Hyperconnectivity Advances Forward

You may have heard about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative, headed by Nicholas Negroponte of MIT. The OLPC is centered on the XO laptop, which among other things has wireless mesh connectivity, allowing connectivity to the Internet from child to child to child optionally using solar, crank or pull chord power, both necessities in many underdeveloped countries.

So what’s the news today. Uruguay has become the first country to order 100,000 XOs, with potential to double this order and thus reach every child in this small South American country. O yes, the XO high resolution screen can be read in the bright sunshine common in Uruguay. A tremendous step forward for the children of Uruguay, and hopefully an action that will get other governments to follow suit.

John, Nortel’s CTO, wrote in his blog that one interesting aspect of the XO “is the idea of a device being designed from the start to be part of a collective of communications-enabled peers, to do everything from music creation to collaborative learning. In fact, it is pretty clear that when we look at the evolution of IT, that the interaction between the end point and the network will become less hierarchical and more ad hoc and peer to peer.”

Everyone is being connected;)