<incom> The XO in Santa Clara, California

[Steve Cisler]

The care and feeding of a new device.

I finally  saw an XO computer. What was the occasion?
Eben Moglen of the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
spoke at Santa Clara University last night to an
audience of forty five people from around the valley.
It was sponsored by our center, the Markkula Center
for Ethics, and  the High Tech Law Institute. whose
director Eric Goldman, organized much of the event and
served on the panel that responded to Moglen's talk. I
invited Matt Hamrick, cofounder of the Home Brew
Mobile Phone Club, to speak as well. 

John Gilmore,a longtime FSF supporter, arrived during
the talk, bearing one of the new green XO computers
from the OLPC project. John is doing many, many
projects and has paid for the development of Gnash, an
open source embedded Flash player that will be a
browser plug-in in the XO. Gnash is a high priority
project for Richard Stallman's FSF. Most of the
software in the XO is "Free." The first thing I
noticed was the lack of a crank to generate
electricity. John said it had been removed from the
original design because it was fragile and
inefficient. Perhaps so, but energy alternatives for
this device seem to be crucial if we look at the lack
of electricity in many countries, even worse in 
schools and the living quarters of many of the
students. We know that the XO draws little power, but
the rate of recharge will be one factor that
determines how much the user will have contact with
the machine. Another will be school or ministry of
education policy.

I don't know if one laptop per child means each
student will have access only in  a couple of classes,
the whole the school day, or will take it home in the
evening and on weekends and vacations. I expect
policies and access will vary greatly, depending on
the culture,  the environment, and the kids
themselves.An older student is presumed to be more
responsible than a six-year old.

The problems with electricity will determine usage in
many ways. If the  student cannot generate his own
electricity (DIY) for the XO then sources will be the
national or city grid, a local generator running on
fuel or perhaps solar power. A few places have their
own small hydroelectric systems.

In many schools there is no electricity. It remains a
high cost part of the education infrastructure along
with water and sanitation, the buildings, and
telecommunications. My experience has been in places
like Uganda, Paraguay, and India where the lack of
reliable power will greatly inhibit projects like
OLPC. That said, perhaps the situation in the early
adopter states like Libya, Uruguay, and Rwanda know
that most of their schools can recharge hundreds of
these machines each day or evening, or that the
students can do this at home while they sleep.

The second issue is security. While there are
different plans to disable an unauthorized device,
what policies will be implemented to protect the
computer from theft when the homes of those who may
benefit most for having one are not secure, or in
neighborhoods where the poverty already has led to
petty or violent crime,where phone lines are stolen to
resell the copper. All schools have security problems.
Imagine the challenges of collecting, storing, and
recharging hundreds of XO's each afternoon in a locked
room and the redistribution in the morning. Whatever
the solutions it is going to change daily routines for
everyone involved, and what will happen if a child's
machine is stolen from his home or from the school?
Will the SD memory cards be secured separately? 

Steve