TED2014
Nicholas Negroponte: A 30-year history of the future
Filmed:
Readability: 3.8
2,035,246 views
MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte takes you on a journey through the last 30 years of tech. The consummate predictor highlights interfaces and innovations he foresaw in the 1970s and 1980s that were scoffed at then but are ubiquitous today. And he leaves you with one last (absurd? brilliant?) prediction for the coming 30 years.
Nicholas Negroponte - Tech visionary
The founder of the MIT Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte pushed the edge of the information revolution as an inventor, thinker and angel investor. He's the driving force behind One Laptop per Child, building computers for children in the developing world. Full bio
The founder of the MIT Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte pushed the edge of the information revolution as an inventor, thinker and angel investor. He's the driving force behind One Laptop per Child, building computers for children in the developing world. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:12
(Video) Nicholas Negroponte:
Can we switch to the video disc,
Can we switch to the video disc,
0
657
2454
00:15
which is in play mode?
1
3111
2123
00:17
I'm really interested in how you put people and computers together.
2
5234
5230
00:22
We will be using the TV screens or their equivalents
3
10464
3370
00:25
for electronic books of the future.
4
13834
4374
00:30
(Music, crosstalk)
5
18208
3614
00:50
Very interested in touch-sensitive displays,
6
38117
2252
00:52
high-tech, high-touch, not having
to pick up your fingers to use them.
to pick up your fingers to use them.
7
40369
4327
00:56
There is another way where computers
8
44696
1800
00:58
touch people: wearing, physically wearing.
9
46496
2463
01:08
Suddenly on September 11th,
10
56646
2021
01:10
the world got bigger.
11
58667
2637
01:13
NN: Thank you. (Applause)
12
61304
2985
01:16
Thank you.
13
64289
2059
01:18
When I was asked to do this,
14
66348
2108
01:20
I was also asked to look at all 14 TED Talks
15
68456
4196
01:24
that I had given,
16
72652
1710
01:26
chronologically.
17
74362
1798
01:28
The first one was actually two hours.
18
76160
2274
01:30
The second one was an hour,
19
78434
1456
01:31
and then they became half hours,
20
79890
1549
01:33
and all I noticed was my bald spot getting bigger.
21
81439
3936
01:37
(Laughter)
22
85375
1620
01:38
Imagine seeing your life, 30 years of it, go by,
23
86995
4168
01:43
and it was, to say the least,
24
91163
3407
01:46
for me, quite a shocking experience.
25
94570
4373
01:50
So what I'm going to do in my time
26
98943
1593
01:52
is try and share with you what happened
27
100536
1544
01:54
during the 30 years,
28
102080
1802
01:55
and then also make a prediction,
29
103882
2518
01:58
and then tell you a little bit
30
106400
2061
02:00
about what I'm doing next.
31
108461
2654
02:03
And I put on a slide
32
111115
2951
02:06
where TED 1 happened in my life.
33
114066
4060
02:10
And it's rather important
34
118126
1914
02:12
because I had done 15 years of research before it,
35
120040
4060
02:16
so I had a backlog, so it was easy.
36
124100
2428
02:18
It's not that I was Fidel Castro
37
126528
1760
02:20
and I could talk for two hours,
38
128288
1833
02:22
or Bucky Fuller.
39
130121
1322
02:23
I had 15 years of stuff,
40
131443
1915
02:25
and the Media Lab was about to start.
41
133358
2472
02:27
So that was easy.
42
135830
1800
02:29
But there are a couple of things
43
137630
2664
02:32
about that period
44
140294
1688
02:33
and about what happened that are
45
141982
2053
02:36
really quite important.
46
144035
1855
02:37
One is that
47
145890
2556
02:40
it was a period when computers
48
148446
2896
02:43
weren't yet for people.
49
151342
2637
02:45
And the other thing that sort of happened
50
153979
3145
02:49
during that time is that
51
157124
3071
02:52
we were considered sissy computer scientists.
52
160195
3382
02:55
We weren't considered the real thing.
53
163577
1563
02:57
So what I'm going to show you is, in retrospect,
54
165140
3999
03:01
a lot more interesting and a lot more accepted
55
169139
2508
03:03
than it was at the time.
