Congratulations to Nicholas Negroponte! He is Number 6 on silicon.com's Agenda Setters 2006, the 50 most influential individuals in technology

Picked not for his role at MIT Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte was chosen for One Laptop Per Child, his vision of bringing a $100 $140 dollar open source, mesh network laptops to schoolchildren in developing countries.

To quote Negroponte's silicon.com bio:

Love it or loathe it, the project is causing some big waves in the IT industry - trumpeting affordable computing, potentially spreading open source into markets Microsoft would love to dominate and posing questions regarding just how important tech is in education.

One panelist summed it up: "Whether or not Nicholas succeeds or fails, he's having a dramatic effect on the industry by sheer presence."

Those of us at One Laptop Per Child News couldn't agree more. While his dream's future state will either be a paradigm shifting icon or an artifact of ill-fated idealism, in the present state OLPC is the ICT for development benchmark.

And if you believe that Nicholas Negroponte should be higher on the list of Agenda Setters for 2006, silicon.com has a reader vote with Negroponte on the ballot.