Negroponte, Flores and OLPC

I quote Fernando Flores: _

“I have no doubt, regardless of whether his computer succeeds, that two things are clear: first, the people working with him, highly respected in the academic world; and second, that it is going to produce a disruptive innovation. Today only 50 million laptops are sold in the world, and Negroponte thinks that by 2008 it will be 150 million, three times as many.” “We have to keep monitoring this because it is going to have effects in Chile. For now we have to invent projects and prepare for what would happen if every child in a working-class school had a computer. What phenomena would occur? What challenge does it pose for teachers?”

_

OK, I’m no follower of Flores, but he is one of my favorite jurus. In any case he has influence over a lot of people, and it matters that he devotes a few words to the subject. I’d like him to use his political influence to inspire more people to take the OLPC project seriously.

Either way, I think that through more adhocratic mechanisms we can bring OLPC to Chile. We shouldn’t trust the government to do it for us; governments’ agendas don’t match those of their citizens, unfortunately.

Oh, at the end of Flores’s article there is a link to a talk by Negroponte, where he claims to have orders from China, India and Brazil. We know that is probably not true, but the video is worth watching.