 ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD
Nicholas Negroponte founded a non-profit organization called "One Laptop Per Child" (OLPC) so children from the most impoverished places would have access to information age benefits, specifically education.
OLPC envisons every child on the planet having their own computer, with Internet access, and guaranteed power using a hand crank.
 When they take the laptops home, the kids often teach the whole family how to use it. Negroponte says the families loved the computers because, in a village with no electricity, it was the brightest light source in the house.
In a may 2007 interview with 60 Minutes Negroponte shows empirically how kids don't need teachers to learn to use the computer. They can pick it up with help from other children or simply by experimenting on their own.
"That is what we are doing... that kid is showing this kid - that is key," he says. "They get it instantly. It takes a 10-year-old child about three minutes."
When 60 Minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl says: "You go into countries where there may not be enough food, where the children may not have good enough education to even teach them to read, why a laptop? It almost sounds like a luxury for these people who need so much more than that." Negroponte answers:
"Let me take two countries, Pakistan and Nigeria. Fifty per cent of the children in both of those countries are not in school at all. They have no schools, they don't even have trees under which a teacher might stand..."
"You're saying give them a laptop even if they don't go to school?" Stahl asks.
"Especially if they don't go to school. If they don't go to school, this is school in a box."
The laptops these children receive is one even we 1st World Users would appreciate. It's the first laptop with a screen you can use outdoors in full sunlight. It's also built to withstand harsh weather and 3rd World conditions, it's built much more robust than your normal laptop. It doesn't even have holes in the side of it so neither water, dirt, sand, or particulates will harm it.
Other features of this laptop include built-in camera that takes stills and video, a stylus area, ear-like radio antennas that give the computer 2-3 times better Wi-Fi range than a regular laptop, a battery which lasts 10-12 hours with heavy use, and you can charge it up with a crank or a salad spinner (a minute or two of spinning gets you get 10-20 minutes of reading).
Nicholas is founder and chairman of the One Laptop per Child non-profit association. He is currently on leave from MIT, where he was co-founder and director of the MIT Media Laboratory, and the Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Technology.
A graduate of MIT, Nicholas was a pioneer in the field of computer-aided design, and has been a member of the MIT faculty since 1966. Conceived in 1980, the Media Laboratory opened its doors in 1985. He is also author of the 1995 best seller, Being Digital, which has been translated into more than 40 languages. In the private sector, Nicholas serves on the board of directors for Motorola, Inc. and as general partner in a venture capital firm specializing in digital technologies for information and entertainment. He has provided start-up funds for more than 40 companies, including Wired magazine.
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