Negroponte’s vision of a $100 laptop unveiled, yet the mystery continues

Posted by Dennis Sellers Nov 17, 2005 at 7:44am

Kofi Annan introduced the $100 dollar laptop on Wednesday at the World Summit on the information Society in Tunis. Annan began with an opening statement that is in part, read as follows:

“Some inventions are ahead of their time. Others are perfectly on their time. Still others, seem so obvious and natural, that once people hear about them, or see them – they wonder why it took so long for them to come into being. It is rare – it is a rare invention indeed – that manages to be all greatness at once. But Nicolas Negroponte, his team, of the world renowned MIT media lab and their partners – have given us just such a breakthrough. The $100 laptop is inspiring in many respects. ”

After the introduction, Negroponte demonstrated the unit’s versatility as an e-book, TV, games machine or laptop to a packed house of reporters who couldn’t wait to take photos of this breakthrough unit, that the Media Lab dubbed the Green Machine.

Negroponte presented the unit, like as enthusiastic child. He confessed that he hadn’t actually seen the unit functioning until 20 minutes before its official unveiling. “The next time we see it, we’ll have at least one company signed up to build it, and perhaps one big name company signed up to make it commercially available, ” said Negroponte. It was revealed during his presentation that five manufacturers are bidding for the contract, with three brand names looking at it – which haven’t decided whether or not to build it commercially. He added that “A commercial company could take the same design and make it available, at say $200, for people in small businesses, people in governments, and for people who want to buy it in the retail market. And we’re in those discussions.”

The only thing that Negroponte said on the software side of the equation at first was that it was going to be open source. Later, when specifically asked about the Operating System, Negroponte stated “Whether it’s Linux or some flavor…we’re working on that now.”

That publicly stated generality would make it far too early to assume anything. Although there’s been a lot of noise about the operating system not being OS X, one has to consider that Apple’s open source Darwin project has just as much chance of being that open source OS as anything else.

However, on a number of occasions, Negroponte made a point about one of their sponsors being Google. Negroponte stated that “they’re the experts, the pros at doing things for the bottom up. He plugged Google a number of times with a rather revealing smile that would definitely, in my opinion, point to Google playing the largest role in software in this initiative. Once you see the video yourself, you may see exactly what I mean. Yes, gestures are most revealing aren’t they? You could view the entire one hour and seven minute video of this historic unveiling—at this site, which requires the Realplayer.

So what does Google have to do with operating systems? Well, if you tuned into the Sun/Google alliance’s video and announcements of October 4; there was a general feel that Google had been working with Sun Microsystems on OpenSolaris. Although there was nothing concrete that was announced during that press event, one of the comments that Jonathan Schwartz made was interesting, in that he alluded to wanting to retain “an element of surprise” in respect to future product announcements and/or collaborative efforts between Sun and Google. So I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if Google and or Google/Sun Microsystems got the nod from Negroponte.

Being that Negroponte introduced the fact that the $100 laptop will eventually spill over to commercial markets including governments and small businesses; you should read Macsimum’s report filed on October seventh titled “Apple, Google and the $100 laptop,” that could fill you in on some of the blanks in this respect.

In general

Other topics that Negroponte discussed were Mesh networking, environmental issues, and market entry points, in addition to various aspects of the technology in general. He did touch on the “grey market” that could take advantage of such a program as well.

Negroponte acknowledged that the grey market was in fact a possible problem ahead. He acknowledged that poor families could in fact sell the unit instead of allowing their child to use it, because they needed the money – and that’s a part of the same equation. He gave a number of examples of how this has been examined, but hoped that there would be some community and peer pressure for it not to appear on the grey market. The unit itself, he added, has some built in features that will shut the unit off if it’s not on the network for a few days. Of course, this is one of the advantages of this unit being a network-centric computer.

In so many ways, this unit and project has a mountain to climb on several fronts – and only time will tell if it will ever succeed. Much was revealed at this event that demonstrated the blindness of the project including the fact that unit has never been tested in the real world and humorous accounts of how difficult it was dealing with governments that would virtually change over the weekend. Sorry, but his accounting of that, was funny.

Whatever operating system that the association finally decides on to power this unit, we know that Apple has at least made the gesture that Darwin was available to the project. Being that open source was the bottom line criteria, OS X was never in the running to begin with. But it’s bigger than politics, and I think most are cheering Negroponte on the long road ahead.

Are Negroponte and his One Laptop per Child non-profit association, dreamers? Yes perhaps. But it’s nice to know that someone is willing to go beyond just hoping for the next guy to do something about the great digital divide. In the end, just as in the beginning, Kofi Annan’s opening statement, says it best:

“Some inventions are ahead of their time. Others are perfectly on their time. Still others, seem so obvious and natural, that once people hear about them, or see them – they wonder why it took so long for them to come into being. It is rare – it is a rare invention indeed – that manages to be all greatness at once. But Nicolas Negroponte, his team, of the world renowned MIT media lab and their partners – have given us just such a breakthrough.

Well done sirs, well done indeed!

neo@macsimumnews.com

Advanced Search

Article Information

Comment on this Article Print this Article Email this Article Digg This

Contributor

Recent Articles

Hotel München