Bridging the digital divide
In a rural Cambodian village where the homes lack electricity, the nighttime darkness is pierced by the glow from laptops that children bring from school.
The students were equipped with notebook computers by a foundation run by MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte and his wife Elaine.
“When the kids bring them home and open them up, it’s the brightest light source in the home,” said Negroponte. “Parents love it.”
Negroponte and some MIT colleagues are hard at work on a project they hope will brighten the lives and prospects of hundreds of millions of developing world kids.
It’s a grand idea and a daunting challenge: to create rugged, Internet- and multimedia-capable laptop computers at a cost of $100 apiece.
That’s right, the price of dinner for four at a moderately priced Manhattan restaurant can buy a Third World kid what Negroponte considers an essential tool for making it in the 21st century.
The laptops would be mass-produced in orders of no smaller than 1 million units and bought by governments, which would distribute them.
Ambitious projects to bridge the digital divide in the developing world at low cost have had a shaky track record. Perhaps the best example is the Simputer, a $220 handheld device developed by Indian scientists in 2001 that only last year became available and isn’t selling well.
But Negroponte and MIT colleagues Joe Jacobson and Seymour Papert aren’t deterred.
For one, three corporate partners have committed an initial $2 million apiece to the initiative and pledged to serve as suppliers for the “one laptop per child” project: Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which will bring expertise in processors; “Do No Evil” search engine king Google; and News Corp., Rupert Murdoch’s media company with global satellite capabilities.
The mission: to make laptops as ubiquitous as cell phones in technology-deprived regions. Negroponte’s pitch: The cost of a laptop comes in far lower than a child’s textbook expenses for the computer’s lifespan.
“It’s a way of having the children be the agents of change,” Negroponte told The Associated Press. “They bring the device home, and then the parents look over their shoulder.” He thinks it’s extremely important that individual children own laptops; it will ensure they’ll be well-maintained.
In design and function, Negroponte wants the $100 laptop to “be so close to the current laptops as to be nearly indistinguishable,” but acknowledges that the machine will have a relatively slow processor and modest storage capacity paired with barebones software.
The biggest challenge, he says, is designing a display that doesn’t put the price out of reach or drain the battery too quickly.
Details are still being worked out, but here’s the MIT team’s current recipe: Put the laptop on a software diet; use the freely distributed Linux operating system; design a battery capable of being recharged with a hand crank; and use newly developed “electronic ink” or a novel rear-projected image display with a 12-inch screen.
Then, give it Wi-Fi access, and add USB ports to hook up peripheral devices.
Most importantly, take profits, sales costs and marketing expenses out of the picture.
“The technology challenge is real, and you need to make some breakthroughs, but most of the money is saved in other ways,” said Negroponte, who pitched the project in January at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, the annual confab of global powerbrokers.
Negroponte has also met with Chinese and Brazilian officials to discuss expected orders and production in those countries, which would create local jobs. Two prototypes have been built, and test units could be shipped by the middle of next year. The project would essentially be nonprofit, with about $90 covering hardware for each computer and an extra $10 for contingencies.