Home' Technology Review : August 2005 Contents 14
From the Editor Jason Pontin
FROM THE EDITOR
I , at the Wall Street Journal s D3 conference out-
side San Diego (an event attended by technology princes
like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs), I saw the elements of a
computer that, if it were built, would wonderfully im-
prove the fortunes of poor children.
Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of MIT s Media
Lab, showed attendees the screen of the Hundred-Dollar Lap-
top, or HDL. Beginning in 2006, he said, he would build 100
million to 200 million HDLs every year---and distribute them to
the children of the poor world. Many attendees had read about
Negroponte s idea and dismissed it as quixotic. Hearing how an
HDL might be built, seeing a part of it, and realizing the scale of
the project produced a rustle of delighted interest.
Negroponte recently wrote to me about what he hoped the
HDL would do: "Education: one laptop per child. Whatever big
problem you can imagine, from world peace to the environment
to hunger to poverty, the solution always includes education. We
need to depend more on peer-to-peer and self-
driven learning. The laptop is one important means
of doing that."
Can a $100 computer be built? Maybe. Negro-
ponte does not plan to use three expensive compo-
nents of conventional laptops: Microsoft Windows,
a traditional at-panel screen, and a hard drive. In-
stead, the HDL will be loaded with Linux and other
open-source software; its display will use either a
rear-projection screen or a type of electronic ink in-
vented at the MIT Media Lab; and it will store one
gigabyte s worth of les in ash memory.
The HDL has a number of other, intriguing
features. Since many villages in the poor world do
not have electricity, the machines may be powered
by either a crank or "parasitic power"---that is, typ-
ing. Once turned on, HDLs will automatically con-
nect to one another using a "mesh network" initially
developed at MIT and the Media Lab. In the mesh network
each laptop serves as an information-relaying node. Households
that have HDLs will be able to communicate with each other by
e-mail or voice calls.
Most importantly, Negroponte wants every mesh network to
have access to the Inter net. The laptops will be loaded with
Skype, a communications application that provides free tele-
phone calls. Consider: the most forlorn parts of the globe might
become part of the wider world.
The most vital part of the plan is also, perhaps, the most chal-
lenging. Internet access is not cheap in the poor world; infra-
str ucture is fragile and expensive to maintain. When I challenged
Negroponte about this "hidden cost," he conceded, "[This is] a
very real issue. We are looking at ways to spend less than $1 per
month per child."
At rst glance, Negroponte s economics seem rational
enough. The HDL will not be sold commercially; instead, edu-
cation ministries and other government agencies will purchase
it. Pro ts will be very limited: merely $10 per machine for equip-
ment manufacturers. Of course, building a laptop for $100 de-
mands what economists call "economies of scale." Negroponte s
pilot project requires commitments for at least six million or-
ders. So far, China has expressed an interest in buying two mil-
lion machines, and Brazil one million. At least at rst, the
machines would be built in China, where Negroponte has been
talking to manufacturers.
Not everyone is convinced. On the record, few are willing to
cast doubt on such a worthy project, but some informed people
to whom I spoke wondered
whether the Chinese were ac-
curately estimating the costs
of manufacturing the HDL.
But most people, like D3 s
attendees, are excited by the
prospect of the HDL. Why?
Because it represents some-
thing of a second chance.
Nothing much came of at-
tempts in the late 1990s to
address inequities in the
distribution of information
technologies; bridging the
"digital divide" is no longer a
fashionable cause. But the di-
vide is real enough for all
that. According to the World
Bank, the number of Internet users per capita in the poor world
is 40 percent that of the rest of the world. The rich world has
three times as many computers than the poor. For more than
ve billion people, the Internet is only a r umor. Inevitably, poor
children are the biggest losers: their lives are pathetically cir-
cumscribed. While they need clean water, food, and health
care, they also need education and more-expansive horizons.
Attempts to bridge the digital divide failed because there was
no bridge. Nicholas Negroponte s Hundred-Dollar Laptop could
be that bridge. Do you think the HDL can be built? Write and tell
me at firstname.lastname@example.org. ■
Nothing much came
of attempts made
in the late 1990s to
in the distribution of
bridging the "digital
divide" is no longer
cause. But the divide
is real enough.
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