The first post I made here was about the significance of the MIT Media Lab and the fact that its founder, Nicholas Negroponte was taking a leave of absence to launch the noble effort of supplying $100 laptops to children in the Third World.  In the six months since that post, the $100 laptop has moved toward becoming a reality.  It has also started to affect the computer marketplace in beneficial ways.

Last month the prototype of the $100 laptop had its public unveiling at a computing conference. It is about the size of a hardback book, has an orange plastic shell with two pop up ‘rabbit ears’ that enhance wireless reception and a small, clear LCD display.  It also will come in three other bright colors and has the ability to be powered by a crank.  Other technical specifications include having dual displays, one in color and one in black and white that is sunlight readable. It will use Linux software, it has a 500MHz processor, 128 of DRAM and a 500MB of Flash memory.  It does not have a hard drive, but it does come with three USB ports.

The first stage of the effort has been to find ways to assemble a useable laptop at a low cost.  Finding less expensive ways to produce create and find innovative technology and stripping down software to its fundamentals has been the goal, and it seems as though this phase is drawing to a close.  The next phases will be …

As a futurist I spend a lot of time looking for patterns – pattern recognition – and forces that may develop into trends.  This is just the way I look at the world, trying to connect the dots into patterns and directions that suggest the future.  However, in some cases it doesn’t take a futurist to spot linkage between certain developments.  Let me take you back a few days to a walk on the beach.

I was in Sarasota, Florida to take care of some stuff regarding  my condo and to do a lot of writing and reading.  As I always like to do when doing intensive writing and reading, I took a break to go for a long walk on the beach.  Getting out of the car at the beach, I was hit with a powerful smell of dead fish, and, within a couple of minutes, was also suffering from shallow coughing.  The telltale signs of a ‘red tide’.  For those of you that don’t know the term, a red tide is when there is a sudden bloom of algae in the ocean.  The amount of algae explodes in quantity, sucking up all the oxygen from the water.  The two immediate results are the death due to lack of oxygen of all flora and fauna in the water, and production of a mildly noxious gas that irritates the human respiratory system.  So the result is a beach that at waters edge is littered with endless dead fish and mounds of …

It was twenty-five years ago this month that the PC was born.  In August of 1981 IBM launched the Personal Computer.  This of course was five years after Jobs and Wozniak came out with the Apple 1, but it was the PC, and it’s rapid acceptance first in the corporate world and then in homes that ushered in the explosive growth of personal computing.  The importance of the introduction of the PC cannot be overstated from the vantage point of 2006.

Prior to 1981 computing basically was mainframe computing.  Corporations and universities had air conditioned rooms housing large computers that were operated by Computer Operators and run by Computer Programmers and Systems Analysts.  I actually knew a number of people who has these job titles.  Anybody reading this know someone who currently works as a Computer Operator?  It is now something we all do to open ‘mail’, surf, work and create.

The innovation that Apple brought to the computing industry was first basically embraced by geeks and computer hobbyists, but it did show the way to desk top computing.  When IBM launched the PC it targeted its corporate user base with the IBM 5150 launched on August 12th 1981.  The model has 16 kilobytes of memory – yes, kilobytes. It used cassette tapes and floppy disks to load and save data – seen any of those at a garage sale recently? The last time I saw a floppy disk it was being used as a coaster.

 IBM had tried to sell PCs before …

On a recent trip to Europe I was reminded of the fact that Europeans are so much more conservation oriented and energy efficient than Americans.  The lights in hotel hallways are off until you walk by the sensor or push a button; they go on for two minutes and then go off again.  Motion sensors everywhere that turn lights on in hallways, stairwells and public spaces. In Munich I saw something for the first time: public escalators that don’t move until someone walks onto it and passes the motion detector.  All over downtown Munich there were non-moving escalators, waiting.

Then of course are the small cars, the tiny two-seater sedans that even if not electric must get close to 50 miles per gallon. Then of course all the bicycles.  In Berlin, and much more so in Munich it seemed like the preferred mode of transportation. At a couple of suburban train stations, I saw literally hundreds of bicycles that had been left by train commuters. [Guess there is also a difference in the level of theft].  Everywhere there were bicycles.

All of this made a real impression on me.  It made me again realize how energy indulgent we Americans are.  Lights always on, escalators always moving whether they are being used or not, frigid air conditioning that drives people to wear sweaters inside during the summer,  and everything big, big, big.

The week after I came back from Europe I took a trip to New York City during a record heat wave.  This …