Who wants one?

Former MIT Media Lab director Nicholas Negroponte is pushing an idea for a $100 laptop

Nicholas Negroponte (former director of the famed MIT Media Lab) is on about an idea that just might change the world in unpredictable ways - a $100 laptop computer for poor countries.

His idea is to make it wireless, use all solid-state memory (that is, no hard drive), an innovative projection-laser type screen, and a stripped-down version of Linux.  It shouldn’t be fussy about power, and it should be darn near indestructable.  He believes that remote villages will be able to set up a couple hot-spots and everyone will gather around with their laptops and connect the educational and economic resources of the rest of the world.

Hey Nicholas, a couple things you didn’t consider:

First, everyone I’ve told about this has said; “I want one.”  Every single person....
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...It wouldn’t only affect the third world.  Expensive, fragile, complicated, buggy, Windows-running, power-gulping laptops would have to become cheaper, more reliable, tougher and simpler to use, or competition from Negroponte’s $100 model would wipe them out. 

Schools would buy them by the crate.  In six months, used ones would be $60 on eBay. Offices would use them, giving a giant push to web-based applications (so Microsoft Office would probably disappear as a standard.)  People would buy several, and only carry around a USB keychain drive.  They’d be everywhere.

Second, it could be an even bigger cultural upheaval than the introduction of television.  Can you imagine third-world villagers encountering online gambling, porn, and blogs of every flavor?  This would be on top of Negroponte’s expectation that they’d be exposed to BBC news and MIT’s online science courses.  Not to mention what would happen when they could Google up what other countries are saying about their leaders, economy, etc.

Email and eBay would penetrate into whole new segments of society, triggering… well, it takes a bit of imagination, doesn’t it?  That is, to guess exactly what it would trigger.  A lot of new economic activity, certainly.  Not all of it legitimate and some of it difficult to classify.

I’ve had a hunch that $100 laptops were really possible ever since I saw laptop-shaped Fisher-Price toys at Toys-R-Us and $130 DVD players at the grocery store.  You can bet Sony, IBM, and Dell would hate it, but once it happens, they’ll have to get on board.

I want one.

Notes:
The picture above is a mock-up… you will have to use your imagination a bit.  The keyboard goes in front.  The screen is just a piece of white plastic onto which the image projects from the keyboard.  (Think super-durable!  A screen like that would take abuse that would shatter a normal screen, and use a fraction of the power.)  The whole thing folds up.

See also… Digital Guru floats $100 laptop, and a 1996 essay on laptop functionality by Negroponte, Laptop Envy.

Posted by George on 02/17/05 at 07:44 PM
News •

  1. I think you’re onto something, I really want one of those laptops now too.  My Compaq just doesn’t seem to compare.  I’ve had it for six months and the keyboard’s already starting to get buggy.

    Posted by Socialist Swine  on  02/18/05  at  03:42 AM

  2. i don’t want one. but that may be because i’ve never had a laptop, so i haven’t become addicted to that whole scene as yet.

    if i were to get a laptop, though, it’d have to be darn near bulletproof, because i’m hard on things that aren’t bolted down. and it’d have to play nice with my desktop, so i could move seamlessly back and forth between them. (eh, i’m a linux geek - i can always hack something up with ssh, rsync, and vnc if i have to…) and it’d have to be dirt cheap, because i’m penniless. this project, a couple weeks’ worth of hacking software, and a wireless hub on my home network… yeah, might work.

    Posted by Nomen Nescio  on  02/18/05  at  09:26 AM

  3. Yeah, you could say introducing the net to third world countries may be a real shock especially in the rural areas. But I believe the positive things is far greater than the negative effects. So Mr. Negroponte may go on, I think.

    Posted by The Daily Prophet  on  02/20/05  at  12:37 PM

  4. Este o chestiune extraordinara, la fel cum este si ideea produselor destinate tarilor din lumea a treia. Acest laptop va putea revolutiona intr-adevar procesul de educare al copiilor din tarile lumii a treia dar nu numai si, impilicit intreaga industrie destinata produselor suport> papetarie, birotica, manuale, rechizite, e-book, software educational etc. etc.  BRAVO NEGROPONTE!

    Posted by Vasile Giurgiu  on  08/26/05  at  05:28 AM

  5. Update: here’s the latest announcements on Negroponte’s laptop design, including more detailed illustrations and details.  I want one even more!

    BBC News Online: Sub-$100 Laptop design revealed

    Posted by george.w  on  09/29/05  at  10:20 PM

  6. You said it so well I just put my 2 cents on top and told people to come here and read your take…

    great job.

    Posted by dave  on  09/30/05  at  10:11 AM

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