Can Technology End World Poverty?
By Claremont Port Side Auditing the One Laptop Per Child Program By Rachel Brody Contributing Writer, CMC ’12 This December, as Apple enjoyed yet another Christmastime sales boom, the non-profit organization One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) publicized a much-anticipated design concept for its own “future computer,” not unlike the iPad Apple just released. The XO-3 is the latest in a series of low-cost laptops intended for school-age children in the developing world. Scheduled for release in 2012, the XO-3 boasts a slew of high-tech features: it is half as thick as an iPhone, has a virtual keyboard, and can charge itself through induction rather than through a traditional port. And, at an estimated $75, it is far cheaper than its bulky predecessor, the XO, ultimately priced at $172. As one reporter put it, with such design plans in the works for what could someday be the cheapest laptop on the market, “you may start to wish you were a third-grade child in Burundi.” Herein lies the problem wi
