Re:To everyone making critics out there... (Score 1)

Oh, please. OLPC is just one more academic boondoggle cooked up by an egomanic with visions of Nobel prizes. It's a near complete waste of time. A. The Indian government is right: laptops are unproven as an instructional method. Based on my experience teaching with laptops in some of the worst schools in the US, I believe that they are capable of delivering educational value. But the evidence is not there yet, and there needs to be good, reasonable experiments with this before stapped governments shell out millions on unproven technologies. B. The problems OLPC are trying to address are so great that no amount of open-source idealism and techno-utopist hard sell will get you past them. The problems need smart economic incentives and realistic entrepreneurialism to begin to be solve. And they will be solved. But not by a bunch of academics subsidized in the fantasies by rich, paternalistic foundations. C. There is no way on this planet that Dell, Apple, Lenovo, Microsoft, etc. will let some academic flash-in-the-pan undercut the next huge market for their products. These companies know that the big margins in the next ten years are in emerging markets. And they will offer fully functional (unlike OLPC) laptops and computer to the developing world at $100 and less before MIT. Here's the kicker: they will do a better job in this space than any NGO. Kudos to the Indian government for acting like adults when it comes to the education of children. More on this on my blog: http://vicsedblog.blogspot.com/