The MIT-Media Lab founder, Nicholas Negroponte’s dream of putting a laptop in every child’s hand is starting to become a reality and Brazil is the first beneficiary of this vision.
Today, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will get from Negroponte himself the first of what is expected will be millions of US$ 100 laptops.
Until the end of 2007 Brazil should have one million of these machines. The first 60 computers are expected to arrive in two weeks. They will be installed in technology centers in São Paulo, Salvador (in the state of Bahia) and Brazilian capital Brasília.
Up to 55 million Brazilian kid might end up being benefited by this ambitious program. All of this is being done through the non-profit organization One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) idealized by Negroponte.
For Rodrigo Lara Mesquita, director of Agência Estado and associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s undertaking, Negroponte’s ambition is an act of love to humankind
"This is a project with a humanitarian touch. With the portable computer, 4,5 billion people in the world, who have no access now to technology will be integrated to this new world."
David Cavallo, representative of the OLPC in Brazil and Latin America, says that the new computer will allow that children learn inside and outside the school walls.
He calls the laptop "the digital era’s pencil" and envisages millions of kids around the world participating in the Internet community not as mere consumers of knowledge transmitted by others but as full producers of knowledge themselves.
China, Nigeria, Egypt, Thailand and Argentina are some of the countries that together with Brazil will participate in the OLPC project.
Professor Nicholas Negroponte says that he wants to turn his US$ 100 laptop in something more popular than cellular phones. He has already told that he expects to see his machine being used as a school book by kids all over the world.
He is the author of Being Digital, a best seller that has been translated into over 40 languages, which he wrote in 1995. He is currently on leave from MIT where he has been a faculty member since 1966.
Negroponte serves on the board of directors for Motorola, and he is also partner in a company specialized in digital technologies for information and entertainment. Through this firm he has provided funds for over 40 companies, Wired magazine among them.