My Daughter Meets the XO

My daughter, Harper (below), has been playing with computers since she was old enough to cradle in my lap and clutch a mouse in her chubby hands. Now, at five years old, she surfs the Web, shoots email to her grandparents, and Skypes with friends after a day at kindergarten, exchanging emoticons and giggling at the images. She is, after all, a “digital native” having never known a life without technology at her fingertips.

So when her grandparents signed up for the One Laptop per Child’s (OLPC) “Give One, Get One” program last fall, I was excited about Harper receiving one of the low-cost, candy-colored computers, but doubtful she would find it as useful as a 3 GHz iMac.

OLPC (wiki.laptop.org), a nonprofit with an overarching goal of providing low-cost computers to children in developing countries, sold 162,000 computers through the giveaway—enough to warrant a revival of the program in fall 2008.

It’s one of the high points for an otherwise plagued organization, which has recently lost some big partners. Intel, for example, has stepped down from OLPC’s board to focus on marketing its own low-cost laptop.

When OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte first revealed his dream of a $100 laptop, immediate speculation centered on the XO (as the child-sized computer came to be known) meeting that price point. Even today it hovers closer to $188—a cost OLPC hopes participating countries will absorb.

Approximately 500,000 laptops have been ordered as of March, destined for children in Peru and Uruguay, among other countries. (No one from OLPC would return repeated calls to update this information.) Still that’s far less than the 150 million Negroponte once said OLPC would have launched by 2008. Pushing ahead Negroponte in May unveiled the next iteration of the XO—the XO-2. Resembling an ebook reader, this machine will sport two flat screens and touch technology, allowing youngsters to respond intuitively.

My daughter Harper is no different. When her XO finally arrived—albeit three months past the date promised by OLPC—her father and I spent a difficult 10 minutes with the one-page instruction sheet. Taking matters into her own hands, Harper grabbed the XO, pulled up the rabbit-ear antennae, flipped open the top, and pushed the power button. Then she began to push the screen, expecting it to respond. It didn’t. I expected Harper to dump the XO in favor of the Mac, but she stayed with it for an hour.

David Cavallo, chief learning architect for OLPC, explains that Harper’s experience was just what they had hoped for. “A tremendous amount of consideration was given toward making a machine for children, for international use, and for use by those who do not yet read,” he wrote in an email. “The design needed to be both functional and playful. The machine needed to be durable as well as approachable.”

The XO, a laptop built for a child, is half the size of our iBook—which makes perfect sense. We buy play kitchens sized for our kids, bicycles, even books. Why not a computer? For days afterward, I’d find Harper sitting with the XO propped on a bench near our living room, drawing a picture through a paint program, writing a letter to me, even doing math homework on the calculator.

Then one day, it disappeared into a drawer. A week ago I asked her to take it out. With a sigh, she complied. As it took a minute—or two—to load, Harper rolled her eyes, then angrily punched the screen as she opened the once beloved art program. “It’s like they’re playing a trick on us,” Harper told me, pointing at the lime-green device. I shook my head, not understanding. She showed me the lines she had tried to draw. They were shaky—not as neat as the drawings she had made from the free online Flash programs that I’d accessed on our iMac. “Mama, can I stop?” she asked. “It’s just not fun.”

For a child of middle-class parents living in Manhattan, this made sense. But for children in developing nations, the XO opens the door to a new world of possibilities and represents an important first step toward worldwide technological parity.

In the meantime, Harper won’t allow us to donate her computer.