For $150, Laptop Stirs a Big Debate

FOR $150, THIRD-WORLD LAPTOP STIRS A BIG DEBATE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: John Markoff]
One Laptop Per Child, the nonprofit project aimed at producing inexpensive computers, has won over many skeptics over the last two and a half years. Five countries -- Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria and Thailand -- have made tentative commitments to put the computers into the hands of millions of students, with production in Taiwan expected to begin by mid-2007. That has not prevented the effort, conceived by Nicholas Negroponte, a prominent computer researcher, from becoming the focal point of a debate over the value of computers to both learning and economic development. The detractors include two computer industry giants, Intel and Microsoft, pushing alternative approaches. Intel has developed a $400 laptop aimed at schools as well as an education program that focuses on teachers instead of students. And Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman and a leading philanthropist for the third world, has questioned whether the concept is “just taking what we do in the rich world” and assuming that that is something good for the developing world, too. Negroponte, the founding director of the M.I.T. Media Laboratory, said he was amused by the attention his little machine was getting. It is not the first time he has been challenged for proclaiming technology’s promise. The idea is also that children can take on much of the responsibility for maintaining the systems, rather than relying on or creating bureaucracies to do so.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/technology/30laptop.html?hp&ex=1164949200&en=65317907d3a0f6d7&ei=5094&partner=homepage
(requires registration)