The first of $100 computers have rolled off their production line and between three and five million of the laptops will be distributed to children in six developing countries next year, said Professor Nicholas Negroponte atITU Telecom World yesterday.
Negroponte, chairman of the non-profit 'One Laptop per Child' project, spoke of his plans to increase the number of laptops to as many as 150 million by 2008, with more countries 'in the queue' to receive them.
Negroponte said the'One Laptop per Child' scheme - which is supported by corporates such as AMD and News Corporation - was 'not a laptop project, but an education project.'
'The moral purpose of the project is really to look at education as the tool for eliminating poverty or creating peace, and bringing opportunity to people in a different way,' he said. 'Whatever big problem you or your country has on its mind [will] be solved in part by education, in no part without education and in some cases just with education.'
One of the key principles, he said, was for the children to use the computers to educate themselves. 'Up until the age of six children teach themselves to walk and talk, but after that people assume that education means having a teacher,' said Negroponte.
The bright green hand-cranked computers use less than 2 watts of electricity to function and use a Linux platform, although Microsoft is also developing a plug-in. Using a meshed network, full connectivity for each user would average around $30 per year.
Professor Negroponte said the desktop display was not a traditional office display, but a configuration of icons representing its different functions.