56
171647
2066
03:05
So I'm going to characterize the years
57
173713
2554
03:08
and I'm even going to go back
58
176267
1833
03:10
to some very early work of mine,
59
178100
2104
03:12
and this was the kind of stuff I was doing in the '60s:
60
180204
2886
03:15
very direct manipulation,
61
183090
2187
03:17
very influenced as I studied architecture
62
185277
2655
03:19
by the architect Moshe Safdie,
63
187932
2087
03:22
and you can see that we even built robotic things
64
190019
2762
03:24
that could build habitat-like structures.
65
192781
2756
03:27
And this for me was
66
195537
1687
03:29
not yet the Media Lab,
67
197224
1916
03:31
but was the beginning of what I'll call
68
199140
2817
03:33
sensory computing,
69
201957
1519
03:35
and I pick fingers
70
203476
1872
03:37
partly because everybody thought it was ridiculous.
71
205348
4202
03:41
Papers were published
72
209550
2155
03:43
about how stupid it was to use fingers.
73
211705
4252
03:47
Three reasons: One was they were low-resolution.
74
215957
2818
03:50
The other is your hand would occlude
75
218775
1929
03:52
what you wanted to see,
76
220704
1441
03:54
and the third, which was the winner,
77
222145
1758
03:55
was that your fingers would get the screen dirty,
78
223903
3656
03:59
and hence, fingers would never be
79
227559
2326
04:01
a device that you'd use.
80
229885
1788
04:03
And this was a device we built in the '70s,
81
231673
3049
04:06
which has never even been picked up.
82
234722
1871
04:08
It's not just touch sensitive,
83
236593
1441
04:10
it's pressure sensitive.
84
238034
2178
04:12
(Video) Voice: Put a yellow circle there.
85
240212
1977
04:14
NN: Later work, and again this was before TED 1 —
86
242189
3444
04:17
(Video) Voice: Move that west of the diamond.
87
245633
2803
04:20
Create a large green circle there.
88
248436
3212
04:23
Man: Aw, shit.
89
251648
2329
04:25
NN: — was to sort of do interface concurrently,
90
253977
3430
04:29
so when you talked and you pointed
91
257407
1808
04:31
and you had, if you will,
92
259215
3187
04:34
multiple channels.
93
262402
1559
04:35
Entebbe happened.
94
263961
2007
04:37
1976, Air France was hijacked,
95
265968
3547
04:41
taken to Entebbe,
96
269515
1498
04:43
and the Israelis not only did an extraordinary rescue,
97
271013
5057
04:48
they did it partly because they had practiced
98
276070
1963
04:50
on a physical model of the airport,
99
278033
2495
04:52
because they had built the airport,
100
280528
1156
04:53
so they built a model in the desert,
101
281684
1733
04:55
and when they arrived at Entebbe,
102
283417
1716
04:57
they knew where to go because
they had actually been there.
they had actually been there.
103
285133
2920
05:00
The U.S. government asked some of us, '76,
104
288053
3252
05:03
if we could replicate that computationally,
105
291305
2775
05:06
and of course somebody like myself says yes.
106
294080
2189
05:08
Immediately, you get a contract,
107
296269
2026
05:10
Department of Defense,
108
298295
1485
05:11
and we built this truck and this rig.
109
299780
2688
05:14
We did sort of a simulation,
110
302468
2520
05:16
because you had video discs,
111
304988
1826
05:18
and again, this is '76.
112
306814
2328
05:21
And then many years later,
113
309142
2697
05:23
you get this truck,
114
311839
1469
05:25
and so you have Google Maps.
115
313308
2958
05:28
Still people thought,
116
316266
1520
05:29
no, that was not serious computer science,
117
317786
4020
05:33
and it was a man named Jerry Wiesner,
118
321806
2059
05:35
who happened to be the president of MIT,
119
323865
2407
05:38
who did think it was computer science.
120
326272
2348
05:40
And one of the keys for anybody
121
328620
2637
05:43
who wants to start something in life:
122
331257
3384
05:46
Make sure your president is part of it.
123
334641
3269
05:49
So when I was doing the Media Lab,
124
337910
3020
05:52
it was like having a gorilla in the front seat.
