The tablets that Negroponte intends to fling from helicopters are based on that Marvell design, but with a few enhancements, such as solar powered batteries that will allow them to be used in regions without access to electricity. It’s not clear yet if the organization was able to successfully meet its target $75 production price.
Negroponte described the helicopter drop plan at the Open Mobile Summit event in San Francisco. According to a PC Magazine report, he compared the project to the classic 1980 film, The Gods Must Be Crazy, which depicted how an isolated tribe in the Kalahari Desert might react to discovering a Coca-Cola bottle that fell from an airplane.
“We’ll take tablets and drop them out of helicopters into villages that have no electricity and school, then go aback a year later and see if the kids can read,” Negroponte told The Register. He reportedly cited Professor Sugata Mitra’s Hole in the Wall experiment as the basis for his belief that dropping the tablets will encourage self-directed literacy.
Among the major challenges that the OLPC project was never able to fully overcome during its laptop days were supporting the hardware in the field and providing teachers with the proper training and educational material. In light of the cost and difficulty of tackling those issues, it’s not hard to see why the eccentric stealth drop approach looks appealing to Negroponte.
The obvious downside, however, is the sheer improbability that a majority of the dropped devices will ever serve their intended function. It seems unlikely that Negroponte will find governments that are willing to fund such an odd boondoggle, though Marvell has provided some financial backing. Perhaps somebody needs to air drop Negroponte a healthy dose of common sense to go with his change-the-world ambitions.