M.I.T. - Media Lab

M. Resnick, A. Pentland



Health Special Interest Group

J. Paradiso, R. Picard,
S. Manalis, A. Pentland


unWired, Unwiring the World

Unwiring The World

For the first time your location no longer limits your ability to communicate. From anywhere in the world --- mountain, jungle, or city --- you can now telephone, email, and Web browse using a pocket-sized, battery-powered wireless communicator whose components cost only a few dozen dollars.

For less than the typical IMF bailout we can now unwire the world, making available first-class educational material, medical advice, business communications, and the arts to every family on earth by use of wireless communications technology.

Unwiring the world can have a huge impact, because it directly addresses the problems of health, educational, economic, and cultural opportunity. The most certain method of enhancing people's well being and cutting pollution has always been to increase educational opportunity. The most certain method of promoting peace and prosperity has always been to increase economic and cultural participation. Moreover unwiring --- unlike wired technology ---tends to level differences between rich and poor, because it works as well in remote regions as in modern cities, and is cheap enough to be spread everywhere.

Alex Pentland
Academic Head
MIT Media Laboratory


J.M. Figueres, A. Cruz,
J. Barrios, A. Pentland

Assumptions
Practical Plan
Central Themes
Physical Structure
Services

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