Quem me conhece (ou vem aqui de vez em quando) sabe que sou fã incondicional do Nicholas Negroponte. Só as provocações que ele fazia na Wired (que saudade) e seu livro-filho único, "A Vida Digital", já justificariam minha admiração. Mas eis que o cara reaparece (na verdade, desde o ano passado) com o projeto do Note de US$100. Dizendo ser o projeto mais importante da sua vida!!



Trecho surrupiado da ZDNet:

"While the system is spartan in design (for example, it will incorporate a deliberately thinned down version of the Linux operating system), it is unusually advanced in that it bears some characteristics not found in some of today's most advanced notebooks. For example, not only is it a goal of the Labs to get the price under $100, the system is made of rubber so that when it closes, it's hermetically sealed to protect it from the elements such systems might be subjected to (for example, in the jungles of Cambodia). The system has a retractable crank that can be used to generate 10 minutes of power for every one minute of cranking and the display runs in a dual mode: one as a typical color TFT panel for regular "computing" and the other a black and white mode that conserves a significant amount of power and that essentially turns the system into a electronic book. According to Negroponte, as an e-book, governments can hide some or all of the cost of the laptop in budgets that currently cover the purchasing of textbooks for children.

"Not only is the project well under way, it has corporate sponsors (AMD, Red Hat, and Google for example) as well as customers. According to Negroponte, the project is working with China (where there are 220 million students in primary or secondary school) as well as Brazil, Thailand, Egypt, and South Africa. Negroponte was also involved in the State of Maine's Learning Technology Initiative where laptops will be given to every 7th and 8th grade student as well as all teachers. Massachusetts recently adopted a similar program that Negroponte was instrumental in as well. In his keynote speech to attendees (one that he admitted included his first PowerPoint presentation, ever), Negroponte said that someone tried to place an order with him during the breakfast before the event. He advised them to first come see the prototype at the WSIS on November 17.

"As a side note, the notebook isn't slated to have or need the big honkin' hard drives that today's system have. Where will all that data be stored and what applications will be used in the process? Make a note that Google, already specializing in rich thin-client applications, is a project sponsor. Then, see my treatise on the Google PC. Connect the dots while considering my additional thoughts about the impact on Microsoft."

...

"Whereas there are plenty of naysayers who say the $100 laptop cannot be done, Negroponte appears to be on a course to prove them wrong. During the presentation, Negroponte said:

"50 percent of cost of today's laptops is in sales promotion, marketing, etc. We have none of that cost. The rest of it is the display — and we have a lot of expertise working to bring the cost of that down to $35. As for the rest of the parts, at least 75 percent of it is there to support the weight of the operating system…I'm not just picking on Microsoft. This is true of Adobe and others as well. Invariably, next release [of software] is worse than next one… It's gotten so fat, so slow, so obese, so unreliable that it's time to start over and dumb it down with skinny Linux — skinny open source."

Fácil gostar do cara, né? O artigo original termina assim:

"It's no wonder that Negroponte considers this to be his life's most important work. If he's successful, it'll probably put him on track for a Nobel Peace Prize as well."