BOB GARFIELD:
For solutions to health crisis, economic instability and violent conflict in Africa, many look to improve education. And in 2005, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Nicholas Negroponte, computer science expert and co-founder of the MIT Media Lab, unveiled a simple, if ambitious, plan to address education in the developing world - to get a laptop that costs 100 dollars into the hands of 150 million poor schoolchildren in just four years.

World leaders were enthusiastic in their support, and companies like Google and News Corporation pitched in millions of dollars to the cause. But four years is almost up, and so forth only 2,000 students have the laptops, which cost 188 dollars, not 100.

Steve Stecklow of The Wall Street Journal first wrote about the 100-dollar laptop in 2005 and his recently written a follow-up. He says Negroponte should have assumed that big computer companies wouldn't let his philanthropic plan proceed without trying to get a piece of the action.
STEVE STECKLOW:
I don't think it's dead in the water, but I think that in trying to execute his plan there may have been a bit of naiveté to think that large companies would sit back and watch in developing countries where there are potentially something like a billion new customers and that they wouldn't try to compete.

But, in fact, he quickly ran into rather intense competition from the likes of Intel Corporation, whose chips were not in his machine, and Microsoft, and his [LAUGHS] machine doesn't run Windows.
BOB GARFIELD:
Early on in the project, a number of countries enthusiastically signed on, only later to renege for a variety of reasons, including, in one case, a military coup, and others because they said 100 million dollars would be far better spent on the most basic of basics, like teachers and even school uniforms, than, you know, what they have portrayed as a fancy gadget.
STEVE STECKLOW:
Well, Professor Negroponte has worked in this area for quite some time, and he's seen evidence in Cambodia and other countries where when children are given access to the Internet, when they are given access to technology, learning really does go on.

The problem is, is he took a top-down approach and he got essentially handshake agreements with a number of leaders, including Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, to buy a million laptops each. And some leaders are no longer in power, and also, probably more importantly, is he doesn't approach the bureaucrats in these countries, like the ministries of education, to ask them what they wanted. A lot of them — they opposed it and they raised questions about, hey, look, it doesn't run Windows and who's going to train our teachers?

And these are very legitimate questions. It's just for a long time he seemed to have avoided those people, and I think that's really hurt him.
BOB GARFIELD:
Another strategic blunder would seem to be the question of economies of scale. He thought that if he could get these orders for enormous numbers of machines that he would be able to really undercut the commercial competition. But the commercial competition [LAUGHS] has far greater capital resources.
STEVE STECKLOW:
Yeah. I think the biggest surprise here was the entry of Intel Corporation, the giant chip maker, which doesn't normally make computers at all. But last year they introduced a laptop computer called the Classmate, which is being sold for roughly, I don't know, 230 to 300 dollars. It's only offered in the developing world, and it's become the biggest opponent to Mr. Negroponte's machine.

For a while, Intel was openly attacking Mr. Negroponte's idea, and he went at it with the chairman, Craig Barrett, of Intel. At one point, Mr. Negroponte was quoted as saying, you know, if I'm pissing off Intel or Microsoft, I must be doing something right.

Later, after he appeared on 60 Minutes attacking Intel again this past May, two months later Intel, in effect, jumped into bed with Mr. Negroponte and gave a multimillion dollar investment in his nonprofit and joined the board of this One Laptop per Child organization.

But what didn't happen is that they didn't stop selling this Classmate laptop in country after country, winning sales in many of the countries that Mr. Negroponte had been counting on.
BOB GARFIELD:
So let me ask you this, Steve. Negroponte's goal was to make laptops available to the poorest schoolchildren in the most disadvantaged countries of the world.

But if it turns out that private corporations see those places as potentially lucrative marketplaces and themselves find a way to get their laptops and software into the hands of the poorest schoolchildren in the most disadvantaged countries of the world, does it really matter whether Negroponte's laptop project itself succeeds? Hasn't he still achieved his goal?
STEVE STECKLOW:
Well, I would say yes. When I interviewed him and asked him this very question, he did say he would consider it a success if something like 150 million schoolchildren in 2008 receive Intel Classmates and not his machine.

But the fact is, is Intel and Microsoft both told me that they look at a 15-year timeframe, so it's going to take a lot longer.

And I think he should consider it a success, but if you spent more than two years developing a unique machine from scratch and actually built the thing, which has gotten rave reviews, you would hope that it would become much more than just a niche player in this market.

So I sense definite disappointment. I think the guy deserves a lot of credit for making this happen, because, in fact, it is beginning to happen.
BOB GARFIELD:
Okay, Steve. Thanks so much.
STEVE STECKLOW:
Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD:
Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Steve Stecklow is deputy Boston bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal.