One Laptop Per Child

Imagine you were a young child in a country where there was little education, or little opportunity to see the world and learn of other people and places.  What would happen if one day someone came along and handed you this machine.  A simple computer that would allow you access to the same door that everyone else had.  That door being the Internet.  Then too see in your mind's eye these same people bringing other machines to your part of the world.  Machines that would take a design and bring it to life.  Maybe even a design that you made on the hand cranked device brought by the strangers. 

You might think this is far from reality, but it isn't.  The One Laptop Per Child iniative has taken the best intentions of the computer world and turned them into something to help those who wouldn't otherwise have access to things like educational software and the Internet.  Combine this with MIT's program to bring personal fabricators to poor countries and it get more real all the time. 

Costing about $100 each, the small laptop computers are made of recycled material and employ a hand crank for power.  One minute of cranking time gives about ten minutes of use.  This negates the absolute need for constant electricity. For storage the machines come with an internal 512 megabyte flash drive.  The software is Linux based, running on the open source Fedora platform, which does away with license issues and allows for free upgradeable software. No doubt this will benefit the poorest nations on our planet.  They have even created keyboards that are specific to differing nationalities or ethnicities such as Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai, and Nigerian. 

The founder of OLPC is Nicholas Negroponte, who also happens to be involved with MIT's personal fabricator project, which brings manufacturing technology to poor countries at the micro level.  The technology is based on machines that can take instruction from computers and as long as the materials are there such as raw or recycled plastic, it will manufacture small devices.  It would seem the two go hand in hand quite nicely.  As well, it has great potential in helping our poorest nations make technological advances without having a huge infrastructure that takes years and years to develop.  Even when it is developed it usually takes advantage of the poor by making them work for little pay with no personal investment or empowerment.  These two programs combined give the Promethian fire to the most common among our global community. 

Here is the URL For One Laptop Per Child:

http://www.laptop.org/

You can read about what the future holds regarding personal fabricators here:

http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail460.html

Machine Specs From The Ubiquitous Wiki Entry

http://wiki.laptop.org

Integrated peripherals:

• Keyboard: 70+ keys, 1.2mm stroke; sealed rubber-membrane key-switch assembly
• Cursor-control keys: five-key cursor-control pad; four directional keys plus Enter
• Touchpad: Dual capacitance/resistive touchpad; supports written-input mode
• Audio: Analog Devices AD1888, AC97-compatible audio codec; stereo, with dual internal speakers; monophonic, with internal microphone and using the Analog Devices SSM2211 for audio amplification
• Wireless: Marvell 88W8388, 802.11b/g compatible; dual adjustable, rotating coaxial antennas; supports diversity reception
• Status indicators: Power, battery, WiFi; visible lid open or closed
• Video camera: 640x480 resolution, 30FPS

External connectors:

• Power: 2-pin DC-input, 10 to 25 V, -23 to -10 V
• Line output: Standard 3.5mm 3-pin switched stereo audio jack
• Microphone: Standard 3.5mm 2-pin switched mono microphone jack; selectable sensor-input mode
• Expansion: 3 Type-A USB-2.0 connectors; SD Card slot
• Maximum power: 500 mA (total)

Battery:

• Pack type: 5 Cells, 6V series configuration
• Fully-enclosed "hard" case; user removable
• Capacity: 22.8 Watt-hours
• Cell type: NiMH
• Pack protection: Integrated pack-type identification
• Integrated thermal sensor
• Integrated polyfuse current limiter
• Cycle life: Minimum 2,000 charge/discharge cycles (to 50% capacity of new, IIRC).
• Power Management will be critical

BIOS/loader:

• LinuxBIOS is our intended BIOS for production units.

Environmental specifications:

• Temperature: somewhere in between typical laptop requirements and Mil spec; exact values have not been settled
• Humidity: Similar attitude to temperature. When closed, the unit should seal well enough that children walking to and from school need not fear rainstorms or dust.
• Maximum altitude: -15m to 3048m (14.7 to 10.1 psia) (operating), -15m to 12192m (14.7 to 4.4 psia) (non-operating
• Shock 125g, 2ms, half-sine (operating) 200g, 2ms, half-sine (non-operating)
• Random vibration: 0.75g zero-to-peak, 10Hz to 500Hz, 0.25 oct/min sweep rate (operating); 1.5g zero-to-peak, 10Hz to 500Hz, 0.5 oct/min sweep rate (nonoperating)
• 2mm plastic walls (1.3mm is typical for most systems).

Regulatory requirements:

• The usual US and EU EMI/EMC requirements will be met.
• The laptop and all OLPC-supplied accessories will be fully UL and is RoHS compliant.