$100 laptop usefulness (Score 2, Insightful)

Two of the things that lead to the growth in the wealth and productivity of a society are the ease of communications and the wide availability of knowledge. Jared Diamond makes a similar argument in his widely read book, "Guns, Germs, and Steel." The $100 laptop project offers features for communications (i.e., email, IM, VoIP) and for knowledge dissemination (built in wikipedia, web access).

Over a hundred years ago, when Andrew Carnegie funded the construction of free public libraries in many slum-laden US cities, I am sure many well meaning people said the money could have been better spent on providing food to eat, coal to heat homes, improved public sanitation, etc. But the knowledge that many a slum kid derived from those libraries helped them get an education and escape from poverty.

A full library, with its costs for books, a building, and caretaker, costs much more than the $100-150 of OLPC, so it seems reasonable to try the $100 laptop approach.