![The [OLPC] project’s motivating articulation of needs is made with respect to a very familiar, unilinear model of technological progress, one in which the problems of the developing world are framed as a series of absences, specifically of the furniture of Western life, viz., digital technology, and in particular, the personal computer. Implicit in this model are commitments to individual ownership; indeed, one of the critiques of OLPC has been that the devices might have been better conceived as owned by communities or family groups, and yet the specific design of the laptop – and in particular the small keys on the keyboard, or even its color and design – orient it specifically towards children rather than other family members.
Lilly Irani, Janet Vertesi, Paul Dourish, Kavita Philip and Rebecca Grinter, Postcolonial computing: a lens on design and development, from CHI2010](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l4c8vbvGZT1qzr54lo1_500.jpg)
The [OLPC] project’s motivating articulation of needs is made with respect to a very familiar, unilinear model of technological progress, one in which the problems of the developing world are framed as a series of absences, specifically of the furniture of Western life, viz., digital technology, and in particular, the personal computer. Implicit in this model are commitments to individual ownership; indeed, one of the critiques of OLPC has been that the devices might have been better conceived as owned by communities or family groups, and yet the specific design of the laptop – and in particular the small keys on the keyboard, or even its color and design – orient it specifically towards children rather than other family members.
Lilly Irani, Janet Vertesi, Paul Dourish, Kavita Philip and Rebecca Grinter, Postcolonial computing: a lens on design and development, from CHI2010
