$100 Laptop Helps Cross Digital Divide
>From the New York Times (31 January, 2005):
$100 Laptop Helps Cross Digital Divide
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DAVOS, Switzerland - by John Markoff
Nicholas Negroponte, the technology guru from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology Media Laboratory, prowled the halls of the World
Economic Forum last month holding the holy grail for crossing the
digital divide: a mock-up of a $100 laptop computer.
The machine is intriguing because Mr. Negroponte has struck upon a
remarkable simple solution for lowering the price of the most costly
part of a laptop --- the display --- to $25 or less.
......
Mr. Negroponte said that he had found initial backing for his laptop
plan from Advanced Mico Devices and said that he was in discussions with
Google, Motorola, the News Corporation and Samsung for support.
The device includes a tentlike pop-up display that will use the
technology now used in today's rear-projection televivions, in
contjunction with a light-emitting diode source.
Mr. Negroponte said his experience in giving children laptop computers
in rural Cambodia had convinced him that low-cost machines would make a
fundamental difference when broadly deployed.
"You can just give laptops to kids," he said, noting that they quickly
take advantage of the machines. "In Cambodia, the first English word
out of their mouths is 'Google'."
......
Mr. Negroponte said he was confident that his computers, which run the
free Linux operating system, would find a ready market as early as 2006.
"China is important because there are 220 million students," he said.
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