Courtesy OLPC
Negroponte's Sweet Brainstorm
The One Laptop Per Child group founded by Nicholas Negroponte is championing a new graphical user interface called “Sugar”
By Steve Hamm
Former MIT Media Lab Chairman Nicholas Negroponte founded the nonprofit organization One Laptop Per Child after noting the failure of traditional efforts to introduce computers into education in a way that improved the lives of underprivileged children. Typically, he has said, a handful of computers designed for use in businesses are installed in schools, where students use them only in special computer classes and are forced to share.
In contrast, Negroponte proposed giving a laptop to every student, to be used in every class and taken home at night. To that end, Negroponte and a team of computer scientists and designers have introduced the XO computer, a machine boasting many components built from the ground up. One of its novel features is “Sugar,” the new graphical user interface that breaks from the “desktop” tradition that dominates the industry. Click on for a closer look at the novel interface design.
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