Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

The project to design and build this laptop has been underway for better than a year with the head of MIT's Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte running the show (and no, so far as I'm aware, there's no relation).  Yesterday, they showed off their colorful final design.

The case color is a combination of a lime green and a yellow hue reminiscent of No. 2 pencils. "It was the hardest decision," said Negroponte, who runs the One Laptop Per Child nonprofit group that's organizing the effort. "We wanted to use color because it's a message of playfulness."

The technology behind the little computer is designed to make it rugged and easy to use.  

While it can be plugged into an electrical system, it also includes a hand crank and one of a kind display screen (designed by project engineer Mary Lou Jepsen) that allows the screen to switch from full color to a black-and-white mode without backlighting (in other words, you need to have some other source of light to read the screen in this mode -- like the sun).  In the b&w mode, just one minute of cranking on the hand crank gets you 40 minutes of operation.

This is one cool gadget, and as someone who has every small computer from Atari Portfolio to OQO, I can't deny my technolust.  Thing is, right now the intention is to only make this available to countries that order in large quantities.

However, to satisfy my own need for everything electronic, and do a good deed at the same time, I'd like to propose the: One for You, One for Them program.

It works like this:

1. The laptops would be made availalbe for purchase at a premium, say $350.

2. When you buy one, you don't get one -- you get two!  Only the second one is immediately sent to a needy kid who would not otherwise get one from a government program.

3. Just as when you "adopt" a kid through charitable programs, you'd be given the email address and a picture of the kid who got your "partner" notebook, so if you like, you could stay in touch with her.

What do you think?  Would you sign up for the plan?  If there's enough interest, I'd like to start a more formal process of registering those interested and make a pitch to the One Laptop Per Child folks.