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