Nicholas Negroponte | Co-Founder and Director of the MIT Media Laboratory

Nicholas Negroponte

Co-Founder and Director of the MIT Media Laboratory

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Nicholas Negroponte
Biography

Nicholas Negroponte is the co-founder (with Jerome B. Wiesner) of the MIT Media Lab (1985), which he directed for its first 20 years. A graduate of MIT, Negroponte was a pioneer in the field of computer-aided design and has been a member of the MIT faculty since 1966. He gave the first TED talk in 1984, as well as 13 since. He is author of the 1995 best seller, Being Digital, which has been translated into more than 40 languages.

In 2005 he founded the non-profit One Laptop per Child, which deployed $1 billion of laptops for primary education in the developing world. In the private sector, Negroponte served on the board of directors of Motorola (for 15 years) and was general partner in a venture capital firm specializing in digital technologies for information and entertainment.

He has personally provided start-up funds for more than 40 companies, including Zagats and Wired magazine.

Nicholas Negroponte
Featured Videos

Current: 30 Year History of the Future

Time 19:44

More Videos From Nicholas Negroponte

30 Year History of the Future
Time 19:44
Being Educated
Time 05:55

Nicholas Negroponte
Featured Keynote Programs

True Innovation Shouldn’t Focus on the Outcomes – Celebrate the Process

In the developing world, we are sharing the wrong message about entrepreneurship and what constitutes success. A 12-year-old from Sierra Leone made a battery out of garbage, an achievement celebrated by many. But the accomplishment wasn’t the battery; it was the style of thought that led him there. When we become focused on the outcome and attach our work to it, we find ourselves resistant to trying new things and putting forth our best, innovative efforts. Nicholas Negroponte, drawing insight and inspiration from personal experiences throughout the globe, delves into why this is and how we should instead attach worth to effort – making the innovation process itself exciting and rewarding regardless of outcome.

The Digital Civilization

Nicholas Negroponte’s 1995 book “Being Digital” gave a glimpse into the world we now occupy – complete with wireless, touch screens, ebooks and personalized news. In the 20 years since, digital has shifted from revolution to civilization. We now live, work and play in a digital age (to the extent our culture, infrastructure and economy allow, in that order). And like air and drinking water, being digital will only be noticed in its absence, not its presence, he explains. As we move beyond digital, Negroponte gives us another glimpse of the surprising changes and possibilities that lie ahead. He explores several forces of change that he predicts will – and some that already do – affect the planet profoundly, including extreme bionics, real artificial intelligence and connectivity as a human right.

Creating a More Peaceful Planet Through Technology

Global access to the “digital world” – by children and poorer nations – carries unprecedented potential to bridge education divides, transform learning and improve skills for the globalized economy. Nicholas Negroponte believes the results will drive local value and identity, spur global understanding, and ultimately, create a more peaceful planet. He discusses the impetus behind his pioneering One Laptop per Child program and his more recent reading experiment in Africa as examples of how technology is transforming education while helping break down national borders.

Righting the Wrongs of How We Learn

What if we have learning all wrong? The industrialization of schooling, says Nicholas Negroponte, has replaced our natural wonder of learning with an obsessive focus on facts. We treat knowing as a surrogate for learning even though experience tells us it is quite possible to know about something while utterly failing to understand it. Compounding this, he says, is our fatally flawed belief that anything can be taught and there is a perfect way to teach everything. The lesson doesn’t just apply to children or to developing countries either. In a provocative discussion, Negroponte ponders how our world would be a better place if we focused less on measuring what we tell people and more on understanding how they discover.

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