"Annan presents prototype $100 laptop at World Summit on Information Society"

Read the entire MIT press release.

"U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan unveiled the first working prototype of the $100 laptop Nov. 16 at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, Tunisia."

I heard a radio program broadcasting a discussion of whether developing nations really need a cheap laptop, or whether there isn't some better way to spend scarce resources than buying computers for school childred. It seems to me that this is the old question, "what good is a baby". Babies grow up. Computer prices come down, and become more affordable in developing nations.

The MIT effort is just one of several to develop an ultra-low cost computer for developing country markets. Eventually someone will probably do it. It might well be a firm looking for a cheap commodity computer for a rich country market that stumbles into a mass developing country market.

I frankly don't think Nicolas Negroponte and Symore Papert, whose names seem to be associated with this project, are likely commercial entrepreneurs. I recall that they created the "World Center" in Paris some two decades ago to promote the dissemination of personal computers to developing nations. It went out of business after a few years. I don't know, but I somehow doubt that they will succeed in creating a $100 million per year business selling cheap computers to the education market in developing nations. But I don't really care.

These are two of the most creative guys anywhere. The MIT Media Lab has triggered many, many innovators in new directions. Papert has influenced a generation or two of people involved in creating the technology to enable e-learning. They lead, and others will follow.

The telephone has been around a lot longer than the computer, and it still has not reached the full developing country population. But the creation of modular phones has suddenly and dramatically increased the rate of penetration of the phone network into poor nations. Eventually something similar will happen for the computer and the Internet.

I did my first computer programming in 1958. It was not much before that that the president of IBM famously estimated that the total market for computers might be four or five machines. We must already have a global computing network vastly more powerful that would have been the case had every person in the world obtained a 1950's technology computer. The power of the global computer network in 2050 is far beyond my comprehension or ability to predict.

The first investments in a revolutionary technology may not be very attractive in terms of returns in the short run. But they are necessary if a country or society is to learn to use the technology. There is already much more computer capacity installed in developing nations than I could have imagined when I first went to transfer the technology to Chile in 1965. The developing world is learning to utilize a network that will (in historical terms) be ready for use in the blink of an eye!