On Pragmatism and the OLPC
Jon
Mon, 01/07/2013 - 10:02
has a hands-on photoshoot with the revolutionary XO-4 convertible tablet/laptop. It has an infrared touchscreen, has refocused its interface to run on top of a standard Linux distribution instead of a customized and tweaked version, and... um... it looks rather familiar. I mean to say, it's almost indistinguishable from the XO-1.
And that's a very good thing. What has happened to the OLPC program is, in many ways, what I'd hoped they'd intentionally choose as a path forward- thoughtful and efficient development focused on impact over glitz, using existing projects and tools where available, and not re-inventing things that weren't broken, but using incremental improvements. Of course, that approach doesn't catch headlines as well, but it does work.