One Laptop Per Child Talks

On Thursday, April 26, One Laptop Per Child held a three-hour analyst meeting at their headquarters in Cambridge, MA. The OLPC Leadership spoke on several key aspects of the Children's Machine XO architecture and the program's overall production strategy.

OLPC Talks received exclusive audio tapes of the meeting, transcribed below. Please reference OLPC Talks if you use any quotes or information from the transcripts.

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Nicholas Negroponte, President, One Laptop Per Child: We have a bunch of small device manufacturers lining up to license this for general market use elsewhere.

New Speaker: Do you mean, people want to use it commercially?

Negroponte: Sure. We get asked about a commercial machine, I want to say, daily, and we are staying out of it for the time being because unless it really leverages, and generates more machines for the kids, we don’t want to do it. We want to be clear about our purpose. If we were to give it to somebody and say, “Give us 15% of the revenues,” it’s too small. It’s not big enough…It doesn’t help us launch. Once we’re launched we will think about all sorts of things. If we do buy two and get one in some commercial basis, that’s 100% profit, if you will. That’s always at the back of our mind.

New Speaker: Given the pricing on devices like the N77A or the Nokia 800, you know, which are the tablet devices which don’t have a keyboard, they are a lot more limited in terms of capabilities and most usually retail between $350 and $400. I think that the double price is imminently realistic given the… It’s really the capabilities of the device and also the comparative pricing on other… I mean, that’s not a competing device. It’s very much apples and oranges but I sure don’t think it’s out of the realm that people would pay that.

Negroponte: I think a $300 version of this would fly, especially if you knew when you were buying one, you were buying one for another kid as well. No trouble with the pricing. We just haven’t done that. It’s attractive.

New Speaker: But you’re saying you were talking about kids in the U.S. You’re seriously considering a $300 version, but that’s different from a commercial version from the way you think. Correct?

Negroponte: Yes, it’s different, because with kids in the United States that back off from the $300, you’ve started squeezing them.

New Speaker: Oh, you would? So you wouldn’t charge $300 for that?

Negroponte: I’d have to agonize over it. In other words…

New Speaker: How low would you go if the governor started squeezing you? [laughter]

Negroponte: Wasn’t it George Bernard Shaw who asked the beautiful girl if she would sleep with him for a million dollars and she said, “yes,” and then he said “would you sleep with me for a dollar. Now what do you think I am?” [laugher] We established that in the first question. I’ll do a lot of things for big money. So if big numbers are offered, and governors offer us large numbers, I will readjust my thinking, especially if it’s for kids.

New Speaker: So somewhere between $300 and $175?

Negroponte: Yes. It’s volume priced.

New Speaker: Yeah.

Negroponte: Because we’ve got to launch, you see, and she didn’t tell you a lot of things, factories and stuff, and they are really tooling up for this.

New Speaker: So, in other words, when you say “got to launch,” you mean you have to have an order for so many million machines to launch…

Negroponte: Yes.

New Speaker: …and you don’t have that yet.

Negroponte: No.

New Speaker: How many do you have ordered so far?

Negroponte: We don’t sign orders with anybody until it’s ready, so we will do that at the end of May. Tier one starts May 30, tier two is by the end of July.

New Speaker: But how many orders do you think you have, because you probably know?

Negroponte: 2.5 million.

New Speaker: And how many do you need?

Negroponte: Three.

New Speaker: From those seven countries that have sort of said you are…

New Speaker: The whole…the whole valley.

New Speaker: So these seven countries that you mentioned up front, those are the ones that are the early committers, pledgers, you know, the Libya, the Urugays…Those are the ones who you feel most solid about, right?

Negroponte: Actually, I don’t want to get into family relations, but half of them are worn out, they’ve been doing it so long. Some say ugh, some say ahh, and so on and so forth. So my guess is half of them will be players and half will not. This is my guess.

New Speaker: How about China or India markets?

Negroponte: 15% of the kids in the world are in those two countries.

New Speaker: What are your thoughts likely, then?

Negroponte: China is difficult, because it’s so big and they see their education system, in their own words, as less child-centric than what we are doing. And India, it is a whole different ball game because the trouble with India in July of last year when a memo was leaked from the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Planning, that said they thought our pedagogical theories were suspect. I was furious. I cancelled my trip to India that particular day and it died. You know, things in the press…maybe you guys will write nasty things and they will be in the press for one day and we live with them. We get an elephant’s skin.

But, in this particular case, three weeks later, that same story resurfaced in about five places and took on a life of its own, and it caused us a lot of trouble, and we know how, who, why, and so on, but if India really got spoiled by that event, and there’s also a belief in India and China that they’re so big, they don’t need to be going. Why do they need us? So, there’s a certain mind set.

Pakistan can’t do it on its own. Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria, equally big countries, they’re roughly about the same size … and Russia, those four countries are all about the same size, and none of them believe that. They really do believe they have to do it locally. So we’ve tended to deal with the biggest two countries, the next ones, to get us out there.

New Speaker: Is there any concern that once the children have access to the internet that they might be browsing sites are not appropriate for them? I mean are there any kinds of parental controls, or is that up to the governments? How does that work?

New Speaker: Well, if you attended the…

New Speaker: We had a meeting on content filtering this morning with all the countries, and all of [microphone noise] filter content.

Negroponte: It depends on what content is filtered. There are lots of vehicles for doing content filtering and our recommendation to the governments is that they will not engage in content filtering. They do it … and the server … will be run on level, and don’t do it on the laptop itself without the providing mechanisms directly on the laptop. But the other thing we are providing is … we’re not trying to do this in a vacuum. We are trying to do this on the context of the social structure within the community and the laptop is part of the community, and so we’re trying to leverage the human side about this as well as the technological problems.

