Here’s why I like the MIT, in once quote:

One person said “impossible.” Impossible? “Impossible” at MIT is a code word for “Do it.”

This is how Nicholas Netroponte, the founder of MITs Media Lab, announced victory on their effort to get a $100 laptop computer in the hands of people who can’t afford the current prices. This happened yesterday at MITs own Emerging Technologies Conference, and was the final proof that the effort was real, despite a lot of disbelief in the ability to get something like that out there.

“If you take any world problem, any issue on the planet, the solution to that problem certainly includes education,” Negroponte said during his opening keynote speech for the conference. And “in education, the roadblock is the laptop.”

Ever since I first heard about this project and read about it in MITs Technology Review, I was curious and eager to see how they’d get the laptop out here, so yesterday’s announcement was a happy surprise.

Children would be able to take the computers with them wherever they go, learning languages, math, science, geography, and economics, as well as playing games and chatting online with friends. They will likely also be able to use the devices to draw and compose music.

This is the kind of stuff I like to see investment money going - in this case, investors are AMD, Brightstar, Google, News Corp, and Red Hat. It’s both evolving technology forward by pushing the envelope in innovation, and helping people out in a good way: giving them the means to learn. Excelent.

You can follow the discussion around the $100 laptop on Memeorandum, and read the coverage article on MITs own Technology Review website (that has a few pictures, too).