He’s been talking about the 100$ laptop project for years and now it is here! The computer will be given to children in third world contries under the credo “one laptop per child”. Yesterday Negroponte revealed it at a Unicef summit on the Information Society held in Tunisia.

The interesting stuff here is NOT that Negroponte and the team, consisting of prominent people including Alan “dynabook” Kay succesfully manage to produce a laptop that actually perform pretty well, does most of the job the laptops 10 times the price do, and is less energy-consuming (with a nifty handcranck if power is not availible), durable, virtually indestructable. We all knew it could (should) be done, and thus it is cool.

And it is not that they designed something that look like it came out of a Benetton ad.

The really interesting and what should be the benchmark for this project is the outcome - a longterm leap in the third world. To do so we need to see many more than the device. Because the truely great challenge: to make useful in everyday life, to educate people to use it, to explore it and to make it work within the society and culture that it is to be dropped off into? It will need to be followed by many more initiatives on the ground, education, infrastructures, network, powerlines, other devices. Will it compute? Let’s hope!

And oh, just so you know, it won’t be in the your local Toys’r'us next to the X-box’s this christmas!! Btw.. try bying something that the third world actually would profit from this year - that’s a challenge!

Via BBC