TY Nicholas for offering an alternative to corporate customer gouging. Hopefully this effort won’t be subverted by Indel of Microshlock in the manner of the first XO.

I work for a company with offices worldwide, including Nigeria and South Africa. At a recent training I spent hours talking to employees from those offices. Opportunities exist for advancement in those countries.

Perhaps the OLPC project will not be effective in areas of extreme poverty. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs suggests that certain basic needs must be satisfied before others will be pursued. But there are many different levels of poverty.

The book “The End of Poverty” by Jeffrey Sachs studies countries in various stages of poverty and development. By categorizing the levels of poverty Sachs was also able to propose an explanation as to how certain countries advanced.

The OLPC project may have its greatest impact on countries already progressing out of poverty.

The XO laptop uses more power (yes it has a color screen) and the XOXO or XO2 will be attempting to get down to 1 watt of power (which is the passive black and white power mode of the XO laptop. But the Emate 300 has 3 times less power usage with 24 hour power times off 4 double A batteries and it was made by Apple in 1996 – 98. So Apple Computer apparently in some ways was not only 10 years ahead of time, even with Scully at the helm, but perhaps 15 or 20 years ahead of other computing platforms who are trying to save energy to be green.

The question can often become, what is the message we are giving to the third world? Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not totally against the XO laptop project as some others.

But if things like “peak oil” are happening and impacting the world with population growth and limited resources are we really sending the right message by saying, wait until the next year or two and we’ll give you an even better computer.

The message of consumption, becomes somewhat clear and utopian. We can all share in the wealth and keep growing further. But if there are resource limits and energy limits, then in some cases it’s a matter of cutting back in the “developed world” in other words as the India, China and others get more wasteful and move to American Car culture and consumption, there’s less resources for Europe and America. So it’s a challenge and perhaps more of one to decide how to consume less in the higher level worlds and level them down toward poverty.

In other words, we have the same basic resources, living in a small world, but the “ignorent” or “developing cultures” who multiply like rabbits decide their kids need all the same toys and education that the restrained more aged and population controlled countries have. It’s interesting dilemas we face. Just searching through and looking at all the massive populations it’s amazing that modern society can use efficiency and economies of scale and mass production to feed everyone. Is peak oil and energy limits going to play a role in all this as countries start to feel depressions and food shortages due to fuel costs? That’s the bigger question that could lead to war and starvation. Will continued (wars of cleansing) happen with different religious groups starving others, and other sects and cultural groups as well, due to ethnic, religous and anti-religous cleansing? It seems that the poor fall off the table first and are pushed down further as things get worse. It seems like the mega-rich prosper no matter what and perhaps even engineer the problems for profit.

There are huge problems happening right now, and I’m not trying to put down the laptop or helping kids in the third world. I just wonder if some smart folks aren’t focusing on larger issues at hand.

Obama states he’ll give $3 billion to the auto companies. Ford invested $3 billion this year to put auto plants in Mexico where workers agreed to $2.50 to $5 an hour wages. If Ford won’t help it’s own US auto industry, how can the government be expected to do this with Obama bailout plans?

Developing economies are used like slaves for slave labor wages, meaning wage disparities to make the rich man richer as they ship cheap manufactured goods to more expensive markets. This continues to happen. It’s difficult to say if the XO concept really can have an impact on the major problems. It’s more of a small pet project by the richer countries to try to help the poorest kids. The “curriculum” will be the educators propaganda, maybe good or maybe bad. The xo laptop is just a tool, and who knows how it will be used?

I would like to be assembling content for the OLPCs. My favorite development platform is Adobe/Macromedia Director (not Flash).

I wonder how much work it would be to author similar interactive multimedia for the XO’s (Would I have to master Linux and Python?)

/Rob