Walter Bender, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) President of Content, discussed the design details of the so-called “hundred dollar laptop.” In his presentation, Walter described the three tenets of “being human” as: 1) We learn (and teach), 2) We express, and 3) We’re social. The design of the OLPC was created with his three human tenets in mind with its: 1) pedagogy, 2) digital expression capability, and 3) the mesh networking technology that makes it more of a “local” than a “global” machine.

Power consumption was a major design constraint for the OLPC given that it’s intended audience (the Third World) does not have the luxury of a constant and reliable power source. Thus the OLPC was designed to run at 2 Watts versus the 20 Watts of an average laptop through a variety of clever engineering feats. The third Key of power is relevant in this case, and it is clear that advances developed in the OLPC will point computer designs towards much more efficient power management schemes.

For as long as I’ve known Walter, he’s always claimed that the secret of the Web’s success was the way in which web browsers always had access to the source code of each web page through the “View Source” command. Because most of the Web was built in this open source manner, it became easy to replicate the knowledge of the Web with a simple cut and paste. He reasons that without this ease of playing with digital information in such an open manner, the Web would never have caught on. I think Walter’s right. At Ars Electronica, Walter showed off the new key on the keyboard of the OLPC “Src” which is the world’s first “View Source” key.

If Tim Berners-Lee is considered to be the “father” of the Web, I think it’s safe to think of Walter as the “uncle” of the Web for his early role in electronic media. The world is lucky to have Uncle Walter working on the OLPC project.