OLPC: The Beauty of Failure
by Rachel HinmanLast Christmas, Adaptive Path participated in the OLPC program. Today, fifteen OLPC laptops sit in a storage room here in San Francisco and with the recent panning in the press, I’m not all together sure what we are gonna do with those little computers.
While I agree with a lot of what is being written about OLPC’s shortcomings, I can’t help but feel it’s going to the easy “pot-shot” place. Sure, OLPC’s goal of providing technology access to impoverished children was lofty and probably unattainable. Yes, it was a product designed from a cultural perspective misaligned to the culture and context of the people it was designed for and ultimately failed to meet it’s own creative brief. Yes, it’s difficult to avoid getting a little irritated by the arrogance of the perspective from which this product was made, especially when it won so many design awards.
OLPC was a failure – but don’t products fail all the time?
In light of all the discourse on the shortcomings of the product, there seems to be little said on the things that OLPC accomplished that were interesting. It’s not often that one sees a product that reframes the conceptual model of the operating system. If anything, Sugar was gutsy and interesting in that regard. OLPC also made it out into the world into people’s hands – it wasn’t a pet project cooked up in a research lab, whose only outputs were a couple academic papers and patent filings. Most of all, I believe OLPC at heart had a virtuous Buddha nature. It was created on the belief that people can improve their lives with technology and the desire to increase access to technology throughout the world.
Failure is part of the creative process and yet when we scathe each other on our individual failings, we make it difficult for people in our industry to take the creative risks necessary to push design and technology forward. By focusing so firmly on failure, we aren’t able to see the beautiful by-product failure brings – learning. OLPC was a failure, but there were some cool things about it… and most importantly, it succeeded in giving us something concrete to learn from.
If we head for the ash heap of history, there are countless examples of failures that were necessary in order to realize a dream in the areas of science, transportation and technology. We wouldn’t get on airplanes today if Orville and Wilbur wouldn’t have had the courage to continually fail at Kitty Hawk. Without Apple Newton’s failure, we probably wouldn’t have had the Palm Pilot or the iPhone. Perhaps like the Apple Newton and the Wright Brother’s early flyers, OLPC will be remembered as one of the colossal failures necessary to bridge the digital divide.
May 22nd, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Nice post!
May 22nd, 2008 at 10:12 pm
I am not buying that it failed because of the design. I see critics saying how it was design from a western point of view, and blame that on its failure. But as a Venezuelan, I see Latin America’s education as being pretty much all western. If this program were successful in some of these countries, that would still be a huge success.
Also, in the case of the Newton, it was the user it was designed for that didn’t buy it. In this case it’s not the end user who didn’t buy, they never really got a chance to see it. I think the business plan is more to blame than the product itself.
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:11 am
Good post and an interesting timing. Check out this post on the OLPC 2.0
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:46 pm
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May 24th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
good gosh, why do you say it is a failure??? writing here from india, it is a fabulous idea!!!! americans believe theri media waaay too much, way way too much. direct experience, rather than mediated experienc, please
and if you have 15 of those puppies lying around, send them somewhere!!!!
May 24th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
jeez, i read your atory again and i am almost angry!! it is NOT a faliure!! widen and lengthen your view! and put those 15 in a box and send them somewhere today! heck, send them to me, gregory, c/o ramanashram p.o, tiruvannamalai, tamil nadu, india, 606603, and i will totally blow away about fifty kid’s minds here in the village. and the next village over. and the one after that. and the one after that. jeez!
May 25th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Interesting perspective. Thank you. However my pranic evolution that took an incredible spin this morning has made it possible to understand what you are saying here. OLPC and failure – the two concepts brought together in your posting are hard to swallow in a beneficial way. The mention of “virtuous Buddha nature” followed by “creative risks” and then concluding “by focusing so firmly on failure, we aren’t able to see the beautiful by-product failure brings – learning.” If I am a flowing river and I have a virtuous Buddha nature and I took a dozen creative risks by ebbing and flowing, then would I not be conscientiously and purely moving in the evolution of learning. The concept of failure feels dead-endish. To pair OLPC and failure is bad karma.
May 27th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Rachel, I think you bring up a lot of compelling points in this post. I’m a big believer in taking creative risks and learning from failure, and I applaud the message that failure does not mean defeat.
Which is why I find it wildly ironic (and frustrating) that this post ties failure to OLPC. The BBC News article that is the source of this recent news about OLPC isn’t about failure at all: it’s about the OLPC team fighting for success. And the words “admit defeat” are nowhere to be found.
The failure reference comes from Bruce Nussbaum’s interpretation of the BBC article. I suspect his take is getting good play due to the name of the article. It’s unfortunate that his interpretation says more about the power of schadenfreude. We all know that failure sells more eyeballs than reporting about successes, right?
I’d love to see Bruce write an article on how negative media buzz can kill innovation.
June 27th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
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