The nomination was proposed by the Italian version of technology magazine Wired and has so far been endorsed by 11 people including 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi and Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop Per Child.

Backers of the Internet’s candidacy for the prize cite its achievements in bridging differences and promoting dialogue among different nations. On the promotional site for the Internet’s campaign, called Internet for Peace, supporters contend that the Internet “is much more than a network of computers; it is an endless Web of people.”

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So it was only a matter of time before the project was forced to rejigger its operations, which it did this week. Just weeks after administering its “Give One, Get One” holiday season drive, the OLPC slashed its workforce by half, reduced salaries for its remaining staff and began restructuring operations.
Like many other nonprofits facing tough economic times, One Laptop Per Child must downsize in order to keep costs in line with fewer financial resources,” OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte said in a post to the foundation’s Web log. “While we are saddened by this development, we remain firmly committed to our mission of getting laptops to children in developing countries.”

That’s nice to hear, I suppose. But given the OLPC’s track record with social innovation–and business realities–it’s difficult to put much faith in such assertions. “OLPC promised a product, a sub-$100 laptop, it simply can’t deliver based on underlying economics of the computer industry,” a spokesperson for OLPC competitor Ncomputing told CRN. “And it asks governments already unable to provide basic services to not just buy these laptops but pay to ship them from the factory in China, truck them throughout the countryside to the schools and then support and maintain them. The hidden costs were a nightmare.”

Walt Mossberg and I have had Negroponte at two of our D conferences to talk about the effort (pictured above), which is a great idea in concept, although a much more vexing challenge in reality.

Negroponte’s goal in 2005, which turned into a project called “One Laptop Per Child,” was simple and profound: Create a $100 laptop with interactive and connected capabilities to distribute to 150 million of the world’s poorest schoolchildren in developing countries.

Unfortunately, he is likely to fall well short of that goal now, due to unexpected and stiff competition from for-profit tech companies (most specifically the OLPC frozen-out and miffed Intel and Microsoft), too-high pricing for the product and the need for long-term technical support for its users.

“I’m not good at selling laptops,” Mr. Negroponte is quoted in the article as telling colleagues. “I’m good at selling ideas.”

And here’s the video that goes with the Journal story on OLPC:

“Give 1 Get 1″ is something of an about-face for the OLPC and its co-founder, Nicholas Negroponte. Originally, the organization decided against selling the the so-called “$100 laptop” in the states. It worried the device would appear anemic next to entry-level laptops from Apple, Hewlett-Packard and others, and it feared selling it stateside would distract the organization from its original goal: to bring computing to the developing world’s children. But with early orders for the device falling quite a bit short of expectations, it reconsidered. “There’s a much bigger gulf between a handshake with a head of state and a real check coming out of the treasury,” Negroponte told the Boston Globe. “You could argue I could have been more realistic in the beginning, but if I had, I would never have done this.”