Nicholas Negroponte

The history of innovation is testimony to questioning assumptions and given truths about our world. Particularly in technology, Nicholas Negroponte provokes questions today about how students are better taught through technology – not the way you probably think – or questioning the prevailing condemnation of genetically modified foods to nuclear power are based on wisdom or short term considerations. Consider that at the times when Negroponte was advocating the creation of MIT’s Media Lab, underwriting Wired magazine, authoring “Being Digital,” a New York Times #1 bestseller, to starting the initiative to give poverty-stricken and education-deprived children computers, the worldwide consensus was, on each occasion, opposed to these innovations. When did an innovation ever come from consensus?