| The world’s digital divide is coming to an end thanks to a working prototype of a laptop computer that can be built for $100, says a group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Known as the Green Machine, the budget-priced laptop targeted for use by school children in the developing world is the brainchild of professor Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the Media Lab at MIT.
"Children are the greatest natural resource of any country, and educating these children is at the root of solving our largest and most complex problems," said Negroponte recently during a speech at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, Tunisia. "Yet the best education may not come from sitting in a traditional classroom, but rather through independent interaction and exploration. The development of a $100 laptop will now make this possible for all kids – especially those in developing nations. It will redefine how we 'learn learning.'"
The plan for the Green Machine is to sell it to developing countries through the non-profit One Laptop Per Child organization. Based in Delaware, OLPC is also staffed by faculty from the MIT Media Lab.
The distinct lime green machine, with a hand-crank mounted on the side (used to generate power for its internal battery), will first be sold to governments and then distributed for free to children in some of the poorest regions of the world. Designed to withstand the most rugged of conditions, the Linux-based machine is equipped with one gigabyte of memory and will also have Internet access.
Driving the project is the fact that most of the developing world has been left out of the computer age. Analysts estimate that today only one-quarter of the Earth’s population has access to personal computers.
Although the $100 laptop has been lauded by everyone from the United Nation’s Secretary General Kofi Annan to Thailand’s education minister, it still has detractors.
Craig Barrett, chairman of the world’s largest chip maker, Intel Corp., says the school children of Brazil, Thailand, Egypt and Nigeria – the first countries expected to participate in the project – don’t want the Green Machine.
Barrett has called the laptop a "$100 gadget" that will be limited in its usefulness because of its small memory and hand-cranked power supply.
In a separate project, Intel is also bringing IT access to the developing world, but instead of low-cost computers, they plan to create a wireless network called WiMax. Introduced by Intel in Sri Lanka last month, the company plans to have the broadband wireless service extend across much of Asia.
The ongoing debate about whether the $100 laptop will actually close the digital divide in the developing world will have to wait until near the end of 2006, as millions of the colourful computers are manufactured by Quanta Computer Inc. of Taiwan. At that time, between five million and 15 million of the Green Machines will be distributed in large-scale projects in parts of Asia, Africa and South America. |
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