OLPC in Ethiopia: The thin line between digital innovation, cargo cult and peoples on parade
It is quite remarkable that the article on One Laptop Per Child’s experiment in Ethiopia at M IT's Technology Review is framed in a very technological, maybe even ‘nerdy’ language around hardware and software, Android and hacking without very litt le social gr ounding: Earlier this year, OLPC workers dropped off closed boxes containing the tablets, taped shut, with no instruction. “I thought the kids would play with the boxes. Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, found the on-off switch … powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child, per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs in the village, and within five months, they had hacked Android,” Negroponte said. “Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera, and they figured out the camera, and had hacked Android.” I am fully aware of the fact that this is a short article and far from a being comprehensive report with all the details, but still the a