Interview with Boston Book Festival Participant Nicholas Negroponte

What about libraries? It seems that libraries should be leading a charge to digitize information. Some are, but some seem caught up in opposition to "being digital." Is there a way to get libraries digitized such that we could be checking out ebooks from online libraries soon?

Libraries are drenched in atoms. The physical storage of books, in one place, make less and less sense, especially when you consider that 90% of the books are not checked out in five years.

My recent experience with the Boston Public Library, however, is that it is always full. It is a place to study and find quiet. It is a place to meet people. It is a way to browse information in a physical manner.

Nonethess, the sheer cost of binding, shipping, storing, rearranging and replacing physical books will drive the change to virtual books in place like Boston. In places like remote Africa, they have no alternative and this change is welcome, the sooner the better.

Where do you stand on the Google Books Settlement? Is there a good way to get libraries, nonprofits, or governments to step up and digitize content if a corporation shouldn't be doing it? How could the Media Lab and similarly innovative organizations be part of a digitization solution for content?

Google's digitizing of books was far better before the need for a settlement. I wish they had continued with their original free and open approach. Instead, a guild representing just a few authors (8000) and a small handful of publishers forced a settlement that is not entirely in the general public's best interest. The settlement is being reconsidered at this moment, so I cannot prejudge it. It is not likely, however, to be as free and open as I would wish.

The One Laptop Per Child project has been both lauded and criticized (costly, wrong platform). How do you respond to criticisms? Where would you like to see the project go next? Would a Kindle or ereader be a workable alternative to a laptop for a project like this? What achievement/s of the project are you most proud of?

OLPC has reached over one million children in 19 languages and 31 countries, with another million queued up to go to places like Gaza, Afghanistan, Haiti, Cameroon and Mali. Furthermore, OLPC triggered the entire Netbook category of laptop (which could be a high as 30% of the world laptop market by the end of this year) and has been the downward pressure that has resulted in laptops in general costing 40% less than they did five years ago.

If you look at the criticism, especially the handful of hatchet jobs, they can be traced to commercial interests, to be honest. Nobody is arguing against kids being connected and having access to their own laptop. Also, when people ask me to prove that it works, I asked them if they need proof that electricity works. The only question on the table, the one and only, is the cost... how to pay for it. But, over a five year period, the cost of purchase, connectivity, maintenance, shipping and support—the total cost of ownership—is one dollar per week, per child. Think of it that way and then ask why every child in the world does not have a connected laptop.

What Boston Book Festival panel are you most excited to see (other than your own)?

Apart from the other technical session, David Pogue's, The Future of Reading—Books without Pages? (which I am "producing"), I look forward to Orhan Pamuk's Keynote. He is a deep thinker and I look forward to hearing him. Also, to end on an equally personal note as I began, Debbie and I have been to Istanbul four times in three years and I am particularly interested in that part of the world.