A quick Google hasn’t turned up any hits for this, so I’m turning to the World-Wise Web. I’m generally a socially responsible hand-wringer, but you’ll have to forgive me for a second while I go evil and channel my inner predatory capitalist ….
The OLPC (update: One Laptop Per Child aka “the hundred-dollar laptop”) is set to go out to millions of kids in developing nations later this year. These are kids who, by virtue of their education and the rising tide of lifestyle in those nations, will be the new affluents. Brands like Coke, Marlboro, Toyota, Disney, and Evangelical Churches would surely love to reach those kids, to seed their brand with the kids and their parents.
If that’s true, then we should see some things:
- Companies sponsoring curriculum materials. (“Jenda has five delicious smoky Marlboro cigarettes …”)
- Companies building applications such as casual games for the OLPC platform (e.g., by taking the OLPC programming tutorial at OSCON)
- Companies stepping up to fund the distribution of these machines to kids, as a way of raising brand awareness.
But I haven’t seen these things. For example, signups at the OLPC tutorial aren’t huge and I haven’t seen any reports of companies stepping up to help create branded content. Is the success of the OLPC too uncertain? Is the success of the OLPC kids too uncertain? Or is it just that nobody has thought of the filthy capitalist implications before?