May 2007

Ethan Zuckerman has been in touch with the One Laptop per Child program since its inception, and he reviewed it in January. Tonight I was privileged to meet Ethan and to hear Nicholas Negroponte speak about the current status and future plans for the program. Negroponte is a big thinker. He wants to equip each of the 1.2 billion primary and middle-school age children on the planet with a networked laptop at a price of around $100 each. To do this, he intends to limit orders to one million units. Today the price point on the laptop is about $176 and — as Ethan pointed out to me — there is a networking cost that kicks up the buy-in to about a quarter of a billion dollars if your country wants to be an early adopter.

There are no orders in the pipeline right now, but by the end of the year, the progam will be producing about 20% of ALL the world’s laptops, or 1 million per month. After Negroponte’s talk there was some discussion of gettin these for native peoples, here in the US and in Canada. It seems possible, but the million unit order minimum makes eliminates incrementalism and pilot programs, so it would take a national policy mandate to make it happen.

Just think what would be possible if we weren’t burning money in the bonfires of the Bush wars.

[UPDATE: ISABEL JACOBSON, THE LAST GIRL STANDING IN THE SCRIPPS NATIONAL SPELLING BEE JUST CORRECTLY SPELLED "HELODES." KEEP IT UP, ISABEL!!!]

Professor Negroponte doesn’t have any million unit orders yet, but he has a list of national prospects including nations as diverse as Nigeria, Argentina, and Vietnam. I noticed Venezuela wasn’t on his list. It seems like the kind of natinal betterment project they are equipped to undertake. (Ethan pointed out to me that there can be great enthusiasm at the classroom level, and at the national policy making level, but the school administrators also must buy in).

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