Failures of Narrative: OLPC & XP
I am a pragmatist. I like to think of myself as a realist. I'm wrote this post using TextEdit.app on a Macbook Pro, running OS X version 10.5.2; I profess unabashed love for my iPhone. It's an odd mental schism, but I comfort myself that the fact that the FOSS movement needs more contributors with a more 'typical' user perspective to be ultimately successful. (Put simply, if I have to download a second package from SourceForge to be able to install your software, I'm not going to use it. No matter how much I believe in the idea and ideals of "free as in freedom." Most users don't know what that phrase means.) I claim no moral nor ethical pulpit from which to judge the recent decision to ship XO's with XP, as I clearly use closed source and proprietary software.
Speaking as someone who knows that the goal of this project is to archive the past and write the future, I can only claim a great failure of narrative in this new choice. We were sold on the dream of a completely free, 'completely' free tool; one that would provide an unmeasurable potential for the world's poorest and least well-served human beings to preserve and share their stories, gain new knowledge through tools like Wikipedia and to produce content that we, too, can absorb, contemplate, and finally act upon. A 'toy' that would compel a child's attention, but accompanied by intellectual stimulation - a tool that would make good use of play. A hackable platform that would inspire the next generation of developers, many from groups not currently well represented in the current ranks of Computer Science. The story was beautiful, and many stirred, because they could believe without cynicism: everything was free. If no one has a stake in making money on the dream, surely then the dream is pure and one can offer one's sweat and toil in its service without compunction.
That story no longer sells. It cracked in my mind a bit at first when I realized that visualizing real life use cases and producing content for the machine was more of an afterthought than a part of the plan of attack from the start; on the other hand, such is life amongst the geeks. Even more when Mary Lou Jepsen left to found her startup, flushed with knowledge funded by private research grants from personal investors and large corporations hoping to save the world; on the other hand, such can be life in academia. (Plus I had to admit that those corporations wanted to save the world so they'd have customers, but I've heard worse reasons and at least the world still gets saved.) Now this.
If I am thinking like that aforementioned 'typical' user, I don't have a clue about the history of XO development, software or content, and Mary Lou who? I don't know what free software is - cf. my comment about not installing your software when it requires an additional package - but I do know there's this laptop that they're going to give away to poor kids for free and all the software on it is free; I know that the people who make it are really excited about sharing, and it only makes sense to share with those less fortunate, so it all makes sense. The value of this whole sharing notion and the idea that free doesn't only mean no cost starts to permeate itself into my consciousness, barely. It's in there, though. It's a new thought arc for me and maybe that is all it ever will be. Such is the way the world is changed.
OLPC had the amazing opportunity to tell a story that was, simply put, all good. Surely it could not be entirely perfect under the surface; there would be egos, pontificating, wasted cycles, terse conversations, unknown but by those inside; such is how it goes with all groups, the inevitable by-product of human interaction. Still, there was so much drive and ambition, so many innovative discoveries and hope - always hope. The belief in the dream because this one dream sounded so incredibly pure, sweet and, best yet, achievable. No one needed to smear their name all over it, except maybe MIT, and come on, it's MIT. After all, they'd hacked the system and figured out how to make it - the dream of One Laptop per Child - work.
Let there be light.
Shipping these systems with XP means half of that dream is gone. Children will still be able to learn from their devices, but they will be cut off from the freedom to fully explore them, tinker with them and to make the new world accessible to them fully their own. While this failure of narrative is undeniably suboptimal for the children using the XO, I fear more the toll that this decision will take on the goodwill of those who chose to believe in and sweat for this dream because it was one of pure freedom. People gave full dedication to this project because they were confident in its ability to achieve a global paradigm shift, and a great part of that faith was in this project's ability to change the way people think about software: how it is written, how it is used and how both of these topics have political and social implications. Effectively, that part of the story has now been excised under the editor's pen.
Can we get a rewrite please?
Speaking as someone who knows that the goal of this project is to archive the past and write the future, I can only claim a great failure of narrative in this new choice. We were sold on the dream of a completely free, 'completely' free tool; one that would provide an unmeasurable potential for the world's poorest and least well-served human beings to preserve and share their stories, gain new knowledge through tools like Wikipedia and to produce content that we, too, can absorb, contemplate, and finally act upon. A 'toy' that would compel a child's attention, but accompanied by intellectual stimulation - a tool that would make good use of play. A hackable platform that would inspire the next generation of developers, many from groups not currently well represented in the current ranks of Computer Science. The story was beautiful, and many stirred, because they could believe without cynicism: everything was free. If no one has a stake in making money on the dream, surely then the dream is pure and one can offer one's sweat and toil in its service without compunction.
That story no longer sells. It cracked in my mind a bit at first when I realized that visualizing real life use cases and producing content for the machine was more of an afterthought than a part of the plan of attack from the start; on the other hand, such is life amongst the geeks. Even more when Mary Lou Jepsen left to found her startup, flushed with knowledge funded by private research grants from personal investors and large corporations hoping to save the world; on the other hand, such can be life in academia. (Plus I had to admit that those corporations wanted to save the world so they'd have customers, but I've heard worse reasons and at least the world still gets saved.) Now this.
If I am thinking like that aforementioned 'typical' user, I don't have a clue about the history of XO development, software or content, and Mary Lou who? I don't know what free software is - cf. my comment about not installing your software when it requires an additional package - but I do know there's this laptop that they're going to give away to poor kids for free and all the software on it is free; I know that the people who make it are really excited about sharing, and it only makes sense to share with those less fortunate, so it all makes sense. The value of this whole sharing notion and the idea that free doesn't only mean no cost starts to permeate itself into my consciousness, barely. It's in there, though. It's a new thought arc for me and maybe that is all it ever will be. Such is the way the world is changed.
OLPC had the amazing opportunity to tell a story that was, simply put, all good. Surely it could not be entirely perfect under the surface; there would be egos, pontificating, wasted cycles, terse conversations, unknown but by those inside; such is how it goes with all groups, the inevitable by-product of human interaction. Still, there was so much drive and ambition, so many innovative discoveries and hope - always hope. The belief in the dream because this one dream sounded so incredibly pure, sweet and, best yet, achievable. No one needed to smear their name all over it, except maybe MIT, and come on, it's MIT. After all, they'd hacked the system and figured out how to make it - the dream of One Laptop per Child - work.
Let there be light.
Shipping these systems with XP means half of that dream is gone. Children will still be able to learn from their devices, but they will be cut off from the freedom to fully explore them, tinker with them and to make the new world accessible to them fully their own. While this failure of narrative is undeniably suboptimal for the children using the XO, I fear more the toll that this decision will take on the goodwill of those who chose to believe in and sweat for this dream because it was one of pure freedom. People gave full dedication to this project because they were confident in its ability to achieve a global paradigm shift, and a great part of that faith was in this project's ability to change the way people think about software: how it is written, how it is used and how both of these topics have political and social implications. Effectively, that part of the story has now been excised under the editor's pen.
Can we get a rewrite please?
Labels: OLPC
posted by Leslie Hawthorn at 5:23 PM
4 Comments:
That last paragraph makes me feel particularly sad.
I hope that the people working on the project find a different way to tell the tale. It's too important to give up on, just yet.
It was good to read this post. The title is the best part... narrative is a major player in the history of the project.
Dear Leslie, I'd like to point you to what Ivan Krstić put best: http://radian.org/notebook/this-too-shall-pass
@ sarah stokely: I'm confident they'll find a way given what this team has already managed to accomplish. :)
@ sj: Thanks.
@ shikhar: Thanks, I've read the piece. Also love the title.
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