'60 Minutes': Dream of a $100 laptop Video

'60 Minutes': Dream of a $100 laptop Video Transcript

>> Negroponte realized conventional computers were too expensive. And so his dream of a hundred-dollar laptop was born. And this is it, a low-budget computer for children. ^M00:00:16 [ Speaking in foreign language ] ^M00:00:17

>> Children like these second graders in a poor school in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Each child has been given his or her own machine as part of a test for the Brazilian government to see if they should buy them for all their school children. This must be pretty exciting for you to see these children.

>> It's very exciting. It's very gratifying. It's been two years in the making.

>> The children seemed to especially like the built-in camera that takes stills and video. She is taking a picture of us taking a picture of her.

>> Right.

>> It also has Wi-Fi. She's on the web?

>> Yeah. She seems to be on the web.

>> Give us a sense of what you've seen when children first get these.

>> What I've seen when children first get these is a curiosity where there go as quickly as possible to the internet.

>> Ah.

>> And start typing things and searching things.

>> Negroponte took a leave of absence from MIT two years ago, and has done little else but work on this ever since. So Nicholas Negroponte...

>> Yes.

>> What's in it for you?

>> Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

>> He says it's purely humanitarian, and non-profit. With start-up money from Google and other big companies, he assembled a team of engineers and programmers to come up with something that would stand up to Third World conditions.

>> You can pour water on the keyboard. You can dip it into -- you know, you can dip the base into a bathtub. You can carry it in the rain. It's more robust than your normal laptop. It doesn't even have holes in the side of it. If you look at it, you know dirt, sand, I mean, there's no place for it to go into the machine.

>> Again, designed for the child.

>> Yes.

>> It looks like a toy on purpose. But it's a serious computer with many innovations. For instance, it is the first laptop with a screen you can use outdoors in full sunlight. ^M00:02:08