The World Wide Arena
As a department, the Media Lab is making an aggressive commitment to tackling digital divide issues in the international arena.
"The Media Lab is devoting as much as a third of its energy to developing nations, with particular emphasis on learning and devices, particularly for young children," Negroponte explains. "One project at the lab is to build a PC for less than one dollar. Other projects include programs in the remotest regions of Thailand and throughout all of Costa Rica. New projects are starting in Brazil and Mexico."
Dr. Thomas A. Nwodoh, a research associate in the lab's Spatial Imaging Laboratory, says that he thinks the media lab has done impressive work in the developing world. A native of Nigeria, Nwodoh points out that he is the only Black person at the Spatial Imaging Laboratory. His work in digital video processing is aimed at producing systems to render holograms — 3-D images — as fluid and fast as regular two-dimensional video.
"MIT's commitment to wireless technology has put vital information in the hands of everyday people at the grassroots level of developing societies," Nwodoh says.
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