Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel, told an audience in Sri Lanka that the MIT Lab’s $100 laptop is inadequate. The story is reported here. That is like saying because you can’t have surround-sound Hi-Fi that portable transitor radios are useless.
He said in his snub: “Not handheld devices and not gadgets.” It is handheld that empowers the individual student to own the technology and kids everywhere do love gadgets. His vision of rows of drones sitting in front of stationary muli-featured PC’s is the shortsighted one. The kid-owned $100 laptops will do a great deal to erode the student drone-mentality in the underdeveloped world, and will deliver some real knowledge too.
