One Laptop per Child


'Walter Bender Walter Bender

At a lecture at MIT in the late 90s, Bill Buxton characterized the challenge for the user-interface-design community as minding the growing gap between the complexity of the world, which he argued was growing exponentially—Buxton’s Law, and the human capacity to accommodate complexity, which he argued was growing linearly—God’s Law. He proposed that good design could be used to both reduce complexity and to facilitate interaction.

While it is hard to argue that one should not strive for human-centric design, simplicity is not necessarily a preferred outcome: complexity is much of what makes life enjoyable; it is often the goal. We rarely seek a simple wine. We never seek a simple mind.

More problematic is Buxton’s characterization of God’s Law. Darwinists (and Creationists) would agree that the slope of human evolution is near (or at) zero. However this narrow reading does not take into account a fundamental human trait: people learn. It is only through learning that humanity can reach to complexity.

Eliot Soloway advocates learning-centered design: an approach that takes into consideration the unique needs of learners. It is Soloway—rather than Buxton—who inspires the underlying design principals of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program, which strives to provide Internet-enabled laptop computers to school-aged children in the developing world.

In addition to the capacity to learn, OLPC is capitalizing on two other human traits: the ability to express and the need to socialize. We are building an “expression” machine, whose basic modality is to create and share. We are emphasizing “Constructionism”: you learn through doing; to encourage more learning, foster more doing. The laptop is deployed with a full complement of tools for constructing text, music, and graphics.

We are confident that the laptop will be used for the dissemination of received knowledge without any intervention on our part: the first English word learned by the children in one of our pilot programs in Cambodia was “Google.” Equally sure is the extent to which the laptop will be used for communication: child-to-child and teacher-to-teacher; a sense of presence is always present in the interface, which supports chat and is voice overlaid upon all tasks.

Our goal is for children to appropriate knowledge. Any books and texts they download are embedded in a wiki; the children will be able to add comments and reflections, illustrations, etc. Their expressive output will also be stored in the wiki, to be shared within the community and thus encouraging criticism and reflection.

We have opted to use open-source software in a project for children because it gives them the opportunity to “own” the machine in every sense. While we don’t expect every child to become a programmer, we don’t want any ceiling imposed on those children who choose to reach towards complexity. We are diligent about using open document formats for much the same reason: transparency is more empowering than simplicity. The children—and their teachers—will have the freedom to reshape, reinvent, and reapply their software, hardware, and content.

The mechanical design of the laptop considers safety first. The team from Fuse Project have given the laptop soft, rounded edges and a visually distinctive, colorful design; with its light weight—less than 1.5 kilograms—and integrated handle sized for small hands, it is easy to carry. It contains no hazardous materials; it is fully ROHS compliant.

With the expectation that the laptop will be used in a harsher environment than the typical office computer, it has extra robust design: there is no hard drive to crash and few internal cables-another common point of failure. The laptop is molded with 2.0 millimeter thick plastic walls (over 50 percent thicker than the walls found on most commercial laptops). The I/O ports are protected externally and internally; there are internal “bumpers” to protect display and a soft external bumper for additional shock protection. The sealed rubber-membrane keyboard provides additional protection from dust and moisture.

The keyboard, which has a smaller key pitch for smaller hands, also has a lighter touch than normal keyboards. There is a dual-mode (capacitive for fingers and resistive for styli) extra-wide touch-pad to support pointing, drawing, and writing. While there are an internal microphone and stereo speakers, the external microphone input doubles as an analog-sensor input, enabling the laptop to be used for applications such as an oscilloscope. Other interface features include dual cursor-control pads for “gaming.” Three USB-2.0 ports are available for expansion.

A 7.5-inch dual-mode TFT display is mounted on a “transformer” hinge, supporting both electronic-book mode for reading and laptop mode for computing tasks. With an 8:1 contrast ratio and 1200x900 pixel resolution in reflective mode, the laptop will rival technologies such as E-Ink in sunlight. With the backlight on—transmissive mode—the display is full color.

The built-in wireless mesh network will ensure that even in situations where the connectivity to the Internet is intermittent, the children will have a reliable local high-speed channel of communication. Peer-to-peer “service discovery” ensures that the children will be able to chat, talk, and share with each other, even when they don't have access to remote services such as Google search and Skype. When the children are not using their laptops, they will serve as routers for other children, adding robustness to the mesh.

The laptop has a 2000-cycle removable NiMH battery, but human power is priority; many of the communities where we will be deploying have little or no power. There are a variety of human-power options and the expectation that there will be indigenous power systems adapted to the laptop as well: NiMH is much more tolerant to a wide and varied range of voltages than lithium; there is some evidence that varying the voltage actually improves the lifetime of the battery. Hand-in-hand with human power is power-efficiency: the laptop consumes 1⁄10th of the power of conventional laptops. This translates into a longer battery life and an expected ratio of ten minutes of use for every one minute spent in generating power.

At OLPC, we are not building a “simple,” inexpensive machine for the world’s children; inexpensive is a necessary specification for the laptop, as we are trying to reach children in the developing world. However, it is not sufficient: the laptop must be learning-centered. Our goal is to provide every child with the opportunity to explore, experiment, and express. We are not underestimating children’s need and capacity to engage in the “art of complexity.”
http://www.laptop.org