Laptops Offer High-tech Hope in Developing Countries

JEFFREY BROWN:

It has neon green ear-like antennas and a white plastic frame. It may look like a toy, but it's intended to change the world.

Called the XO, it was developed by the One Laptop per Child project, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to bring low-cost computers to children in the developing world. Pilot programs like this one in Brazil are underway.

Water-resistant and drop-proof, the laptop can run in places where power is scarce, with a long-life battery and a crank. It offers both wireless Internet and the so-called Mesh Network, meaning it can connect with other XO laptops nearby.

It offers word processing and Web browsing, along with a video camera and microphone. And while hopes were sky high at the beginning, getting governments to sign on has turned out to be a slow process.

Nicholas Negroponte is the founder and chairman of One Laptop per Child. He's on leave from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was the director of its media lab, and he joins me now.

Welcome to you.

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE, One Laptop Per Child:

Hello.

JEFFREY BROWN:

What is the problem that this is intended to solve, and how does it do it?

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE:

The problem is poverty, and the idea is to eliminate poverty through education, because 50 percent of the children in this world don't get education. So we're talking about vast numbers — 1.2 billion children in total in the age category that we call primary school — half of them are not getting education.

JEFFREY BROWN:

Now, in the introduction I listed some of the things that your computer could do. What was the key thing, in terms of technology, that you had to get right to make this workable?

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE:

Jeff, keep in mind that the kids that we are targeting are, first of all, in very remote parts of very poor countries. They have no electricity. In many cases, they don't even have a school. It's under a tree.

So we have to build a laptop that, first of all, doesn't plug into the wall, doesn't have an AC adapter, so it has to work with human power. You can crank it; you can do other things, or very inexpensive solar panels. So power was a very important element.

Needed to work in the sunlight. You had to use it as an electronic book and be able to read it outdoors, as well as indoors. It had to create a network, because all the kids in the village — there is no phone system or hot spot. They have to make the network automatically with the laptops. Just those three things forced us to do something from the bottom up.

JEFFREY BROWN:

And how long did that take you to work the technology?

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE:

It took about two years and roughly 500 people doing things in different parts of the world, and we're in mass production today.