So easy that only a child can do it...

[drcpunk]

mnemex explained to me that the XO is intended for people who have never used computers before. This, he said, means that it may confuse people like me, who are used to computers working in certain ways.

Today, I tried to play with his XO, with limited success. I figured out how to turn it on and off, and where to plug the power cable in. I figured out which icon to click to use Opera, as opposed to the default web browser, and I surfed the web.

Then, I tried to use the Write program. I figured out how to get to the home screen, and which icon to click on. I figured out where to plug in my card reader. I could not figure out how to open files on the sd card -- or anywhere else, for that matter. Also, I forgot the trick mnemex told me to use, or at least, if I didn't forget it, I saw no results from using it.

I tried to go back to Opera, but I kept getting a blank screen. I tried to close Opera from the home screen, but the mouse moves a bit too fast for me. I think mouse speed may be adjustable, but I'm not sure how to adjust it.

The keyboard feels less wrong to me now, and I do have the advantage of having small fingers.

Comments

[lonebear.livejournal.com]

My experience is fairly close to yours. I overthink it. However my DW, giraffeaholic was able to power it up and get on the web without me telling her thing one about the system.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Cool!

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't much understand the proper context for the XO or whether it can be successful or not. I think it could be a useful and successful invention were it to achieve critical mass, but that mass must occur on at least two levels.

Local mass must be achieved in that a close-knit community of users must exist in order to wrest the most functionality from the XO, thanks to the mesh-networking approach. Plainly put: if all the kids in a village have an XO that makes each child's XO much more useful. Especially if that village also has the infrastructure to get that sub-mesh an economic connection (which I suspect means "functionally free") to the wider internet.

Overall mass has to be achieved: in order to keep the XO alive as a vehicle for research, software, support, and long-term maintenance, there has to be a compelling world-wide infrastructure in place to keep the XO going. It's not clear to me how that infrastructure will apply to a non-virtual project like the XO. Actual physcal tools need actual physical systems to produce them, maintain them, deploy them, repair them.

The XO struck me more as an interesting prototypical thought-experiment in the social application of computing than a proper, rubber-on-the-road tool that would meet with successful wide-spread use. (An eMate-done-right demonstration, maybe?)

And, as such, I couldn't help wonder if all the funds spent on the XO wouldn't have been much better spent on simple fresh-water systems, distribution of fundamental vitamins, non-destructive agricultural techniques, or at the very list more fundamental, grass-roots pedagogical plans (like actual school buildings, slates and blackboards, and so on).

But I haven't done any more detailed research, so I don't know if that worried hunch is justified...

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, the XO is supposed to be good at what it does, but we won't know until it's been out there for a while.

On this side of things, enough folks have them, having participated in the buy-1-give-1, that there are XO meets at sf cons.

For my purposes, what I want is to be able to use the machine to:

Read pdfs
Read and edit text documents
Read and edit Word documents
Read and edit Excel spreadsheets
Surf the Internet

Of these, the only thing I don't think our machine can do is handle Excel documents or generic spreadsheets. I suspect we could download something for that, maybe OpenOffice.

Surfing the Internet, oddly, is not highest on my list of priorities for the XO.

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

And, as such, I couldn't help wonder if all the funds spent on the XO wouldn't have been much better spent on...

While I too question the neecessity of the XO, in general I try to avoid this sort of thinking. The people making the XO are doing so out of clearly altruistic reasons, and the money that they getting to fund it is likely coming from different revenue streams than other charitable organizations: the buy one-give one is a good way to tap into a different market. Charitable giving isn't a completely zero-sum game, after all. Yes, non-profits compete for the regular pools of donations, but there are always ways to grow the pool.

In addition, I really don't like the idea of ranking which projects are more "important" because it always comes down to the ranker's priorities - much like that list of best TV shows that you were complaining about a while back. The idea that we shouldn't find space exploration because we haven't beaten breast cancer, or that we shouldn't give kids a technological edge until all of them have clean drinking water. All of these are important, and all of them require significant ongoing investment. Telling someone that they're in the wrong because they;re backing their list of priorities rather than yours just feels wrong.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Good points. I wasn't so much thinking that XO supporters were wrong, but I've had this feeling in the pit of my stomach since first hearing about the XO that a few years from now a lot of them might very well end up sitting gathering dust on shelves somewhere, because they were proved essentially impractical in the final analysis. However, your points are compelling and so is Lisa's: first world adoption of the XO might fuel the construction of the production/maintenance infrastructure I was referring to and the XO's buy-one-get-one approach could prove a novel way to bring that about. I hadn't considered that aspect of the project in that way before; more food for thought...

[mneme]

In addition to other points, I think it's arguable that XOs are a better educational tool than actual school buildings, slates, and blackboards--and quite possibly a more economical one, bang for buck.

Whether they'll have a serious long-term impact is an interesting question -- but I doubt they'll be spending much time on shelves for a while.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

I'd also check with osewalrus if you want to be talking to someone who actually has this as his field.