125
340930
3157
05:56
If you were stopped for speeding
126
344087
2185
05:58
and the officer looked in the window
127
346272
2240
06:00
and saw who was in the passenger seat,
128
348512
2009
06:02
then, "Oh, continue on, sir."
129
350521
1962
06:04
And so we were able,
130
352483
1685
06:06
and this is a cute, actually, device, parenthetically.
131
354168
3793
06:09
This was a lenticular photograph of Jerry Wiesner
132
357961
3049
06:13
where the only thing that changed in the photograph
133
361010
2363
06:15
were the lips.
134
363373
1343
06:16
So when you oscillated that little piece
135
364716
2976
06:19
of lenticular sheet with his photograph,
136
367692
3230
06:22
it would be in lip sync
137
370922
2013
06:24
with zero bandwidth.
138
372935
2239
06:27
It was a zero-bandwidth teleconferencing system
139
375174
2711
06:29
at the time.
140
377885
1842
06:31
So this was the Media Lab's —
141
379727
3981
06:35
this is what we said we'd do,
142
383708
1693
06:37
that the world of computers, publishing,
143
385401
2575
06:39
and so on would come together.
144
387976
2688
06:42
Again, not generally accepted,
145
390664
2104
06:44
but very much part of TED in the early days.
146
392768
4972
06:49
And this is really where we were headed.
147
397740
3206
06:52
And that created the Media Lab.
148
400946
1687
06:54
One of the things about age
149
402633
4251
06:58
is that I can tell you with great confidence,
150
406884
4267
07:03
I've been to the future.
151
411151
2464
07:05
I've been there, actually, many times.
152
413615
3284
07:08
And the reason I say that is,
153
416899
1508
07:10
how many times in my life have I said,
154
418407
2441
07:12
"Oh, in 10 years, this will happen,"
155
420848
1777
07:14
and then 10 years comes.
156
422625
2048
07:16
And then you say, "Oh, in
five years, this will happen."
five years, this will happen."
157
424673
1758
07:18
And then five years comes.
158
426431
1684
07:20
So I say this a little bit with having felt
159
428115
3758
07:23
that I'd been there a number of times,
160
431873
2337
07:26
and one of the things that is most quoted
161
434210
3640
07:29
that I've ever said
162
437850
1149
07:30
is that computing is not about computers,
163
438999
2383
07:33
and that didn't quite get enough traction,
164
441382
3556
07:36
and then it started to.
165
444938
1519
07:38
It started to because people caught on
166
446457
3695
07:42
that the medium wasn't the message.
167
450152
3138
07:45
And the reason I show this car
168
453290
2645
07:47
in actually a rather ugly slide
169
455935
2328
07:50
is just again to tell you the kind of story
170
458263
2504
07:52
that characterized a little bit of my life.
171
460767
2828
07:55
This is a student of mine
172
463595
2014
07:57
who had done a Ph.D. called "Backseat Driver."
173
465609
3551
08:01
It was in the early days of GPS,
174
469160
2082
08:03
the car knew where it was,
175
471242
1566
08:04
and it would give audio instructions
176
472808
1915
08:06
to the driver, when to turn right,
when to turn left and so on.
when to turn left and so on.
177
474723
3427
08:10
Turns out, there are a lot of things
178
478150
1611
08:11
in those instructions that back in that period
179
479761
3035
08:14
were pretty challenging,
180
482796
1250
08:16
like what does it mean, take the next right?
181
484046
3228
08:19
Well, if you're coming up on a street,
182
487274
1900
08:21
the next right's probably the one after,
183
489174
2183
08:23
and there are lots of issues,
184
491357
1231
08:24
and the student did a wonderful thesis,
185
492588
2245
08:26
and the MIT patent office said "Don't patent it.
186
494833
4847
08:31
It'll never be accepted.
187
499680
1940
08:33
The liabilities are too large.
188
501620
2310
08:35
There will be insurance issues.
189
503930
1391
08:37
Don't patent it."
190
505321
1644
08:38
So we didn't,
191
506965
1093
08:40
but it shows you how people, again, at times,
192
508058
3638
08:43
don't really look at what's happening.
