[Edu-sig] OLPC on 60 Minutes

[kirby urner]

So I just viewed this segment, mostly an interview of Negroponte with Leslie
Stahl:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1998/07/09/60minutes/main13546.shtml , but
with lots of footage from Cambodia, plus significant footage of (a)
Negroponte
telling lecture hall that Intel was bad (b) Intel defending itself in the
person of
its CEO.

For an intro to a big topic, I thought this was good overview, and 60
Minutes
always needs a twisted plot i.e. a bad guy, so I don't begrudge dwelling on
the
private industry threat.  My Project Renaissance model builds in the idea of

test pilot nonprofit idealists like Negroponte paving the way for commercial

imitators -- surely this pattern is repeated over and over (used to be the
military was the biggest guinea pig, for health care innovations
especially).

Negroponte himself comes across as a class act, handsome, well spoken,
an idealist we can love.  So the XO uses AMD chips, so what?

I'm glad the idea of massive computer power spreading to the world's
underprivileged is being presented as pretty much a fait accompli.  Even
if Intel is getting in the way, it's doing so by embracing the vision.  I
hope
the XO really flies big time though.  Wouldn't bother me to see it fattening
a bottom line or two -- the investors could be XO-using entrepreneurs in
the developing world, doing the hard work of keeping the pipeline moving.

Kirby
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