Failure of One Laptop Pre Child-Initiative. Social Sciences Essay

Failure of One Laptop Pre Child-Initiative
Name:
Institution:
Course code:
Date:
One laptop per child was an ambitious initiative that was proposed in late 2005 by a tech visionary Nicholas Negroponte. This was in the presence of the then Un secretary-general Kofi Annan and Negroponte took the chance to explain the revolutionary features the laptop had all this with being budget-friendly. The design was rugged precisely made to ensure that kids can operate it from any location and more resistant to damage from the kid’s clumsiness and it required little electricity to operate making it convenient for kids in developing countries to use. The laptops were to be purchased by the governments and thereafter sold to the children in those countries overseen by their respective ministries of education CITATION Aud12 \l 1033 (Audrey) The initiative was a noble one but it was one that was easier said than done. How did this proposal fail to materialize and accomplish all the goals it was meant to?
The early signs were promising with the OPLC foundation releasing one of the laptops, a green and white XO-1 in 2008 that gad a rugged and distinctive look and was poised to retail at $180 per unit. The simplistic nature of the laptops however made some people question its efficiency and the practicability of the initiative, however, Negroponte was making the laptops for a target population, countries in which the kids have never laid eyes on a laptop. This was not just a laptop but a plan for technological revolution as Negroponte insisted on the importance of kids understanding the use of computers and technology. With all this preparation and proposals, Negroponte might have failed to take certain details into consideration in assessing the practicability of the OPLC program.
The laptop was a product of OLPC and a Taiwanese computer maker, Quanta CITATION Aud12 \l 1033 (Audrey) and the design and features left a lot to be desired. The Laptop was conventional and was designed into a toy like shape, it had thick edges and the screen was able to fold into a tablet. It also had an antenna that increased the range that it could access WI-FI signals. To keep the price of the gadget down, they made tradeoffs in the design and the gadget was to retail at $180. Around this time, however, technology was developing and fancy and advanced smartphones and tablets had started being manufactured. The smar...