Computing for Everyone

In three presentations that look back to digital-age milestones, and glimpse ahead to what may come next, speakers share some previously undisclosed stories, great enthusiasms, and a few concerns. Nicholas Negroponte tells a few “dirty secrets” about the start of the MIT Media Lab, including the fact that Negroponte and co-founder Jerome Wiesner wanted to admit people “who wouldn’t normally apply to MIT, let alone get in,” and that the lab was viewed by top administrators as a “salon de refuses:” a refuge for brilliant researchers such as Seymour Papert, “who were not welcome” elsewhere. After heading up the lab for 25 years, Negroponte wanted to end his peripatetic, fund-raising duties and start a project of his own. Having witnessed on a small scale the transformative power of computer technology in developing countries, Negroponte started One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), a program that has now placed approximately three million laptop computers in the hands of children in 40 countries. Some nations have implemented the program more successfully than others, he admits: Libya’s Qaddafi just toyed with adopting OLPC, but the president of Uruguay “decided it would be his legacy.” Negroponte shows photos of children from different countries taking advantage of their laptops, including one teaching grandparents how to read and write, and another walking home with the computer balanced on her head. Back in 1969, Tim Berners-Lee was unaware of the first message traveling along ARPANET, but 20 years later at CERN, his passion for the internet ignited, leading to the development of HTML, URLs, and the World Wide Web. Berners-Lee describes how Michael Dertouzos recruited him to MIT’s Lab for Computer Science, and then took Berners-Lee “under his wing” to launch the international consortium behind the web. Today Berners-Lee says this “linked data cloud” sees a doubling of content every 10 months, and that information systems must be built to cope with the nearly “ridiculous”...

Channel: MIT World Video Length: 0s Date Found: Thu, Jul 07 2011 5:11 PM Category: Science Date Produced: Fri, Jul 01 2011 12:00 AM View Count: 0