I was born in 1986, and at that time personal computers were on the rise. Yes, personal computers existed long before that, but back then many people still did not have them. At the time computers were more expensive and not as interesting to intellectually challenged people. It wasn't for several years that every member of society absolutely had to have a computer and an e-mail address. I know people who held out for a decade after it became ubiquitous.
Ever since I was in kindergarten, the prevailing [ignorant] viewpoint in society was that computers just magically made people smarter and improved your child's education a billion percent. Every school that I attended had to have computers, and they always bragged about how many computers they had. Idiots in the administration talked about how technology was revolutionizing education and how the students were being prepared for the future by being taught computer skills. By the time I was in high school, they made sure that every single classroom had at least one computer in them, sometimes two or three or five. Nothing relevant about computers was actually taught.
Ultimately, it was pointless. We didn't use the computers in effective or creative ways; both teachers and students ignored the computers and studied our textbooks. All we used the computers for was to browse the web in our free time and play Counterstrike. Some kids utilized the school's network infrastructure to upload porn and warez. I went to college with a bunch of computer illiterate people who grew up with computers, and now I work with a bunch of computer illiterate people. My mom went adult education classes to become "computer literate," and they taught her that computer expertise meant knowing how to use Google search and Microsoft Office.
As someone who is very into computer technology and software, it has been a hobby that I pursued since a young age, and it ended up becoming my trade. I think I'm qualified to speak a little bit about computing technology, and I've said this many times in the past: computers don't improve education. They just don't. The money that schools waste on computer equipment could be put to use in so many much better ways. Throwing computers at education is just a mutated form of our cultural tendency to throw money at problems--it's stupid and doesn't work.
Can computers be used in education? Sure, they can, but if and only if it makes sense. Right now in my studies I have to use a computer constantly to look up reference material--it's a huge time saver and makes my field of study dramatically easier than it once was. The reason why computing helps is because the computer is a tool that provides a function necessary for the completion of my work. It's not because I learn better with computers than without them, or that computers solve all of my problems in school; rather, sometimes you have a particular need for them, and in many cases you don't.
I support OLPC because it connects people to the Internet who weren't connected before, which basically gives them access to limitless reading material should they choose to utilize it. 99% of people do not take advantage of the knowledge that can be read on the Internet. That's fine. If even a small group of intelligent children can find a way to benefit from having access to a computer, then those people might learn something that they can use to improve their own lives and the lives of people around them.