Nicholas Negroponte

Founder and Chairman, One Laptop per Child

Negroponte is a new media pioneer, and the driving force behind One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a non-profit that seeks to provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves via computers. After earning two professional degrees in Architecture from MIT, Negroponte joined its faculty in 1966. Based on his extensive research in computer graphics, computer aided design and human computer interface; he founded MIT’s Architecture Machine Group, a combination lab and think tank, which studied new approaches to human-computer interaction. He later also founded MIT’s legendary Media Lab (1985), one of the world’s leading interdisciplinary research centers that applies an unorthodox research approach to envision the impact of emerging technologies on everyday life.

Negroponte continued to demonstrate his big-picture thinking by becoming the first investor for Wired magazine, for which he also contributed a monthly article. Combining and expanding upon those ideas, he wrote the bestselling book “Being Digital,” which solidified his status as an expert on how the worlds of interaction, entertainment and information would eventually merge. “Being Digital” has since been translated into 40 languages. He was the first speaker at TED and spoke over ten times thereafter. Perhaps his most notable and controversial achievement is his current non-profit program, OLPC, a project to bring durable, affordable and innovative computers to children worldwide. Believing that a nation’s most precious resource is its children, Negroponte aimed to put low cost, robust, connected laptop technology into the hands that need it most—the nearly two billion children in developing countries. This revolutionary way to promote learning started with Negroponte building five schools in rural Cambodian villages that do not have electricity, telephone or television—but now have broadband wireless.

In 2005, Negroponte unveiled his latest creation, a $100 laptop computer, designed for children ages 6–12-years-old in developing nations. To date, the OLPC program has 2.5 million laptops committed and one million already in the hands of children in 25 languages, 40 nations, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Palestine. In addition to his academic and philanthropic contributions, Negroponte also serves the private sector on the board of directors for Motorola, Inc. (1995-2009) and as general partner in a venture capital firm specializing in digital technologies for information and entertainment. He has also provided start-up funds for more than 40 companies including, Zagats, Ambient Devices, Skype and Velti.