In 1993 I was sitting in a picturesque Greek cafe, listening to Greek folk music and watching a bunch of old Greek guys playing checkers in front of a whitewashed wall. It was a scene out of a movie, and I thought about how tranquil it was without all the technoworries of modern civilization.

Then the old guys got louder–arguing over the checkers game, I thought benignly–and one of them suddenly burst out “NO! H-T-T-P-colon-slash-slash!”

Right then I realized that information had gone global, and that we needed to change “teach a man to fish” to “teach a man to Web…”

That “computers vs. books” argument is an old one. We tussled with it back in the late 70′s when we brought PLATO to South Africa. Did the kids in Soweto really need computer based education? While you’ll never find me saying computers are better than books, there are instances where computers and computer-based education do (does) have an edge. In South Africa the CBE was colour blind. The computer didn’t know if the user was Black, White, or Coloured (old S. African classifications). And, as such, it just merrily went along dishing out education without prejudicing the educational interactions with preconceived notions about the recipient. As I see it the XO is in the same class. It will dish out its stuff regardless of who is pushing buttons. That’s the real beauty of it. The kid in some back-of-the-world camp that’s got the chops can shine and progress without the burden of an educational system that says “you are incapable of this.”

GcB