Walter Bender of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) was on Chris Lydon's show on WGBH radio last night. He had some good answers to the usual criticisms about whether the money would be better spent elsewhere, such as pointing out that in most of the world's schools, there aren't many textbooks either, and given how quickly textbooks become obsolete the $100 laptop may be a more effective mechanism for disseminating knowledge. OLPC is indeed a massive social experiment whose effect won't be known until it is implemented. My prediction is that putting all this computing power in the hands of people in developing counties will unleash a huge wave of talent and innovation. If you consider that intelligence (unlike wealth and education) is probably distributed evenly throughout the world's population, then there must be many budding Steve Jobs who are currently herding cattle and carrying water in the developing world. If even a small percentage of them get access to the knowledge and distribution channels of the larger world there is no telling what they will be able to produce.
Also, I wouldn't bet against OLPC Chairman Nicholas Negroponte's predictions for the future. [Full disclosure: Nicholas was my thesis advisor.] Some predictions of his that many originally scoffed at:
- Architects using computers
- Personal/home computers
- The demise of time sharing
- The demise of the (printed) newspaper
- Mainframes morphing into servers
- Raster displays
- Digital TV
- E-commerce
- User-generated content