193
511696
4199
08:47
Some work, and I'll just go
through these very quickly,
through these very quickly,
194
515895
2895
08:50
a lot of sensory stuff.
195
518790
1605
08:52
You might recognize a young Yo-Yo Ma
196
520395
2475
08:54
and tracking his body for playing
197
522870
3970
08:58
the cello or the hypercello.
198
526840
2348
09:01
These fellows literally walked
around like that at the time.
around like that at the time.
199
529188
3977
09:05
It's now a little bit more discreet
200
533165
2635
09:07
and more commonplace.
201
535800
2041
09:09
And then there are at least three heroes
202
537841
2269
09:12
I want to quickly mention.
203
540110
1129
09:13
Marvin Minsky, who taught me a lot
204
541239
2478
09:15
about common sense,
205
543717
1387
09:17
and I will talk briefly about Muriel Cooper,
206
545104
3441
09:20
who was very important to Ricky Wurman
207
548545
2618
09:23
and to TED, and in fact, when she got onstage,
208
551163
3735
09:26
she said, the first thing she said was,
209
554898
1947
09:28
"I introduced Ricky to Nicky."
210
556845
2154
09:30
And nobody calls me Nicky
211
558999
1700
09:32
and nobody calls Richard Ricky,
212
560699
1759
09:34
so nobody knew who she was talking about.
213
562458
3402
09:37
And then, of course, Seymour Papert,
214
565860
2397
09:40
who is the person who said,
215
568257
1505
09:41
"You can't think about thinking
216
569762
1415
09:43
unless you think about thinking about something."
217
571177
2415
09:45
And that's actually — you can unpack that later.
218
573592
5663
09:51
It's a pretty profound statement.
219
579255
4106
09:55
I'm showing some slides
220
583361
1740
09:57
that were from TED 2,
221
585101
2086
09:59
a little silly as slides, perhaps.
222
587187
3742
10:02
Then I felt television really was about displays.
223
590929
5341
10:08
Again, now we're past TED 1,
224
596273
3063
10:11
but just around the time of TED 2,
225
599336
3026
10:14
and what I'd like to mention here is,
226
602362
2149
10:16
even though you could imagine
227
604511
2115
10:18
intelligence in the device,
228
606626
2054
10:20
I look today at some of the work
229
608680
1432
10:22
being done about the Internet of Things,
230
610112
2438
10:24
and I think it's kind of tragically pathetic,
231
612550
2940
10:27
because what has happened is people take
232
615490
2430
10:29
the oven panel and put it on your cell phone,
233
617920
3498
10:33
or the door key onto your cell phone,
234
621418
1789
10:35
just taking it and bringing it to you,
235
623207
2173
10:37
and in fact that's actually what you don't want.
236
625380
2721
10:40
You want to put a chicken in the oven,
237
628101
2058
10:42
and the oven says, "Aha, it's a chicken,"
238
630159
2328
10:44
and it cooks the chicken.
239
632487
1149
10:45
"Oh, it's cooking the chicken for Nicholas,
240
633636
1766
10:47
and he likes it this way and that way."
241
635402
1834
10:49
So the intelligence, instead of being in the device,
242
637236
3053
10:52
we have started today
243
640289
1709
10:53
to move it back onto the cell phone
244
641998
2112
10:56
or closer to the user,
245
644110
2370
10:58
not a particularly enlightened view
246
646480
2188
11:00
of the Internet of Things.
247
648668
2741
11:03
Television, again, television what I said today,
248
651409
3464
11:06
that was back in 1990,
249
654873
2622
11:09
and the television of tomorrow
250
657495
1470
11:10
would look something like that.
251
658965
2323
11:13
Again, people, but they laughed cynically,
252
661288
3544
11:16
they didn't laugh with much appreciation.
253
664832
5251
11:22
Telecommunications in the 1990s,
254
670083
2650
11:24
George Gilder decided that he would call this diagram
255
672733
5700
11:30
the Negroponte switch.
256
678433
2429
11:32
I'm probably much less famous than George,
257
680862
2006
11:34
so when he called it the Negroponte switch, it stuck,
258
682868
3607
11:38
but the idea of things that came in the ground
259
686475
2665
11:41
would go in the air and stuff in the air
260
689140
1715
11:42
would go into the ground
261
690855
1459
11:44
has played itself out.
