3rd November, 1999, The Taj Mahal Hotel, Mumbai

According to Prof. Nicholas Negroponte, it's only a matter of time (and not very long) before 'smart technologies' become part of our everyday life and provide everyone with personalized services previously available only to those who could afford a personal butler. A New World is being invented. A world where machines will see, hear, talk, and (after a fashion) think. A world where your refrigerator orders milk before you run out, where your front door opens as you approach it, where your computer reads incoming mail and media and highlights important and relevant information.

"If you grow cotton, make cashmere sweaters or Chinese food, you have some breathing space… if the bulk of what you sell is information, then the risk of being replaced by some electronic medium is far more immediate"

- from the book Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte

About Prof. Nicholas Negroponte

In 1968, he founded MIT's pioneering Architecture Machine Group, a combination lab and think tank responsible for many radically new approaches to the human computer interface. Out of this experience came several influential texts, including the Architecture Machine, Soft Architecture Machine and Computer Aids to Design and Architecture. Dr. Negroponte is also the founder and director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology uniquely innovative Media Laboratories.

In 1980 he was founding chairman of the International Federation of Information Processing Societies' Computers in Everyday Life program in Amsterdam. Two years later, Negroponte accepted the French government's invitation to become the first executive director of the World Center for Personal Computation and Human Development, an experimental project designed to explore technology's potential for enhancing primary education in underdeveloped countries. Beyond his work with Wired and his best-selling book, he is a special general partner in a venture capital fund dedicated to new technologies for information and entertainment.

Media Lab - Massachusetts Institute of Techonology

• Things That Think
• News in the Future
• Television of Tomorrow
• Perceptual Computing
• Learning and Common Sense

Whether he is being quoted on page 1 of the Wall Street Journal on the future of Internet commerce, or tossing off Viagra jokes at Harvard's "Internet and Society Conference". Prof. Negroponte is arguably one of the most engaging spokesmen of the digital age as a columnist for Wired. He has been a preeminent speaker on the future of the digital age, and oversees the development of the tools of the Internet's future, such as intelligent agents. He wrote Being Digital, and is a frequent contributor to magazines and journals on all things wired. He's also an Internet philanthropist and educator, helping launch this fall's worldwide MIT junior Summit, where thousands of youngsters will discuss world issues via the Internet. The digital revolution is over. We now live in a digital civilization, says Nicholas Negroponte. A visionary who acts, Negroponte brings the world into sharper focus with a lucid description of our electronic future. His definitive book on the cyber revolution, Being Digital, has been translated into 30 languages. Founder and director of MIT's famed Media Lab, he is also a columnist for Wired and The New York Times, and a partner in a venture capital fund dedicated to new technologies for information and entertainment. He is founding chairman of 2BI Foundation, an organization designed to bring the digital world to classrooms is developing countries.

One in a series of events brought to India by TFCI

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