A team of physicists in Vienna has devised experiments that may answer one of the enduring riddles of science: Do we create the world just by looking at it?
To enter the somewhat formidable Neo-Renaissance building at Boltzmanngasse 3 in Vienna, you must pass through a small door sawed from the original cathedrallike entrance. When I first visited this past March, it was chilly and overcast in the late afternoon. Atop several tall stories of scaffolding there were two men who would hardly have been visible from the street were it not for their sunrise-orange jumpsuits. As I was about to pass through the nested entrance, I heard a sudden rush of wind and felt a mist of winter drizzle. I glanced up. The veiled workers were power-washing away the building's façade, down to the century-old brick underneath.
The nested entrance to the IQOQI lab building
In 1908 Karl Kupelwieser, Ludwig Wittgenstein's uncle, donated the money to construct this building and turn Austria-Hungary into the principal destination for the study of radium. Above the doorway the edifice still bears the name of this founding purpose. But since 2005 this has been home of the Institut für Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation (IQOQI, pronounced "ee-ko-kee"), a center devoted to the foundations of quantum mechanics. The IQOQI, which includes a sister facility to the southwest in the
valley town of Innsbruck, was initially realized in 2003 at the behest of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. However, the institute's conception several years earlier was predominantly due to one man: Anton Zeilinger. This past January, Zeilinger
became the first ever recipient of the Isaac Newton Medal for his pioneering contributions to physics as the head of one of the most successful quantum optics groups in the world.
Over the past two decades, he and his colleagues have done as much as anyone else to test quantum mechanics. And since its inception more than 80 years ago, quantum mechanics has possibly weathered more scrutiny than any theory ever devised. Quantum mechanics appears correct, and now Zeilinger and his group have started experimenting with what the theory means.
On April 25, 2008, 135 children in two schools close to Kathmandu, Nepal, each received a small green laptop. Most of the children had never used a computer before, but within a short time they were exploring it, taking photos of themselves with the integrated camera, playing games, and showing each other how to use everything. Similar scenes had previously taken place in other schools around the globe from the Peruvian Andes, to rural areas in Ethiopia, to Thailand.
These children, their teachers, and parents are among the first ones to benefit from the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project which was started by MIT's Nicholas Negroponte. The non-profit organization has developed a low-cost laptop, the "XO-1" or "$100 laptop" as it's more commonly known. The laptop is designed to be an educational tool for children in developing nations, giving them access to interactive learning contents and the wealth of knowledge and information that is digitally available. As Nicholas Negroponte often reiterates:
"It's an education project, not a laptop project."
It is an attempt to overcome the digital divide that is hindering nations from achieving economic prosperity. In order to achieve the necessary large-scale impact, Negroponte envisioned ministries of education purchasing a minimum of 1 million units to be distributed in their respective school systems. That way, he had planned to have 5 to 10 million children with access to a laptop by the end of 2007.
Even though OLPC has encountered many challenges along the way, and this ambitious goal has not been reached so far, the project has already had a significant impact. Apart from the tens-of-thousands of children using the XO-1 laptops, an increasing number of individuals and organizations are now actively working on solutions for introducing information and communication technologies into education, especially in developing nations. At the same time, there are efforts underway to create a new 9th United Nations Millennium Development Goal which calls for ensuring "that every child between the ages of 6 and 12 has immediate access to a personal laptop computer."
These children, their teachers, and parents are among the first ones to benefit from the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project which was started by MIT's Nicholas Negroponte. The non-profit organization has developed a low-cost laptop, the "XO-1" or "$100 laptop" as it's more commonly known. The laptop is designed to be an educational tool for children in developing nations, giving them access to interactive learning contents and the wealth of knowledge and information that is digitally available. As Nicholas Negroponte often reiterates: