Spreading Technology on the Cheap

No matter how many times I hear about the hand-cranked laptop, it's still cool:

More than 500 children in Thailand are expected to receive the machines in October and November for quality testing and debugging.

The One Laptop Per Child program, which began at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab and now is a separate nonprofit organization, hopes to deploy 5 million to 7 million machines in Thailand, Nigeria, Brazil and Argentina in 2007.

Thailand's government is expected to buy 1 million in the first year.

This kind of project proves, once for all, it's not how much money you spend, but the quality of what you spend the money on, that should motivate investment in education and social services. The best solution is not always the one with the highest price tag.