100$ Laptop for 3rd World Countries

The MIT Media Laboratory launched a prototype of its US$100 laptop last wednesday in Tunesia, Nicholas Negroponte, the lab’s chairman and co-founder came up with the idea. The facility has been working with industry partners to develop a notebook computer for use by children in primary and secondary education around the world, particularly in developing countries. The laptops should start appearing in volume in late 2006. Children in Brazil, Thailand, Egypt en Nigeria will get this laptop from NGO's and Governments.

“In emerging nations, the issue isn’t connectivity,” Negroponte said at the Emerging Technologies Conference on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Cambridge campus Wednesday. “That’s not solved, but lots of people are working on it in Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G, etc. For education, the roadblock is laptops.” He and his colleagues believe that equipping all children in the world with their own laptop will greatly improve the level of education and help stimulate children to learn outside of school as well as in the classroom. Very cool intiative!

Update: Educ.ar the foundation Martin Varsavsky started with others in Argentina, announced that they will buy a 100 Million $ worth of these computers (once proven that they actually work) and have neighbors of poor schools allow school kids to pick them up. They will come bundled with Fon software to allow the kids to have free acces to the internet via wifi foneros in their nabourhood!