More on the $100 laptop

I first wrote about the $100 laptop a few months ago. Now, The Christian Science Monitor is talking about it:

Rich nations, however, have a checkered history of introducing new technology to poor nations, where basics such as electricity and clean water are still often lacking. For every success story - such as hybrid, easy-to-grow rice and wheat - there are many clunker ideas, such as sending farm tractors to remote villages with no hope of spare parts. In fact, an entire movement, sparked by the late British economist E.F. Schumacher, sprang up in the 1970s to adapt "appropriate" technology to poor lands.

The "$100 laptop" seems designed with those concerns in mind.

Computers have changed our way of life, why couldn’t they change theirs?