Kids in developing countries don't drop out of school because they have to work the fields or care for their younger siblings, Nicholas Negroponte said in his plenary lecture at AAAS. They drop out because they're bored. Just after he got laptops to all the kids at a rural schoolhouse in Cambodia--one of the inspirations for his nonprofit, One Laptop per Child--there was a 100% increase in attendance. No one dropped out. (Parents were fans, too, mainly because the laptop screens were the brightest light in the house.)
The fact that half the kids in the world don't even have electricity isn't stopping Negroponte--on leave from the MIT Media Lab, which he cofounded--from trying to connect them to the internet. One Laptop per Child's machines can be powered by mechanical energy (the human upper body can generate about 20 Watts, 10 Watts for a malnourished child), have a minimum of ...
