Way back in ancient history, in 1997, Clayton Christenson of Harvard wrote The Innovator's Dilemma, explaining a seeming paradox in high-tech.

Why is it, he asked, that in many product areas, innovation does not come from established companies, but from startups? Why is it that companies doing exactly what the experts tell them to do, that is, to listen to their customers, are constantly going under? The short answer is, because the next big market isn't with your current customers. It's with a vastly larger group of would-be users who couldn't afford your previous products, or couldn't carry around the huge devices of previous generations.

It would be easy to go too far with Christensen's analysis. As a counter-example, Intel has been doing fine for many generations of product, because it is able to make effectively bigger but cheaper products in a roughly constant physical size range, and its existing customers, along with ever-more-numerous startups, then seek out the profusion of new markets for new processors, memory, and all the rest.

People like to talk about autos vs. the buggy-whip manufacturers, or dinosaurs vs. mammals, as analogies for tech competition. Those are OK as far as they go, but remember that mammals didn't kill off or even out-compete the dinosaurs. Some of the dinosaurs turned into birds, and are still here with us in profusion.

Why do I bring all of this up? Because Mary Lou Jepsen brought it up in a video about the new Pixel Qi screen technology:

She says, "The cool thing about the Pixel Qi technology is, you know, poor kids in Africa got it first. You know, it's the classic Innovator's Dilemma." Mary Lou proved the market for her innovations in an area that most people didn't believe could exist, and now her company is in hundreds of market segments.

In our case, the new market is hundreds of millions of children who couldn't possibly afford conventional computers out of current income. Nevertheless, with education and the resulting economic growth their countries should be able to afford them as an investment in their future. Some people are still arguing whether that is so. I take a different tack. It isn't a question of existing facts on the ground, but of ethics, the obligation to change those facts. Ending poverty is worth so much that we should all simply decide to make it so.

She went on to describe the new 3Qi technology, which is even better, and has nothing left of the original OLPC XO screen. Laptop Magazine reviewed one of the 3Qi prototypes hacked into an Acer machine side-by-side with a conventional screen.

People ask Mary Lou, do we really need a contrast ratio of a million to one, or 120% color saturation? Isn't 100% enough? Well, in fact, those are great for watching movies, but they aren't the specs for a book reader. Her focus is on being able to do both well, including reading in sunlight. (People always ask whether we need hardware improvements, since they obviously aren't required for current applications. I was on a panel in 1981 where we were asked what anybody would do with more than 640K of memory.)

Another point is to encourage designers to use architectural ideas from the XO in order to save power and extend battery life. This means having an integrated screen controller and integrated wireless that can run while the main processor turns off. So if you think that the XO inspiring the netbook market was a big deal, you haven't seen anything.

Mary Lou has more technical tricks up her sleeve for better displays at even lower power, which I don't want to get into here. If you want the tech, go watch the video. And even if you don't want the tech details, go watch Pixel Qi vs Kindle vs Toshiba R600 vs regular LCD tablet, where she demonstrates the 3Qi screens in comparison with other technologies.

CGI rendering of the XOXO.

So where does that take us? Aha! It takes us to the XO-2 screens. According to the designers, that means multi-touch haptic screens usable as display or keyboard.

In English, 'haptic' means that when you push on the screen, it can push back or vibrate, so you can tell what you are typing, and more importantly where the centers of the keys are. Essential for touch typing. Multi-touch means that you can type key combinations, or play multiple notes on a music keyboard, or activate several triggers in a game at the same time.

Mary Lou says that she doesn't yet know what screens Pixel Qi will supply for the XO-2. It's up to the designers at OLPC to decide what they want, and then the two teams together can discuss how to get that at the best price.

Us haz teh bestest toyz.

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