Opera CTO, HÃ¥kon Wium Lie, demos OLPC at Wired, and gives a video tour.
The OLPC, often called the $100 laptop project (now $150), initiated by the MIT Media Lab under the leadership of Nicholas Negraponte is a project with tremendous implications for education, literacy, the digital divide, and economic growth across the globe (cheat sheet on OLPC). Also, see a comparison between Flexgo - the new payment system intended to make Windows affordable for the non-rich in developing countries, and OLPC , here. There is also and interesting video from Brazil that I found on Neverwonderland comparing Classmate with OLPC. Classmate is the $400 laptop made by Intel – “for kindergarteners through high school students in emerging nations.” Classmate will run under a version of Windows modified “to prevents kids from accessing Internet sites or adding programs that have been designated by parents or teachers as off-limits,” and sold in conjunction with a pay-as-you-go system. (see my page comparing Flexgo. with OLPC for more on this).
March 15th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
This is awesome. I’m a huge believer in real economic development as the ultimate solution to some of our most critical national and global security problems, and projects like this will go a long way toward making that reality.