262
692314
1885
11:46
That is the original slide from that year,
263
694199
4745
11:50
and it has worked in lockstep obedience.
264
698944
3375
11:54
We started Wired magazine.
265
702319
2167
11:56
Some people, I remember we shared
266
704486
3736
12:00
the reception desk periodically,
267
708222
2722
12:02
and some parent called up irate that his son
268
710944
4058
12:07
had given up Sports Illustrated
269
715002
2229
12:09
to subscribe for Wired,
270
717231
1879
12:11
and he said, "Are you some
porno magazine or something?"
porno magazine or something?"
271
719110
3197
12:14
and couldn't understand why his son
272
722307
2584
12:16
would be interested in Wired, at any rate.
273
724891
3899
12:20
I will go through this a little quicker.
274
728790
2604
12:23
This is my favorite, 1995,
275
731394
3499
12:26
back page of Newsweek magazine.
276
734893
3037
12:29
Okay. Read it. (Laughter)
277
737930
1969
12:31
["Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure."
—Clifford Stoll, Newsweek, 1995]
—Clifford Stoll, Newsweek, 1995]
278
739899
1901
12:33
You must admit that gives you,
279
741800
1645
12:35
at least it gives me pleasure
280
743445
2227
12:37
when somebody says how dead wrong you are.
281
745672
3758
12:41
"Being Digital" came out.
282
749430
2146
12:43
For me, it gave me an opportunity
283
751576
2641
12:46
to be more in the trade press
284
754217
2202
12:48
and get this out to the public,
285
756419
3271
12:51
and it also allowed us to build the new Media Lab,
286
759690
3015
12:54
which if you haven't been to, visit,
287
762705
1933
12:56
because it's a beautiful piece of architecture
288
764638
3019
12:59
aside from being a wonderful place to work.
289
767657
2825
13:02
So these are the things we were saying in those TEDs.
290
770482
2695
13:05
[Today, multimedia is a desktop or living room experience, because the apparatus is so clunky. This will change dramatically with small, bright, thin, high-resolution displays. — 1995]
291
773177
1567
13:06
We came to them.
292
774744
1492
13:08
I looked forward to it every year.
293
776236
1992
13:10
It was the party that Ricky Wurman never had
294
778228
3052
13:13
in the sense that he invited many of his old friends,
295
781280
2909
13:16
including myself.
296
784189
1659
13:17
And then something for me changed
297
785848
2392
13:20
pretty profoundly.
298
788240
1469
13:21
I became more involved with computers and learning
299
789709
3953
13:25
and influenced by Seymour,
300
793662
2462
13:28
but particularly looking at learning
301
796124
2615
13:30
as something that is best approximated
302
798739
3910
13:34
by computer programming.
303
802649
1754
13:36
When you write a computer program,
304
804403
2014
13:38
you've got to not just list things out
305
806417
2795
13:41
and sort of take an algorithm
306
809212
1728
13:42
and translate it into a set of instructions,
307
810940
2876
13:45
but when there's a bug, and all programs have bugs,
308
813816
2683
13:48
you've got to de-bug it.
309
816499
1709
13:50
You've got to go in, change it,
310
818208
1990
13:52
and then re-execute,
311
820198
1622
13:53
and you iterate,
312
821820
1804
13:55
and that iteration is really
313
823624
2907
13:58
a very, very good approximation of learning.
314
826531
2903
14:01
So that led to my own work with Seymour
315
829434
3667
14:05
in places like Cambodia
316
833101
2358
14:07
and the starting of One Laptop per Child.
317
835459
2904
14:10
Enough TED Talks on One Laptop per Child,
318
838363
2814
14:13
so I'll go through it very fast,
319
841177
1761
14:14
but it did give us the chance
320
842938
3925
14:18
to do something at a relatively large scale
321
846863
3506
14:22
in the area of learning, development and computing.
322
850369
3993
14:26
Very few people know that One Laptop per Child
323
854362
2817
14:29
was a $1 billion project,
324
857179
2635
14:31
and it was, at least over the seven years I ran it,
325
859814
2647
14:34
but even more important, the World Bank
326
862461
2146
14:36
contributed zero, USAID zero.
