Imagine a $100 laptop computer, well now it's here thanks to Nicholas Negroponte, director of the Media Lab at MIT. According to this piece in the British daily The Independent, the professor has developed a simple computer that can be foldable in various ways, is encased in bump-proof rubber and has a hand crank on the side to provide power when electricity is spotty or absent. Negroponte says he designed these less than basic designed computers with basic laptop components like a 500 MHz AMD processor, Linux operating system and a wireless connection so they can be shipped off to the various students and teachers within the third world, where there is a lack of a strong infrastructure but a growing need for to learn how to operate computers and navigate the web to prepare them to seek jobs in the IT field.
I'd have to say that this is probably one of the best ideas to come out of MIT in a good while. Not only will this open up an avenue to advance the computer and education skills of people in these less developed spots in the world but It will also open up the power of ideas like democracy and freedom to countries that have had a deficit of such in these remote sections of the world. I can only image what the computers could do for the folks in the remote regions of Iraq and Afghanistan and what in could do for folks in the various Outposts of Tyranny who struggle for freedom and democracy every day. So Bravo to you Professor Negroponte.
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