The One Laptop Per Child initiative, a brainwave of MIT's Nicholas Negroponte, is just the latest in a long line. When you throw in fancy phrases like "bridging the digital divide" the publicity is ensured.

The OLPC has taken on the aura of an open source effort, solely because of the involvement of Red Hat which will supply a customised GNU/Linux distribution for using on the $US100 device. A presentation on the gadget was made at the Australian Linux conference in Sydney last week.

Nobody seeks to question Negroponte's motives - the man is definitely trying to do "good" to the poorer, uneducated denizens of countries like Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nigeria, Libya, and Pakistan, some of the countries which have signed up to participate.

Of course, like a great many other projects before it, the OLPC is predicated on the principle that technology is the remedy for a great many social and cultural ills; in other words, a touch of tech and a view of the web and hey, a great many weighty problems will vanish into the ether.

Countries like Libya and Nigeria have sufficient wealth to provide their citizens with formal education - the only thing that will bring about a change. But the corrupt governments of both countries ensure that the people stay poor: it is difficult to continue a benign or hardline dictatorship when one's subjects know that they are being taken for a ride. Keep them poor and uneducated and you can sell them myths that ensure you and your heirs continue to rule till kingdom come.

A project that teaches children basic skills like reading, writing and arithmetic is probably too hard a task for those who map out projects like the OLPC to plan and execute. Instead, we have the plan to provide laptops - which will make a handy asset to be sold on the blackmarket.