New Speaker: The flip side of that is are these countries pushing down any other national, for the lack of a better word, propaganda?

New Speaker: Let me ask you a hypothetical question: If Quaddafi had insisted that is face be the screen saver, would you do it?

Negroponte: Well, I know how you think. The answer is if it gets thing into the hands of all of the children, then yeah, you’d do it. So, but I didn’t ask…

New Speaker: By the way, he hasn’t asked.

Negroponte: I didn’t ask if he would do it, I asked if any of them actually had plans to do it. In fact, we may not be close enough to launch to …

New Speaker: I think he is somewhat, I understand, that this is diplomatic about the idea of Windows being on the machine. You know, Microsoft says, “Hey, we’d like you to send us the machines. We’d like to do some development work on seeing if we can fit Windows on there. The format that that’s going to take. But I’m wondering if in your discussions with governments, if they mention any, “Sugar looks great, but we’d like to have the option of Windows as a backup.” I mean, honestly, how much do think this might help your sales case now that you don’t have to get them to buy into Sugar as a paradigm. You could say, “Well, look, you could swap into Windows if…”

Negroponte: In the beginning, before Sugar existed, the first country I went to, where it was really evident they wanted to use Windows was Egypt. I met with the prime minister and three other ministers separately, and each, within the first minute, asked me if Windows would run on the machine. As we developed Sugar, and all the countries have Sugar, I have not heard a request for Windows in the last 6 to 8 months. Have you? That doesn’t mean they won’t want to run it, and being able to run it is an option, but I haven’t heard it recently.

New Speaker: But I mean, would you envision sort of saying, “Oh, by the way, now you’re locked in to the original software we come up with.” There is less risk, perhaps.

Negroponte: I don’t need to tell them that, but you do. [laughter] But it’s, you know, a reality – being able to run Windows reduces an element of risk for them. Yes?

New Speaker: Who will be responsible for providing WIFI?

Negroponte: Who?

New Speaker: Who will be responsible for providing WIFI?

Negroponte: Remember, the machine really doesn’t need WIFI in the sense that you or I are using it right now in the room. The mesh network uses the WIFI spectrum, but it doesn’t need access points. They are a mesh unto themselves.

New Speaker: So that doesn’t mean that I have one connection?

Negroponte: One thing has to be connected, but that could be anything, satellite dish, just like a WIFI access point like the one in the back of the room is connected, you need something that is connected. Maybe I should answer the question. We will be working with each country to deploy the connectivity for that country. So when it arrives in the village… If you launch – let me give you the numbers – If you launch a million machines in one year, you need 600 people to do it. 100 of those people go out in advance to the villages, making sure they are connected, have a satellite connection, so on and so forth. And so that advance group of 100 people do what I think you’re asking. We’re very much involved with that and work with … it depends on the country, where they’re launching. For example, BT does it, Pakistan, Nigeria, it’s not clear yet who is doing, and so on.

New Speaker: What kind of range will these satellites have?

Negroponte: Well, again, the satellite…The coverage of the satellite, it depends on what satellite you are using for its footprint. It turns out that if you look at the world’s inventory of satellites, the smallest amount of footprint is on Africa, especially Central Africa. It’s a very expensive commercial rate. Right now it’s $3000 per megabit. It’s very costly. That’s actually a reasonably good price for a country like Rwanda. They’re landlocked, so there’s no fiber, even, close by.

We’ve got to do very well. The good news side of it is that there are ways to use the cell phone towers, and we are going around trying to get all the cell phone companies to allow us to use their towers, because the tower has not only the height of the tower, but it has power, which very often doesn’t exist. It’s a generator, sometimes with a policeman standing there 7 by 24 with a gun to protect the power and the fuel, and if we could use the tower free, which I think we can do in those cases, that gives you a great leg up, it really allows us to do things. Yes?

New Speaker: How many units did you say have gone to the original 7 countries? Is the range 200 or so?

Negroponte: It’s 200 to 400.

New Speaker: 200 first to Brazil, 200 for Uruguay, 200 for Pakistan, 200 for Libya, 200 for Nigeria, 200 for Argentina, generally 200, only 50 to Thailand.

Negroponte: I cheated for an extra 100 and they go to Brazil. They will have 300.

New Speaker: Yeah, and then Rwanda has got some, and all the rest of the machines will go ________ developers. [Unintelligible]

New Speaker: The ones in the field, now. And the ones that are in different countries?

New Speaker: Those are mostly D2s or D1s out there. We built about 2500 D2s and 875 D1s. There are actually 500 8S4s, which are the motherboards, out in the field as well.

New Speaker: And this does not have that new AMD TO?

New Speaker: No, this is it. This is the only one that ____. That’s the GOGX. This is a GO12.

New Speaker: [Unintelligible]

New Speaker: Each of those those numbers I was citing, 200 here, [unintelligible].

New Speaker: And what about feedback?

New Speaker: We’re starting to get feedback. I think I mentioned earlier those videos from Puerto Delegra, of before and after the [unintelligible].

New Speaker: [Unintelligible]

New Speaker: Use the mobile towers to put WIFI WIVACS on the tower, and then you could also, if they’ll give you access, use their back hall.

New Speaker: Alright. Do you think that [unintelligible] to try to take advantage of it, or are you not generating enough…

New Speaker: No, there are people.

New Speaker: Just yesterday, we had conversations with new satellite providers for sub-Sahara Africa.

New Speaker: Maybe this is actual break. I gather we have wine and cheese. Thank you very, very much for coming.

New Speaker: Thank you.

New Speaker: Our email addresses are well-known, I guess.

New Speaker: Yes. Bad story. [laughter]

New Speaker: If somebody sends an email and it doesn’t get an answer in 5 hours, they start asking if I’m sick. [laughter]