Martin Varsavsky (CEO of Fon , which I advise) has posted what may be the first photos of the new designs of $100 laptop being created by the project Nicholas Negroponte heads. Very cool!

In the same post, Martin talks about the desire to have Fon routers mesh. This to me is one of the great hopes of the Fon project. Right now, the selling point to users for Fon is that if you share your bandwidth, you can use any other “Fonero’s” bandwidth anywhere in the world. (The selling points to ISPs are that Fon encourages people to get broadband and Fon will split the $2/day access charge for those who don’t share their bandwidth.) But imagine that your wifi router (Fon-ized) is also able to mesh up with other wifi routers in your neighborhood. Now you can have a neighborhood LAN that’s a new social infrastructure. There are other benefits to meshing as well, but the social possibilities are to me the most exciting.

You know the “network effect” from which unpredictable properties emerge? Meshing could bring a neighborhood effect. [Tags: nicholas_negroponte martin_varsavsky wifi fon]

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