It's hard to propose a $100 laptop for a world community of kids and then not say in the same breath that you're going to depend on the community to make software for it.
Nicholas NegroponteI grew up with free television. Now, it wasn't free, there was these commercials, and so the economic model was driven through commercials and through advertising.
Nicholas NegroponteComputing is not about computers any more. It is about living. Whatever big problem you can imagine, from world peace to the environment to hunger to poverty, the solution always includes education, ... We need to depend more on peer-to-peer and self-driven learning. The laptop is one important means of doing that.
Nicholas NegroponteBut just as elevators have changed the shape of buildings and cars have changed the shape of cities, bits will change the shape of organizations, be they companies, nations, or social structures.
Nicholas NegroponteIt's not computer literacy that we should be working on, but sort of human-literacy. Computers have to become human-literate.
Nicholas NegroponteI'd like to describe a sort of life 20 years ago as being a fried egg. There was a yolk and a white and the white was maybe work, and the yolk was life. Today, it's more of an omelet. It's more mixed and it's more interspersed and I think that that's a more interesting state of being and for some people, they'll say well I want the crisp, fried egg approach to life.
Nicholas Negroponte