the Onda

To readers of this blog, it is clear that I think Paul Graham is a modern-day Mark Twain for geeks. He's always got that unique perspective that makes you laugh and nod while reading his essays. In one of my favorites he explains that nerds are unpopular in school because they will always choose being smart over being popular. Why then does it always seem that these nerds seem to prefer being cool to being popular?

Let me state up front that I am a big fan of MIT people. Having gone to undergrad across the river, I always thought the real smart nerds went to school across the water. But for some reason, while seeming to be that holy grail of nerd and cool at first blush, it seems that MIT's close cousin (brother, Siamese twin?), the Media Lab, forgot the be smart ahead of being cool rule.

Example: I am sitting at the Wall Street Journal's D-Conference listening to the uber-cool Nicholas Negroponte talking about how every village child in the developing world should get his own laptop. Computing centers at the center of villages don't foster the same sense of pride in ownership, he argues (I think the state of Maine has proven that already).These laptops should be made for cheap and need to be networked even if it's a thin straw path to the Internet. Check. They need to be rugged. Again, check. Sacrifices are going to have to be made in terms of what we consider standard in first-world laptops. Right on, who needs a 1400x1000 display anyway?

Then he goes loop-de-loop on us: the machines needs to be brought down to a cost of $100 which means using all sorts of futuristic MIT Warp drive stuff and making them in modest lot sizes of 6 million a piece. Ah, the Media Lab pixie dust strikes again.

A $100 laptop is a nice idea but it's neither likely not feasible especially if the constraint is that we need to make 6 million on the first cookie sheet that comes out of the oven. What about a $400 laptop? Why not shoot for that? And why not start in places that don't currently require Panasonic Tough Book laptops that Negroponte currently gets from eBay but which used to cost over $3K when they were new.

I am all of BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals). But I would much rather see something start to happen in 6-12 months, albeit at a smaller scale because the trick to an effort like this is building an organization and letting it gather momentum more than it is to wait for e-ink to be just so for creating $15 displays. I also realize that Nicholas is very good and his job and certainly has much more experience at administrating organizations than I do so I won't pretend that I can even fully understand his master plan.

It's just that a really affordable laptop (which I think $400 is) is a really good idea in all sorts of educational nooks and crannies. Imagine this machine without an optical drive running linux at $400 for all anyone who wants it. It it was sold to anyone (not just restricted to those with big initial POs) we could use standard economies of scale to drive cost out of it (think of all the people who would buy them as kitchen appliances?)

Sitting next to me at this thing was my friend John who has some experience making affordable hardware. When I told him about this idea he laughed and pointed to the old Oracle NIC as an example of why this would never fly as a consumer device. And maybe he is right. But one thing we both checked while listening to the way in which the second generation of the $100 was going to pack a Star Trek Next Generation Holodeck as its display technology was Dell's gross margin. It turns out that Dell has about a 30% GM according to their latest 10K filing. Now doesn't this mean that when they are advertising $499 laptops in Sunday supplements that we are getting dangerously close to a feasible $400 personal laptop for every kid in America all the while letting whoever makes them keep enough of the green to make a viable business? (think: strip out the Windows license and all the extra gunk).

As per his talk, Negroponte has made a very interesting discovery about what happens when kids are allowed to "own" their means for self-enrichment. Now why not take that and work within the bounds of today's technologies and in today's marketplace?

Oh right. It might be smart but it certainly wouldn't be cool.

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