Nicholas Negroponte hits back at OLPC critics

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 17 Nov 2009 at 10:32

One Laptop Per Child founder Nicholas Negroponte has hit back at the project's doubters, claiming “we need to look beyond sales.”

OLPC was founded in 2005 to put low-cost laptops into the hands of children in developing nations.

Our recent PC Probe, OLPC: What Went Wrong, investigated why the XO laptop had failed to meet sales predictions and featured interviews with former OLPC team members.

We tried to contact Negroponte at the time of writing without success, however he has since contacted us to refute the conclusions drawn in the piece.

OLPC is one of the most successful projects in computers and learning, with over 1.2m laptops in the hands of kids

“OLPC is one of the most successful projects in computers and learning, with over 1.2m laptops in the hands of kids in 31 countries and 19 languages. [A further] 800,000 [are] headed their way,” Negroponte wrote on the article's comments section.

“You can thank us for the downward price pressure on the laptop industry, not to mention the fact that OLPC is the birthplace of the netbook, soon to be 30% of the world market. Instead, you quote an employee that was dismissed for bad performance."

He went on to suggest that the article’s focus on sales had missed the real benefits brought by One Laptop Per Child. “When you ask if kids should get ‘connected laptops’ substitute the word ‘education’ and you will never ask that silly question again. When we go to places like Afghanistan, Haiti and most recently Gaza, the project is about hope, as well.

“OLPC has changed the lives of so many. A shame you cannot look beyond sales, which are meaningless to us (we do not take a penny of margin), as we are a non-profit, humanitarian program. Imagine if I had said in 2005 that we were doing 100,000 or 500,000 laptops. It would not have created any attention, nor the subsequent disruption, nor real change.”