One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)

One laptop per one child, can that really happen. Even me doesn’t have a laptop yet. It is originally planned to be priced only about $100, but unfortunately the devices are now slated to cost $188 when mass production begins this fall. The last price the nonprofit announced was $176; it described $100 as a long-term goal. Spokesman George Snell blamed the increase on a variety of factors, including currency fluctuations and rising costs of such components as nickel and silicon. He said the project was committed to keeping the price from rising above $190.

The OLPC itself was founded by Nicholas Negroponte with a core of Media Lab veterans, but quickly expanded to include a wide range of exceptionally talented and dedicated people from academia, industry, the arts, business, and the open-source community. Each individual involved brings a unique skill set, and a deep personal passion, to the project. Their goal is simply to provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves freely and right.

Nicholas Negroponte lays out the details of his nonprofit One Laptop Per Child project. Speaking just days after relinquishing his post as director of the MIT Media Lab, he announces that he’ll pursue this venture for the rest of his life. He takes us inside the strategy for building the “$100 laptop,” and explains why and how the project plans to launch “at scale,” with millions of units distributed in the first seven countries. “This is not a laptop project; it’s an education project,” he says.

- info from laptop.org