BusinessWeek and Found|Read are discussing the OLPC’s recent re-organization.
It’s true, there’s no doubt that Negroponte expected to be much farther ahead in his vision of providing one laptop per child. Convincing world leaders that the OLPC idea is a good thing has been one thing – actually getting the money in the bank and orders approved has been another.
I’ve been hearing for a while that the OLPC has operated more like a research group than a company hoping to deploy a product. So the search for a new CEO and the restructure are not surprising at all to me.
What’s been truly surprising however is how things got so nasty between OLPC and Intel, especially when Intel began promoting its low-cost Classmate product around the world.
Back in 2005 or so, Negroponte came to the MIT Media Lab during the celebration of the Lab’s anniversary and gave a talk about the OLPC. When asked what he would do if other companies went after the OLPC market, I vividly remember him saying something along the lines of:
‘The beauty of this is that if we are the ones providing the machines, the children win. If we prove this is a viable market and others start offering computers to kids as well, the children still win. This is a win-win situation no matter how you look at it. We are not in this to make money. That’s why we are a non-profit. This is about education and access to information’
That was a typical Negroponte answer. Thoughtful, academic, visionary, non-confrontational and focused. It’s obvious that Intel would play hard ball. That’s their modus operandi, if they don’t do that Dell, HP and everybody else eats their lunch.
In the battlefield, it seems Negroponte forgot his own mantra. Not that it’s easy to remember it when you’ve worked so hard to build something great and someone tries to backstab you. I don’t blame him, but the finger pointing through the media didn’t help the OLPC organization and mission.
Also, from a technology point of view, I believe that by going through the enormous effort of designing a completely new computer from scratch, the OLPC should have come up with something so unique and tailored to its market that Intel and Microsoft shouldn’t have had any breathing room. The XO is a very innovative machine, but if Intel can convice someone that their machine is better, then I tend to think the XO is not ‘effective’ enough as its own breed.
Despite all this, I hope the OLPC reorganizes and finds its place. You can count in one hand the number of people having world-changing ideas and trying to execute them at the scale of the OLPC.
I am just back from a week in São Paulo, Brazil. As the largest city in the southern hemisphere, according to National Geographic, the city is facing major traffic gridlocks these days. Imagine the following situation:
You are in charge of transit authority for a big city with about 18 million people and growing. What do you do when this city goes through a period of such economic prosperity and low unemployment that a large percentage of its 18 million people earn the means (and have the desire) to own a car for the very first time? To make matters even worse, imagine that this city grew like a weed for decades without any sort of urban planning and seriously-enforced zoning laws.
Well, if it’s a city like Atlanta or Houston, you might build more roads, more loops and rings and try to alleviate the growing traffic that way. But if that’s not an option, say due to lack of space (think Boston), then what do you do? Public transportation, perhaps, but more buses in the streets means even more traffic and pollution. Building a new subway system (or extending an existing one) sounds appealing but takes time and money.
Well, this is roughly the profile of São Paulo right now and what’s happening to the city’s chaotic traffic and public transportation. It’s interesting to see the solutions that are being considered to deal with this issue, because like with everything else these days, it’s all about design.
Here are some of the possible solutions under discussion at the moment:
- Issue privately-owned vehicle licenses
- Make it illegal to park in the streets (to free up more lanes)
- Charge a fee to vehicles entering the city center
- Designate bus-only lanes
- Build more subway lines
Number 1 is the option that Singapore chose to deal with its traffic problems. In Singapore, being able to afford a car is not enough. You also have to pay a hefty fee of thousands of dollars in order to obtain a license for your vehicle. This is similar to a taxicab license in NY, for example. It costs serious money and is in limited supply.
Number 2 is pretty straightforward. No more parked vehicles in the streets equals more room for cars coming and going. But what do you do when you are driving and you reach your destination? Where do you park? Seems like you (partially) solve a problem but create another one almost as fast.
Number 3 is limited in that it works only for areas that have seriously acute traffic problems, like the London city center, which has embraced this approach. But it’s not an option when the whole city of São Paulo is at a standing still at 5PM. São Paulo already employs a scheme based on license plate numbers where certain cars are not allowed to be driven on certain days of the week. It worked for a while, but it’s no longer enough.
Number 4 is probably the easiest one to implement in the short term. In fact, São Paulo has already designated several bus-only lanes in many of its busiest streets. The real challenge here involves convincing drivers that public transportation is the way to go.
Number 5 is an excellent choice, but it’s expensive and takes time. It’s not clear if São Paulo can afford to wait and by the time the city celebrates the availability of additional subway tunnels, demand will have outgrown supply several times over.
I’ve always wondered when São Paulo would start facing some really serious infrastructure problems. This is just the beginning. The real solution, in my opinion, is to move people out of the city, with strong government incentives targeting businesses and large employers. But that’s far from easy.
I am on my way down to Brazil for a few days, but I had to get connected along the way to learn more about the iPhone SDK event of today.
Very exciting! This is going to be a really fun ride.
Now that we’ve learned how to sequence the genome of pretty much any species, it’s just a matter of time until we unlock our personal genetic code. Call it the democratization of genome sequencing. Knowing your code will dictate the most effective health care that you should get among many other things (I am particularly interested in the field of Nutrigenomics).
Anyways, this idea seems a bit far fetched. But it is not! If you have $1000 and a saliva sample to share, 23andMe will reveal slices of your very own genetic material. Here’s how they describe themselves:
“Welcome to 23andMe, a web-based service that helps you read and understand your DNA. After providing a saliva sample using an at-home kit, you can use our interactive tools to shed new light on your distant ancestors, your close family and most of all, yourself.”
Michael Arrington of TechCrunch gave the service a shot and is now sharing the results of his DNA traits with the world. This is interesting, but not because the world now knows that Michael has “wet earwax”, but because it offers a glimpse of the depth of 23andMe’s analysis.