327
864607
3115
14:39
It was mostly the countries
using their own treasuries,
using their own treasuries,
328
867722
4155
14:43
which is very interesting,
329
871877
1603
14:45
at least to me it was very interesting
330
873480
1356
14:46
in terms of what I plan to do next.
331
874836
3144
14:49
So these are the various places it happened.
332
877980
3025
14:53
I then tried an experiment,
333
881005
2902
14:55
and the experiment happened in Ethiopia.
334
883907
4281
15:00
And here's the experiment.
335
888188
2642
15:02
The experiment is,
336
890830
1631
15:04
can learning happen where there are no schools.
337
892461
3780
15:08
And we dropped off tablets
338
896241
2530
15:10
with no instructions
339
898771
2243
15:13
and let the children figure it out.
340
901014
3273
15:16
And in a short period of time,
341
904287
3647
15:19
they not only
342
907934
2098
15:22
turned them on and were using 50 apps per child
343
910032
3072
15:25
within five days,
344
913104
2102
15:27
they were singing "ABC" songs within two weeks,
345
915206
2934
15:30
but they hacked Android within six months.
346
918140
3893
15:34
And so that seemed sufficiently interesting.
347
922033
3518
15:37
This is perhaps the best picture I have.
348
925551
2559
15:40
The kid on your right
349
928110
4151
15:44
has sort of nominated himself as teacher.
350
932261
2475
15:46
Look at the kid on the left, and so on.
351
934736
2520
15:49
There are no adults involved in this at all.
352
937256
3150
15:52
So I said, well can we do this
353
940406
1424
15:53
at a larger scale?
354
941830
1597
15:55
And what is it that's missing?
355
943427
2481
15:57
The kids are giving a press conference at this point,
356
945908
2269
16:00
and sort of writing in the dirt.
357
948177
2685
16:02
And the answer is, what is missing?
358
950862
3445
16:06
And I'm going to skip over my prediction, actually,
359
954307
2536
16:08
because I'm running out of time,
360
956843
1528
16:10
and here's the question, is what's going to happen?
361
958371
3968
16:14
I think the challenge
362
962339
1487
16:15
is to connect the last billion people,
363
963826
2628
16:18
and connecting the last billion
364
966454
2651
16:21
is very different than connecting the next billion,
365
969105
3397
16:24
and the reason it's different
366
972502
1394
16:25
is that the next billion
367
973896
1864
16:27
are sort of low-hanging fruit,
368
975760
1950
16:29
but the last billion are rural.
369
977710
3367
16:33
Being rural and being poor
370
981077
3752
16:36
are very different.
371
984829
1132
16:37
Poverty tends to be created by our society,
372
985961
3633
16:41
and the people in that community are not poor
373
989594
5450
16:47
in the same way at all.
374
995044
1909
16:48
They may be primitive,
375
996953
1405
16:50
but the way to approach it and to connect them,
376
998358
4044
16:54
the history of One Laptop per Child,
377
1002402
2531
16:56
and the experiment in Ethiopia,
378
1004933
3656
17:00
lead me to believe that we can in fact
379
1008589
3275
17:03
do this in a very short period of time.
380
1011864
2801
17:06
And so my plan,
381
1014665
1841
17:08
and unfortunately I haven't been able
382
1016506
2234
17:10
to get my partners at this point
383
1018740
2868
17:13
to let me announce them,
384
1021608
1291
17:14
but is to do this with a stationary satellite.
385
1022899
4907
17:19
There are many reasons
386
1027806
2459
17:22
that stationary satellites aren't the best things,
387
1030265
4515
17:26
but there are a lot of reasons why they are,
388
1034780
2937
17:29
and for two billion dollars,
389
1037717
3095
17:32
you can connect a lot more than 100 million people,
390
1040812
3684
17:36
but the reason I picked two,
391
1044496
2661
17:39
and I will leave this as my last slide,
392
1047157
3383
17:42
is two billion dollars
393
1050540
1784
17:44
is what we were spending
394
1052324
2919
17:47
in Afghanistan
395
1055243
2093
17:49
every week.
