A non-profit called One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) wants to create low-cost laptops for children in developing countries. Their website tells you why it is important:
The purpose, of course, is to accelerate learning for kids as governments give away these computers. And they seem to get a lot for their $100, same source as above:
One does not think of community pencils—kids have their own. They are tools to think with, sufficiently inexpensive to be used for work and play, drawing, writing, and mathematics. A computer can be the same, but far more powerful. Furthermore, there are many reasons it is important for a child to own something—like a football, doll, or book—not the least of which being that these belongings will be well-maintained through love and care.
So Argentina, Brazil, and Nigeria should get ready. By the way, some should still address the digital divide in this country. There are children in this country in poor areas who could benefit from the same program.
The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, with a dual-mode display—both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white reflective and sunlight-readable at 3× the resolution. The laptop will have a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have four USB ports. The laptops will have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network. The laptops will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data.
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