Give a thousand Ethiopian kids — who have never seen a printed word let alone played around with expensive consumer technology — a tablet, and what happens? They hack it. Obviously.
Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child initiative has historically been more about promise than fulfilment. But in the $US100 XO 3.0 tablet, OLPC may have its first product that’s not just practical, capable or cheap. It’s actually… good.
The One Laptop Per Child project has had a long, noble, bumpy road. The dream of getting computers into every small third-world hand hasn’t arrived yet, but now there’s a new plan: toss ’em out of helicopters.