A Computer For Every Child

By Jeffrey Ressner

O.K., so his big brother John is Director of National Intelligence and delivers daily briefings to the President. But Nicholas Negroponte, 62, is trying to reach a far more challenging audience: the world's poorest children. The co-founder of M.I.T.'s Media Lab and former Wired columnist took a leave from academia last year to build a computer--a laptop so cheap that developing countries could buy them by the millions to help their kids leapfrog into the 21st century.

It's an ambitious project, but the charismatic Negroponte has a persuasive pitch and a knack for fund raising. With the support of the U.N., his so-called $100 laptop quickly found backing from, among others, Google, Red Hat, Advanced Micro Devices and Nortel. His team is still making prototypes, but a finished motherboard was delivered in April. A wind-up crank has been replaced by a new foot pedal to supply power in areas lacking electricity.

"The actual decision to make millions of laptops will happen sometime in December or January," he says, predicting that finished machines could be ready by next spring. He hopes to start in seven countries--Nigeria, India, China, Thailand, Brazil, Argentina and Egypt--with a combined total of at least 5 million orders. For the first year or so, however, the $100 laptop will probably cost $140.

Negroponte has his skeptics (including Bill Gates) but is undismayed. "The cynics can be as cynical as they want," he says. "If this makes the industry address low-power, low-cost laptops that can be used in very remote places, that's perfect."

And has big brother John opened any doors? "Nepotism does help," he says, chuckling, and adds that he has met with the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. "But we're trying to make this less of an American project and more of a global one."