396
1057336
1912
17:51
So surely if we can connect
397
1059248
3307
17:54
Africa and the last billion people
398
1062555
2700
17:57
for numbers like that,
399
1065255
1554
17:58
we should be doing it.
400
1066809
1313
18:00
Thank you very much.
401
1068122
2297
18:02
(Applause)
402
1070419
3529
18:05
Chris Anderson: Stay up there. Stay up there.
403
1073948
4330
18:10
NN: You're going to give me extra time?
404
1078278
2030
18:12
CA: No. That was wickedly clever, wickedly clever.
405
1080308
2362
18:14
You gamed it beautifully.
406
1082670
1865
18:16
Nicholas, what is your prediction?
407
1084535
2630
18:19
(Laughter)
408
1087165
2026
18:21
NN: Thank you for asking.
409
1089191
2436
18:23
I'll tell you what my prediction is,
410
1091627
2773
18:26
and my prediction, and this is a prediction,
411
1094400
2700
18:29
because it'll be 30 years. I won't be here.
412
1097100
2662
18:31
But one of the things about learning how to read,
413
1099762
4728
18:36
we have been doing a lot of consuming
414
1104490
2849
18:39
of information going through our eyes,
415
1107339
2285
18:41
and so that may be a very inefficient channel.
416
1109624
3076
18:44
So my prediction is that we are
going to ingest information
going to ingest information
417
1112700
5085
18:49
You're going to swallow a pill and know English.
418
1117785
3197
18:52
You're going to swallow a
pill and know Shakespeare.
pill and know Shakespeare.
419
1120982
2692
18:55
And the way to do it is through the bloodstream.
420
1123674
2609
18:58
So once it's in your bloodstream,
421
1126283
1857
19:00
it basically goes through it and gets into the brain,
422
1128140
2218
19:02
and when it knows that it's in the brain
423
1130358
2182
19:04
in the different pieces,
424
1132540
1322
19:05
it deposits it in the right places.
425
1133862
2625
19:08
So it's ingesting.
426
1136487
1332
19:09
CA: Have you been hanging out
with Ray Kurzweil by any chance?
with Ray Kurzweil by any chance?
427
1137819
2520
19:12
NN: No, but I've been hanging
around with Ed Boyden
around with Ed Boyden
428
1140339
3213
19:15
and hanging around with one of the speakers
429
1143552
1845
19:17
who is here, Hugh Herr,
430
1145397
1813
19:19
and there are a number of people.
431
1147210
1897
19:21
This isn't quite as far-fetched,
432
1149107
1397
19:22
so 30 years from now.
433
1150504
2945
19:25
CA: We will check it out.
434
1153449
1742
19:27
We're going to be back and we're going
to play this clip 30 years from now,
to play this clip 30 years from now,
435
1155191
2302
19:29
and then all eat the red pill.
436
1157493
3031
19:32
Well thank you for that.
437
1160524
2185
19:34
Nicholas Negroponte.
438
1162709
1444
19:36
NN: Thank you.
439
1164153
1348
19:37
(Applause)
440
1165501
814
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Nicholas Negroponte - Tech visionaryThe founder of the MIT Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte pushed the edge of the information revolution as an inventor, thinker and angel investor. He's the driving force behind One Laptop per Child, building computers for children in the developing world.
Why you should listen
A pioneer in the field of computer-aided design, Negroponte founded (and was the first director of) MIT's Media Lab, which helped drive the multimedia revolution and now houses more than 500 researchers and staff across a broad range of disciplines. An original investor in Wired (and the magazine's "patron saint"), for five years he penned a column exploring the frontiers of technology -- ideas that he expanded into his 1995 best-selling book Being Digital. An angel investor extraordinaire, he's funded more than 40 startups, and served on the boards of companies such as Motorola and Ambient Devices.
But his latest effort, the One Laptop per Child project, may prove his most ambitious. The organization is designing, manufacturing and distributing low-cost, wireless Internet-enabled computers costing roughly $100 and aimed at children. Negroponte hopes to put millions of these devices in the hands of children in the developing world.
Nicholas Negroponte | Speaker | TED.com