Anyone ever spared a thought about the amount of e-waste that would be created by a project like this? But then waste of every description is being shipped quietly from Western countries to the developing world every day; throwing in a couple of thousand laptops won't make such a big difference will it?

Do computers really help children learn? There are countless studies which claim they do and not surprisingly a great many of these are initiated by the tech industry. What about repetitive stress injuries, eye strain, and obesity, just three things which are common among children in the West? Has technology really been a benefactor?

Have any of the bright minds who thought up the OLPC spared a thought for the fact that sitting hunched over a laptop can distract children from social interaction and prevent them from developing language skills and keep them from creating bonds with adults? Clifford Stoll had some thought-provoking things to say about the web in his classic Silicon Snake Oil.

Nine out of ten articles or comments on the OLPC are obsessed with the technology itself - the interface, the cost of running the laptop, whether the wireless chip used is a proprietary one or not, and so on. Little if no discussion has taken place to consider if the project is needed at all.

A week in a village in India would suffice to introduce great minds who think up such ideas to the realities of life in the developing world. (India has said it will not be part of the project but that you can put down to the commercial possibilities the government sees in implementing a similar project itself.) Children do not go to school because they are needed to look after cattle and take them out to graze. In many cases, children go to worksites with their mother or father and help to boost the family's meagre income. This isn't anecdotal stuff - I've lived and worked with Indian villagers in one of the most underdeveloped regions of the country.

It's easy to try and tackle effects rather than their causes - you can treat a fever and neglect the wound on your leg which causes it. But other effects will manifest themselves until the cause, the wound, is treated.

Similarly, the lack of education, the appalling literacy levels, and social practices which belong to the dark ages, are all effects; remove the cause which is a government devoted to keeping the people uninformed and illiterate and you'd probably make some progress. But that would be too difficult - so in the meantime, let's salve our guilty consciences and give them a laptop instead.

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