MIT’s Media Lab has officially launched their not-for-profit scheme to provide cheap laptop computers to children of developing countries. Once 5-10 million have been ordered and paid for, manufacturing will begin. You do the maths.

Someone appeared on Newsnight last night to extol the virtues of this. Apparently, children will be able to learn to use this without teachers and have access to ‘millions of books’.

Except they won’t. Sure they have WiFi, but out of the box, only peer-to-peer networking. So if your friend has a book, you can have it too. How do they get that book? They need access to the internet. MIT “are also exploring ways to connect them to the backbone of the Internet at very low cost.” Plus, if you cannot read or write, how do you send messages to your friends? Or read a book you’ve downloaded?

What about upgrades, repairs, roll out of new software?

Besides, do children in the developing world really need computers, and if their respective governments had the money and inclination to spend $100 on them, a computer wouldn’t be high up the list.