One Laptop per Child - Essay Example

The dream could bring many new possibilities for poor children. Negroponte believed that he could have the opportunity of seeing it happen in reality if he was able to aid in inventing an inexpensive laptop to start achieving this humanitarian goal, he founded his non-profit organization and named it “One Laptop Per Child.” He also employed some of the most professionals in the IT industry to be able to design laptops with prices under 200 dollars which were specifically designed for poor children to be able to purchase.

The idea of OLPC came to his mind in a deprived village called Reaksmy in Cambodia (MARKOFF, 2005) which needed a 5-hour drive from the nearest city. The people there do not even have electricity or drinking water, and the people are mostly very poor. Negroponte established a school there 8 years ago. He also placed a satellite dish to send and receive signals and generators as power supplies. Then they gave a laptop to each child. Immediately, school got a lot more popular and modern than a school in a developed country. Kids who had never had an idea of what a computer looked like before were now a part of the modern world. Nicholas Negroponte was impressed since the children who did not even have a TV before, had a high-speed internet connection now. Negroponte’s idea was that children should not any need anyone to teach them how to use a computer. He had the idea of designing a laptop computer in which they could experiment with the way to use it on their own or with a little assistance from a friend.

Negroponte says the idea of One Laptop Per Child is completely humanitarian and non-profit (OLPC, 2007). He got the startup money to begin his project from some of the well-known companies in the IT industry such as Google. He also organized a team of engineers and programmers to design and implement a personal computer that could be usable for a child in Third World conditions, an advanced computer with many innovations. For example, it’s the first laptop computer with can be used in the open air and in full sunlight. Water may be dropped on the keyboard and it will not be damaged at all. Sand and dust cannot enter the system and this level of protection keeps it safe for a long time.

Recently the OLPC project is facing a new challenge which is competition and there is a question regarding this goal, If Negroponte's idea is humanitarian and kids are proposed to be the only persons to benefit from it, why there are companies that want to do the same work?

Perhaps a large number of needed laptops for children is the reason. With such a big number of cheap laptops going to be distributed around the world, these companies will face a loss of revenue. Intel, for example, is a company that Negroponte believes is doing an effort to prevent him from achieving his goal for example by giving a laptop to every child in a school in Mexico (IWAP, 2007). But Intel describes this effort as a part of the goal of giving any child a laptop and giving them access to the most affordable computers.

Negroponte is sure about getting these orders, even with the increasing amount of competition as other companies are trying to produce cheap laptops. Even considering these competitions, it is believed that the OLPC program will finally result in more kids getting laptops. This is the end, what Negroponte wanted the first day.

The laptops today are in the production process and it is said that Intel and Negroponte are cooperating to achieve the goal of OLPC together.  Intel is now a main part of One Laptop Per Child (IWAP,2007) standing beside Google and other large companies.