Nortel provides telecommunications infrastructure and services and has annual revenues of around USD 10 billion. Here is a September 12 piece about One Laptop Per Child by John Roese, Nortel's CTO. Nortel develops, makes, and sells the stuff that enables networked devices to connect to each other. So it is no surprise that Roese is keen on "hyper-connectivity", which he defines as "a state in which the number of network connections exceeds the number of humans using the network". But the point about Roese's piece is that the evidence it provides that "big IT" is taking notice of OLPC, and most certainly does not see it is as a the work of a "bunch of well-meaning open source amateurs", as it is sometimes characterised.
Don't forget that Nortel is also a sponsor of OLPC. It was identified early on as contributing $2 million USD to the program.
Posted by: Wayan | 16/09/2007 at 15:31