Visionary's dream of true world wide web

The angel investor and philanthropist who provided $1 billion worth of laptops to the developing world says the best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Nicholas Negroponte has consistently demonstrated a knack for anticipating the next big thing, from touchscreens to ebooks.

The 72-year-old Greek-American created the One Laptop One Child initiative in 2005, bringing cheap internet-capable laptops to children in the developing world.

As co-founder of the tech-focused Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he has a clear view of the next big thing in technology, with the process of prediction made easier by the huge Media Lab team.

"The Media Lab has 700 people but they are doing things for so long, you can extrapolate them," Mr Negroponte told AAP on a recent visit to Sydney.

"You can project where they will go."

After the laptop initiative, the next frontier of mass education is not computer hardware but web connectivity, Mr Negroponte says.

Internet access is so critical in the modern age, he said, that it was equal to a human right.

"Connectivity is caught in a bind at the moment because it's still in the realm of the private sector and very competitive," he said.

"Attitudes need to change, and the attitude could be as simple as re-evaluating what's part of civic society.

"Competitiveness has perhaps gone too far."

Mr Negroponte spoke on digital convergence at the first ever TED Talk conference in 1984.

He created the Media Lab in 1985 with co-founder Jerome Wiesner and directed the laboratory for 20 years.

In Sydney to speak at the recent World Business Forum, Mr Negroponte said despite his skill in prognostication there were things he couldn't foresee.

"When I started the Media Lab 35 years ago I never thought it would be a biotechnology lab," he said.

"It took bringing the size of man-made things down, to getting to such a level that it kind of met with nature."