"It is an impressive technical achievement, able to do almost anything that larger, more expensive machines can do," said Kofi Annan. "It holds the promise of major advances in economic and social development."
"When they start reaching the hands of the world's children, these robust and versatile machines will enable kids to become more active in their own learning," he added. "Children will be able to learn by doing, not just through instruction or rote memorization. And they will be able to open a new front in their education: peer-to-peer learning."
Nicholas Negroponte as well views the project very much in terms of education. "Every single problem that you can think of -- poverty, peace, the environment -- is solved either with education or including education," he said at the World Summit. "I cannot think of a world problem that is solved without education being a part of it. So when we make this machine available in the numbers we are talking about, it's an education project. It's not a laptop project. And we think as an education project it will help solve what is called the digital divide."
"The digital divide really isn't digital, it is a learning divide," he added. "It is an education and an opportunity divide. And digital is the means by which children can learn. I cannot tell you how important that is."
The prototype of the laptop, developed with many of the resources of the Media Lab, is now being ushered toward the production phase by a non-profit organization which Negroponte and his associates have set up, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). The organization's financial supporters include Google and Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. has reportedly contributed $2 million for the project.
The laptop will serve as a tool for displaying electronic textbooks, as well as a word processor and a Wi-Fi mesh networking machine that will give students email and access to the Internet. When the laptops open up, they connect to each other. "If 1000 or 2000 kids make up a mesh network, only a small number have to be connected back to the Internet for all of the kids to be connected," explained Negroponte. "And we are exploring making the power requirements of the broadband Wi-Fi connectivity of the mesh sufficiently low powered so that when you close the machine, it is still on the mesh and it is routing other machines. If we can do that with a sufficiently low power budget, then the network will always be very extensive and very robust. Mesh networks are very good and will be very, very popular over the next couple of years."
Low Power Consumption
Creating a machine that had very low power consumption has been a primary objective in developing the laptop, in part so that it could be powered both by standard C cell batteries and also with a wind-up crank that would offer something like 10 minutes of operating time with one minute of charging. Negroponte admits, however, that this ratio is still theoretical until the actual units are built.
The laptops will have a 500MHz processor and 1 GB of flash memory that would offer limited data storage. And Negroponte insists that all the hardware and software is open source. "We are assuring that it will operate in every local language where they are distributed, every single one, even small ones," Negroponte said. "We will use the open source community to develop that and have several groups at the moment offering all the fonts and the character sets."
One challenge to keep both the cost and power consumption down has been developing a display for the machine. Earlier this year, Negroponte talked Mary Lou Jepsen into leaving her job as chief technology officer in Intel's display division to become CTO at One Laptop Per Child. Jepsen has developed a new technological approach to increase the resolution of DVD player screens by changing the way they display color. This means the screens could be built for $35 or less, compared with typical laptop displays that cost upwards of $100. "We are concerned both with cost and power consumption, as well as sunlight readability," Jepsen said. "There are some parts in the world with outside classrooms where kids learn outside. That's a real problem."
The first prototype of "the green machine."
Another development objective to lower costs and power consumption is simply to get the fat out of the system. As they said in a FAQ on the machine, "Today's laptops have become obese. Two-thirds of their software is used to manage the other third, which mostly does the same functions nine different ways." The $100 laptop is being designed to be a lean machine where no computing power or memory is wasted.
Where Can You Get One?
Quite simply, you can't. They don't exist yet. And the minimum order is for roughly 1 million machines (depending upon the exact cost to eventually manufacture them).
Negroponte is currently seeking six larger governments to each purchase $100 million worth of machines, possibly using the money that they would traditionally spend for textbooks over the next 5 years. As the laptops would double as electronic book reading machines, they could provide the textbooks the money would have gone to purchase.
Ministries of education would distribute the laptops to the children who would actually own them, and therefore take better care of them. And the color and design, which has resulted in the computer being dubbed "the green machine" around the MIT Media Lab, is so distinctive that Negroponte hopes no secondary market will develop for them. Struggling third world families wouldn't be tempted to sell them for needed cash if there is no secondary market and other corruption problems in their distribution might also be eliminated.
The reason Negroponte is concentrating on six large countries to start with -- he has been talking with Brazil, Thailand, China and Egypt among others -- is the training that needs to accompany the rollout.
"One of the reasons it will work is that a lot of effort will be put into teaching the teachers," said Negroponte. One of the ways to teach teachers is to have a couple of people from MIT go to that country, spend a month with the 30 most enthusiastic teachers that can be found. After a month, maybe 25 of the 30 people would qualify to teach 30 people themselves. So you do it exponentially, and then with four cycles, you have 100,000 teachers."
Negroponte hopes that smaller orders could be placed by smaller countries six or eight months after the initial rollout. OLPC has an agreement with UNDP for this agency to help with training in smaller countries.
Negroponte admits that the project has met with skepticism from some technology development veterans. If anything, it will be Negroponte's own influence and determination that will drive this project forward. He told reporters at the World Summit that this is the one project he is now dedicating his life to because it is the one he believes will make a real difference in the world.
And that is a view that Kofi Annan seems to share. "Studies and experience have shown repeatedly that kids take to computers easily -- not just in the comfort of warm, well-lit, rich-country schools and living rooms, but also in the slums and remote rural areas of the developing world," he said. "We must reach all these kids. Their societies, and the world at large, simply cannot do without their contributions and engagement."
