Negroponte CBS interview

CBS 60 Minutes has run a detailed interview with Nicholas Negroponte (including his critics / competitors such as Wayan Vota / Intel) about the One Laptop Per Child Project. Worth watching the online video.

Negroponte started on this pathway by founding a school in Cambodia in 1999, putting in a satellite dish and generators. Then they gave the children laptops. Instantly, school became a lot more popular.

"The first English word of every child in that village was 'Google'," he says. "The village has no electricity, no telephone, no television. And the children take laptops home that are connected broadband to the Internet."

When they take the laptops home, the kids often teach the whole family how to use it. Negroponte says the families loved the computers because, in a village with no electricity, it was the brightest light source in the house.

Another relevant fact from the interview - Fifty per cent of the children in Pakistan and Nigeria are not in school. OLPC can provide some sort of education for these children.