From the Editor

From the Editor: The Hundred-Dollar Laptop

  • August 2005
  • By Jason Pontin

MIT's Nicholas Negroponte wants to provide Internet access to all the world. His plan: a dirt-cheap computer.

   

In May, at the Wall Street Journal's D3 conference outside 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 improve the fortunes of poor children.

Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of MIT's Media Lab, showed attendees the screen of the Hundred-Dollar Laptop, 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.

 

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