It’s understandable that some people get depressed around this time of the year. There is the uncomfortable weather, lack of sunshine, and incessant reminders of how we should all be out shopping, etc.. Fortunately, the flip side of that is that we can get cozy at home (with a tasty stir-fry of lemongrass-marinated beef), meet with friends in the evening (the blogger meetup was this Thursday night), give and get gifts, and perhaps even make plans for the new year. Pam has the jump on me this year in several ways: first, with one of the coolest gifts that you can give a nerd, an OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) XO computer. Although it hasn’t arrived yet, I got the email confirmation of the gift so the cat is out of the bag. The way the OLPC purchase works is to ‘give one and get one’, so in getting me this interesting piece of technology, Pam’s also insured that some child in another country (like Uruguay and Rwanda) also gets one. It’s a project started by Nicholas Negroponte, the flamboyant and charismatic founder of MIT’s Media Lab, and now the of the Non-profit organization (OLPC) that has created the device with the idea of getting an inexpensive (the original goal was <$100, the real price is now a little less than twice that number) laptop in the hands of children in poorer countries all over the world, with the hope of bridging the information divide). Here’s an ad with Heroes’ Masi Oka for OLPC:
You can be sure that future postings will be about this new gift, and given that it has a pretty long wi-fi range and is one of the few laptops that has a screen that is visible in full sunlight, as well as long battery life and lightweight design, I’m hoping that there will actually be some postings for this written on it (perhaps from the park out back?) as well.
I mentioned that Pam had the jump on me in the gift department. She’s also out ahead on plans for next year. She’s going to do something that she’s wanted to do for years now: see Antarctica. In February (the end of summer for that part of the world), she will first fly to Santiago, Chile, then board a charter flight to the southern tip of Argentina at Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego (the world’s southernmost city). At that point, she’ll board the ship Explorer II, a “Double bottomed Ice Class vessel with an ice rating (Italian RINA Class 1‑D) that exceeds the requirement for operating safely in Antarctica” (thank goodness for that, with the recent sinking of a vessel from Gap Adventures, the M/S Explorer) The ship cruises for 2 days through the Drake Passage to the Antarctic peninsula. She’ll spend about 4 days there, making excursions in Zodiac rafts to the ice,where hopefully she’ll see penguins like these. There are plans to land on the South Shetlands, including Half Moon, Cuverville, Paulet, Penguin, Goudier and Deception Island, depending on the weather conditions. I’m hoping that she’ll be able to send some of the day-to-day details of her voyage, although I’m not sure how easy email will be.
Before all of this starts, there are a few other (less impressive trips), including a visit to my parents’ house in Baltimore, and a week in San Francisco for MacWorld Expo. Looks like 2008 is going to get off to a busy start.
Thanks so much for this post. I had read about OLPC a while back and then forgotten about it. But, after reading your post and checking some stuff on-line, I just ordered G1G1. I’ll be checking back to see what you think of it… once Santa arrives.
Safe travels to Pam!! The trip sounds awesome!
Thanks, Melissa. That’s great to hear that you went out and got one yourself! Hopefully we’ll be able to compare notes some time.
Bob, Pam says thanks and that she’s still got 6 more weeks (but I’m sure that will go by pretty quickly.)
Hey David — I keep hearing about the OLPC (I LOVE the progressive stuff that seems to be happening, largely thanks to tech and 2.0, nothing to do with governments — not that I’m happy it’s not government initiatives, but if they won’t do it, the people will! … I say, overly optimistically). Anyway — I’m kinda scared to ask the question, but if the ‘puters are made at less than $100, umm, are they being made by exploited factory workers in asia? Ok. Had to ask.
That’s a good question, Nancy. As far as I know, the economies that were made on the OLPC to try and get the cost down were primarily technological decisions: some cheaper materials, leaving out some features like a disk drive, ports, a cheaper, slower processor by AMD, leaving out the cost of Windows (it uses a version of Linux called Fedora with a special graphic interface called ‘Sugar’), and a dim, but very cheap display.
That said, when I explored the OLPC Wiki site (http://wiki.laptop.org — which has a lot of specifics about the device and the project), I couldn’t find anything detailed about the manufacturer.
When I get a chance tonight, I’ll ask this question on the site and see if I can’t get a more definitive answer. It would indeed be ridiculous if this altruistic project was guilty of exploiting Asian factory workers in order to help other people in countries that are even poorer.