Can we finally realize Alan Kay's Dynabook for $100?

[ Thanks to Jason Perlow for this link. ]

"Since the device's theoretical conception in 1968 and a publication of a paper proposing its use in 1972 when Kay was at Xerox's PARC, many of the technologies that were in Kay’s conceptual device finally did come to fruition, such as portable and mobile computing, GUIs, and object-oriented programming languages. But has the Dynabook truly been realized?

"In a nutshell, no. While we have made tremendous strides in computing and information technology in the last 40 years, it's hard to say that we've been able to go completely paperless and create the computing equivalent to the 1930's Volkswagen or the "People's PC". And certainly, from the perspective of the Dynabook's true purpose as an educational tool, even the OLPC organization of which Kay is an active consulting member has fallen way short of its original lofty goals to getting a computer into the hands of every single student in the world at a cost of $100 per unit, not the $294.00 that Kay originally proposed in 1972."

Complete Story

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