Heroes - Made in Taiwan

Taiwan is also proud to claim as its own Los Angeles Dodger’s pitcher Hong-Chih Kuo and tennis player Yen-Hsun Lu. The 2004 Summer Olympics added two new names to the list, with Ms. Chen Shih-Hsin becoming the first Taiwanese athlete to win a gold medal in Taekwondo while Chu Mu-Yen became the first male to win gold, also winning in Taekwondo. Taiwan’s cultural figures have also left a splash on the world, with film director Lee Ang and Cloudgate Dance Theater founder Lin Hwai-min at the top of their game.

But while sports figures and celebrities get greater visibility due to their public persona, Taiwan has another class of business world heroes. Over the last few years, philanthropic donations by leading business leaders have increased. After donating NT$15 billion to the National Taiwan University for cancer research, (which works out roughly to US$460 million) Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Chairman Terry Gou last year donated another NT$200 million to attempt to solve the problem of the island’s large stray dog population by neutering and implanting chips in the animals. Soon after tycoon Terry Gou’s donation, Quanta Computer Inc vice chairman C.C. Leung also donated NT$205 million for a new research center at the National Taiwan University’s physics department.

But one story that has perhaps not received as much media coverage as it deserves is Taiwan’s involvement in the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. According to the organization’s website (laptop.org), this laptop is “a potent learning tool created expressly for children in developing countries.” The machine, now called the XO-1, was imagined as a durable, cheap, power-efficient personal computer simple enough for children. The project founders believe that the best way to transform a society is by skipping a generation and moving directly to a nation’s future. With an XO-1 laptop, even kids living in harsh and remote environments will have a computer to practice on and, if the infrastructure supports it — access to the Internet. The media originally called the project the “U.S. $100 laptop” and when the concept was unveiled by founder Nicholas Negroponte in 2005, many argued the project was close to impossible.
And without Taiwan’s active participation, the OLPC idea may have indeed died. April’s edition of the Taiwan Review features an article by Glenn Smith explaining how Taiwanese companies Quanta and Chi Mei Optoelectronics are directly responsible for the resurrection of founder Negroponte’s vision. In fact, according to the project’s chief technology officer and co-designer Mary Lou Jepsen, the completed “XO-1” is 92% Taiwanese.

While the U.S. $100 price goal has not yet been met, the most recent incarnation of the XO-1 is now selling for US$188. With a little bit of luck, the “one-hundred-dollar laptop” will sell for US$100 later this year. Quanta Computer, which manufactures the XO-1, says it has confirmed orders for one million units. The company is thinking big, indicating they may offer machines that are highly similar to the XO on the open market and claiming it could ship up to 10 million units of the XO-1 in 2008 because Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Thailand have all committed to purchase the machine for schoolchildren.

According to the OLPC website, the overwhelming majority of close to two billion children in the developing world are not adequately educated — with one in three not completing the fifth grade. Many children receive no education at all. When one stops to consider the consequences of these statistics the true tragedy of these numbers hits like a ton of bricks. The fact that millions of people are consigned to a life of abject poverty because they have no access to education is shameful. As the world ambles towards the great divide between the “have-knowledge” and those who “have-no-access-to-knowledge,” it’s amazing to think that just one hundred U.S. dollars could make the difference between a life of a hunter-gatherer and a life of meaningful existence.

The good people at OLPC believe the time has come to rethink this unbalanced equation. Through stopping the causes of poverty at their source and enabling a new generation through education, Taiwan’s tech companies are literally changing the future of our planet. It’s a story of true heroics deserving of attention and praise. As Glenn Smith writes, “thanks to the contributions of Taiwan’s Quanta and Chi Mei, a half-million school children have already made the leap into the digital age.” There are now a few more heroes on Taiwan’s trophy shelf.