by Nicholas Negroponte

About the author: Nicholas Negroponte, who writes a monthly column for Wired, a magazine about developments in computer technology and popular culture, is the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. He is also the author of Being Digital, from which this viewpoint is excerpted.

Being dyslexic, I don’t like to read. As a child I read train timetables instead of the classics, and delighted in making imaginary perfect connections from one obscure town in Europe to another. This fascination gave me an excellent grasp of European geography.

Thirty years later, as director of the MIT Media Lab, I found myself in the middle of a heated national debate about the transfer of technology from U.S. research universities to foreign companies. I was soon summoned to two industry-government meetings...