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[Peer Gynt]

As an unAmerican I look on with admiration at the American genius behind the design of the OLPC. This is design encompassing vision, daring boldness and technical virtuosity. A country which gave us John McCarthy and Lisp, Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation now gives us Nicholas Negroponte and the OLPC.

Yes, there have been strategic mistakes. The G1G1 program has been ineptly run. I feel this is from the mistaken decision to avoid selling units in the developed world which, as many have argued, would actually contribute greatly to the success of the program. And yes, they are mainly engineers, who have never had a great reputation for running consumer focused organisations. With constructive criticism and help from ppl who have these organisational skills and share in the vision of the project these hiccoughs can be rectified and lessons learnt. We move forward. Communication is already starting to improve.

However.

This is also the country which gave us the Machiavellian business genius of Microsoft. The tech-glitz cultism of Apple, a company that fed darkly on the undoubted talent of its engineering tech-savants from its very beginning with Woz.

And now, in sight of freedom from these oppresive reigns, for the new to life and the new to computing, we have a few members of this forum sulking and threatening to take their bats and balls home with them because some stuff-ups have delayed their gadgets from arriving on time. And crying because some others who ordered after them have already got theirs! Mummy, it's not fair.

Who are the children here?

In the words of one of your prominent countrymen, fellas, now's not the time to cut and run.

I urge you to all to stay the course.

Regards,
Peer Gynt

[dporter]

Thank you

[AkaGriffin]

Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I have no interest in cutting and running. However, it now seems like the individuals leading and managing OLPC are afflicted with incapacities more serious than those suggested by your hiccough diagnosis. As you say, there have been strategic mistakes and the G1G1 program has been run ineptly. I have no doubt that the individuals involved have the best intentions. However, the ongoing G1G1 debacle and OLPC's failure to take responsibility for the mess, or even to acknowledge the extent of it, suggest that the nature of the illness is not merely an acute case of the hiccoughs but something more systemic and troubling.

[intelliot]

That's an interesting point-of-view. I never considered OLPC to be part of a country. I thought it was a worldwide effort! Any country with freedom can have people who innovate in the ways you described.

[Ravenflight]

Stay the course. Yes but have you asked yourself where the course is leading? Have you forecast what will happen when hundreds of thousands of children in the US get their laptops, show them to all their friends, teachers, and relatives? Have you considered what will happen after a few hundred thousand of these start showing up at Starbucks, and McDonalds? What will happen when olpc lights the powderkeg of consumer demand right after they shut off the supply?

Sure, stay the course. Unfortunately the course looks like the Titanic headed straight for an iceberg, while all the passengers in first class are up on the observation deck sipping their latte's.