MIT Prof. Nicholas Negroponte is a man with a long-cherished mission -- to design, make and distribute laptops accessable to children the world over. His One Laptop per Child program has created low-cost, child-friendly XO computers to sell to developing nations.
He's coming to South Florida this week for a philanthropy conference hosted by Poder magazine. In advance, he sat down and answered a Miami Herald questionnaire about his One Laptop per Child program, the struggle to get the low-cost laptops produced and the program's foreign policy.
Q. Isn't philanthropy really charity? If not, what's the difference?
A. One Laptop per Child (OLPC) made a very fundamental decision at the onset, to be a nonprofit association. This philanthropic status creates clarity of purpose. We are an education project, not a laptop project. OLPC is also a foundation. The difference between two, the association and the foundation, is largely tax law. Both have the same charitable mission. I do not draw much distinction between philanthropy and charity.
Q. What's the theory of putting a laptop in every student's schoolbag?
A. The key is leveraging children, engaging them in their own learning. One reason it is a laptop (not a desktop) is so that the child can own it, take it home, have access to the Internet in his or her whole life, 24/7. Even if school were perfect, in a two-shift system a child is in a classroom less than 14 hours per week.
Q. By what age do you think every child on earth should have a laptop?
A. Five.
Q. How many have you delivered so far?
A. In round but quite accurate numbers: 500,000 have been ordered, half of those built, half of those arrived, and half of those in the hands of kids today. We are just starting.
Q. Kids don't talk anymore. All they do is text. Why not just give them cheap handheld devices?
A. Screen size or e-book mode is one reason. There is a reason that an atlas is bigger than a novel, that itself is bigger than a train schedule. How our visual system works for reading and browsing is import. The reading experience is key to learning. Another reason for a full laptop is driven by the size of two hands and the desire to have all 10 fingers at work, with a full keyboard. All children should know how to touch-type.
Q. Shouldn't there be a limit to American altruism?
A. No.
INSPIRATION, SUCCESS
Q. When did you first come up with this idea, and how long have you been working on it?
A. 1968. Seymour Papert introduced early concepts of ''learning learning'' and invented Logo, a programming language for children. In the 1970s, he ran projects in NYC and Boston. In 1982, we were using Apple computers in primary schools in Senegal, Pakistan and Colombia. In the 1990s, the MIT Media Lab was bringing wireless to remote and rural parts of the world (India and Costa Rica). In 2002, I and my family got involved in bringing laptops to Cambodian villages (no electricity, telephone, TV or running water. . . . One village did not even have a road).
These all converged in 2004 -- OLPC -- at first at the MIT Media Lab, and later spun off into a stand-alone nonprofit.
Q. What have you learned about the industry?
A. If you mean the laptop industry, I have learned they will follow rapidly, which is good. I have also learned that commercial interests can disrupt humanitarian programs, which is unconscionable. We have witnessed this with Intel, sadly.
Q. How many laptops do you have?
A. Four, not including countless XO laptops. [Editor's note: XO is the name for the OLPC models.]
Q. How old were you when you got your first computer?
A. 1963. In those days you went to it, you did not get it to come to you.
Q. Do you still have it?
A. It was the size of a tennis court.
Q. What do you do for fun?
A. One Laptop per Child.
Q. They're being made in Taiwan, right? Can you send them to China?
A. No. They are being made in China, just outside of Shanghai. Nonetheless, they are being built in a free-trade zone, so it is harder to send them to China itself than to Taiwan.
MISSION OF PRINCIPLES
Q. Will you send them to Cuba? What about Iran and North Korea?
A. We're talking to Iran and would love to talk to North Korea and Cuba.
Q. What countries go first?
A. Uruguay, Peru and Mexico. Mongolia, Cambodia, Rwanda and Afghanistan are starting.
Q. Why isn't the U.S. State Department helping with this to illustrate American largess?
A. Right now, it is not clear that State Department funding is what the world wants. We are certainly in discussion with the U.S. government, the Department of Defense in particular. But this should not be an ''American'' project as much as it is a global effort.
We are in discussions with the EU.
Q. What's the difference between a visionary and a kook?
A. Only history can tell.
Q. There are American kids who don't have laptops. Shouldn't they get one first?
A. Not really. We spend $10,000 per year per child in the U.S.A. on primary education. Whether a laptop costs $200, $300 or $400 is really incidental to education spending. In fact, even within developing countries, we go to the remote and rural kids first.
Q. If a mother is struggling to put food on her family table, what should come first? Food or the laptop?
A. Substitute the word ''education'' for ''laptop'' and you will not ask. We never ask a mother to trade food for education.
She needs both for her children.
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