Nicholas Negroponte, founding chairman of MIT's Media Laboratory, has launched an initiative to design and produce a $100 dollar laptop computer for use by children around the world. Alan Kay is listed as one of the "Additional Researchers" on the MIT website. The OS will be Linux, therefore Squeak would be the perfect application to run on it. Since the laptop is targeted toward children, the eToys environment will be particularly useful, as well as Tweak.
The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, full-color, full-screen laptop that will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data. These rugged laptops will be WiFi- and cell phone-enabled, and have 4 USB ports. Its current specifications are: 500MHz, 1GB of flash memory (instead of a hard drive) and 1 Megapixel display. It will be a color display, but users will be able to switch easily to monochrome mode so that it can be viewed in bright sunlight, at four times normal resolution. One display design being considered is a flat, flexible printed display developed at MIT's Media Lab. Negroponte said the technology can be used to produce displays that cost roughly 10 cents per square inch. "The target is $12 for a 12-inch display with near-zero power consumption," he said. For connectivity, the systems will be Wi-Fi- and cell phone-enabled, and will include four USB ports, along with built-in "mesh networking," a peer-to-peer concept that allows machines to share a single Internet connection.
A prototype version was unveiled on 18 November 2005 at the WSIS.
