they fall; Slow and steady wins the

race In the case of OLPC I would partly support the popular principle of International Development (mainly in academic circles) here which is 'slowly, slowly, slowly' and is also favoured by Holmgren (2002) in a similar flavour of 'use slow and small solutions'. The effects of rapid and 'inappropriate' development are widely documented. However, in some cases 'leapfrogging' older technology should be an urgent priority, eg. If the need for more, or the replacement of, power infrastructure arises it would be preferable to use renewable energy sources such as concentrating solar power (CSP) over nonrenewable sources such as coal-fired power stations due to the realities of peak energy and climate change. According to the OLPC team computers will significantly improve access to education and consequently decrease the level of poverty in the developing world. If this is true, then given the urgency of poverty reduction, the scalability of the OLPC concept is critical i.e. How fast and how widespread can the OLPC computers be deployed in the developing world? But, there is a problem with this logic since I would suggest that much of the development on the XO is now redundant given the recent announcement that the next generation OLPC laptop, the XO-2, is scheduled for release in 18 months time and will include two touchscreens (?supporting virtual keyboards of various native languages) and more power efficient 'ARM' processors compared to the AMD manufactured ones in the XO. (Shah 2009) This will also necessitate substantial new software development on the operational and application levels. This move will play a major role in 'reducing cost and optimizing the features so what comes out is a device that works very reliably and is even easier to use.' (Shah 2009) I would predict that the move away from x86 based architecture (found in AMD and Intel processors and chipsets) (and hopefully towards the goal of 100% reusable, repairable and recyclable materials) will be a major leap forward in computing in general and essential to try and exceed that $100 price point for OLPC laptops. So, why sell 250,000 XO laptops to the Indian Government given this change of direction for OLPC? Is 'slowly', from the Indian government's perspective, a more appropriate principle here...? The main problem of scalability in this context is the effects of pollution resulting from the redundancy of older laptop technology en masse aka the conventional consumer computing paradigm, eg . The XO could become a waste product well before it's predicted 5 year lifespan if all future product development is focused on the XO-2 architecture/system. Could the same problem occur if the XO-3 is a major leap forward from the XO-2 architecture? Would the XO-2 then rapidly become a global waste stream (albeit mostly 'recyclable')? On the ground there are numerous companies competing with their own OLPC laptop products – a clearly stated goal of Negroponte (Rothman (1), 2008) so there will be increasing scales of waste streams on a global scale of variable 'green' characteristics. I hope that governments choosing to 'quickly' get laptops out to 'their children' will favour laptop manufacturers that meet high green credentials as well as supporting low-power computing architectures such as the XO-2 and its future incarnations. Initially, waiting for the XO-2 may seem a 'slow' process, but probably more responsible over the long-term if green computing is the goal – which it should be. However, if the XO is not 'quickly' deployed on a large scale, the XO-2 development will probably occur more 'slowly' due to slower and lower capital inputs – and grossly inferior OLPC products, like Intel's 'Netbook' will gain the dominant foothold in the OLPC market, which it is currently trying to establish. I doubt that the OLPC will change the way the consumer computing paradigm works however I think it is better and ethically defensible to have more educated children that have more opportunities in

general and that there should be a global effort such as the OLPC concept to develop the XO-2 architecture as a starting point for future 'green' computing. Use edges and value the marginal: Don't think you are on the right track just because it is a wellbeaten path High levels of diversity at the edge of industrial civilisation will become increasingly valuable in the context of 'peak everything'...how would the OLPC concept affect this 'edge' i.e. people/companies/governents of the world that have not yet being assimilated into the centres of, eg., economic and political power? How will this computing access empower and disempower those living at the edge? Is computing and subsequent internet access essential from a systems ecology perspective, eg. Maximum Power Principle, in that those people/companies/governments who lack widespread access to the information economy will be poorly adapted, inefficient and quickly overpowered/outmaneuvered when competing with more information-intensive people/companies/governments in the global economy? CONCLUSIONS As the global economy continues to grow, despite the hiccups (past and present) of boom-bust capitalism cycles and international aid and development programs, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer in the context of an increasingly hostile biosphere [Copy that?]. What importance does and should education, and perhaps more importantly access to and the dissemination of useful information via appropriate technology across all age demographics, especially the 'child' demographic, have in rebuilding more sustainable and just civilisations and cultures? Will the OLPC concept fundamentally become an 'appropriate' energetic equaliser for humanity or just another 'inappropriate' ideological trap, like the global economy in its current form and structure, imagined and pioneered by engineers embedded in dominator civilisations and cultures and delivered to dominated ones? Maybe 'the truth' lies somewhere in between. REFERENCES ●

EPEAT (www.epeat.net)

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Holmgren, David, “Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability”, Holmgren Design Services, Victoria, 2002 Nosowitz, Dan, 'India Buys 250,000 OLPC Laptops After Own $10 Laptop Project Didn't Quite Work Out', http://www.gizmodo.com/5230502/india-buys-250000-olpc-laptops-after-own-10laptop-project-didnt-quite-work-out, last updated 28 April, 2009 OLPC team, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child, last updated December 2007 Rothman (1), Wilson, 'OLPC Origin: Bittersweet Success and Future of the XO Laptop', http://www.gizmodo.com/5043089/olpc-origin-bittersweet-success-and-future-of-the-xo-laptop, last updated 28 August, 2008 Rothman (2), Wilson, 'OLPC Origins: US and Taiwan's Hardware Lovechild', http://www.gizmodo.com/5042466/olpc-origins-us-and-taiwans-hardware-lovechild, last updated 27 August, 2008 Rothman (3), Wilson, 'Secret Origin of the OLPC: Genius, Hubris and the Birth of the Netbook', http://www.gizmodo.com/5041765/secret-origin-of-the-olpc-genius-hubris-and-the-birth-of-thenetbook, last updated 26 August, 2008 Shah, Agam, 'OLPC set to dump x86 for Arm chips in XO-2',

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http://www.pcworld.com/article/161112/olpc_set_to_dump_x86_for_arm_chips_in_xo2.html, last updated 12 March, 2009 Anon (1), 'Electronic waste', http://www.Wikepedia.org, last updated May 2009 Anon (2), 'Understanding E-Waste Statistics', http://www.1300rubbish.com.au/rubbishremoval/ewaste/understanding-e-waste-statistics/, last updated 8 May, 2009