Driving Force: One Million Dollar Laptop

Description:

Picture of second generation prototype

The $100 laptop is an education project for creating an inexpensive laptop computer intended to provide every child in the world access to knowledge and modern forms of education.

The computers will be rugged, Linux-based, and so energy efficient that hand-cranking alone will generate sufficient power for operation. Ad-hoc wireless mesh networking may be used to allow many machines Internet access from one connection. The pricing goal is currently expected to start at around $135 not hitting the $100 mark until 2008. The laptops will be sold to governments and issued to children by schools on a basis of one laptop per child.

The laptop is being developed by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization. OLPC is a Delaware based, non-profit organization created by faculty members of the MIT Media Lab to design, manufacture, and distribute the laptops. OLPC was announced by Media Lab chairman and co-founder Nicholas Negroponte at the January 2005 World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland.

For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$100_laptop

Enablers:

The Increasing Use of Internet
Development of 3G techonology

Inhibitors:

Cost of Computer Resources
The Increasing Use of Internet
Decrease in investments in R&D
Programming standards

Experts:

Nicholas Negroponte
Chairman Emeritus, MIT Media Laboratory
Chairman, One Laptop per Child
Group: MIT Media Laboratory
Office: E15-210
Phone: (617) 253-5960
Fax: (617) 258-9212
E-mail: nicholas@media
addresses are formatted username@media.mit.edu
URL: http://www.media.mit.edu/~nicholas
Assistant: Nia Lewis, niav@media

Web Resources:

1. http://www.laptop.org/

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$100_laptop