MUMBAI, OCT 23: Nicholas Negroponte is to the digital world what Massachusetts Institute of Technology is to research. The founder director of MIT's Media Labs pioneered the idea of multimedia much before it became the norm in computing. His status as a visionary was reinforced by his best selling book Being Digital which spoke about the wired world as it is today, five years back. Being Digital held sway with more than academicians and computer people making it to the New York Times best seller list just weeks after its release. It has been translated into over 30 languages.Negroponte's philosophy can be summed up in single word - "bits". And in today's networked world it is easy to see why it carries so much of weight. In 1995, Negroponte predicted digital living would remove the limitations of geography. "The concept of an address now takes on a new meaning. When you have an account with America Online (an ISP), your Internet address is your ID followed by @aol.com - usable anywherein the world. It is a virtual address. The address becomes much more like a Social Security number than a street coordinate."Negroponte will be in Mumbai on November 3 for a digital seminar aimed at CEOs and CIOs. The organisers, Trade Fairs and Conferences International, said over 250 people including several bureaucrats and N Seshagiri of the National Informatics Centre have signed up for the event.
