Lately, the development world has been aided by a nerdy counterpart: the tech world. This odd couple is bringing Apple-esque innovations to places where even electricity is a recent phenomenon. The XO laptop is the most striking example. This neon green computer can run for 10-12 hours on one charge (solar power or hand crank) and is durable enough to withstand heat, water, and sand. With its two rabbit-ear antennas, it has a wi-fi range better than any laptop in America. The XO also comes with a built-in webcam and open source software to create documents, surf the internet, and even compose music. But the best spec is that, at mass production levels, the laptop’s cost is now $175, and it could be brought down as low as $100 in the foreseeable future.

The laptop can improve education in poor areas of the world. Children quickly embrace computers and the internet. With proper teaching and supervision, they churn out PowerPoint presentations and Wikipedia research better than any aging executive. Such technologies supplement the building blocks of education and make school fun, increasing the incentive for children to attend regularly.

Negroponte should bring his head down from the clouds and take advantage of the creativity and technical expertise he used in creating XO for marketing the device.

But the laptop’s creator, MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte, considers his product to be the panacea for the global education problem. He travels the world more than 300 days a year lobbying governments to order the XO and has created a formidable marketing machine in the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) consortium. OLPC’s website, which is cute enough for the iPod generation, hypes the revolution that the $100 laptop will supposedly start. It even claims, citing “experience” as a source, that “more of the same—building schools, hiring teachers, buying books and equipment—is a laudable but insufficient response” for improving education in poor nations.

Wait a minute: since when did teachers, schools, and books become antiquated? In societies that value human capital development, technology improves the classroom experience; it does not, however, replace it. While children will certainly grasp the basic operations of computers and the internet quickly, they will still need to be taught and guided in order to refine their skills. Quickly learning to search on Google or play video games doesn’t mean that the children will eventually produce cogent reports and structured spreadsheets on their own. The higher education and well-paying jobs that can elevate poor children to the global elite require teaching, not just tools.

If anything, unsupervised computer access can backfire, creating situations in which children spend hours playing video games when it is in their best interest to engage in more intellectual pursuits. The spread of high technology implies a continued, and perhaps even elevated, need for the structure that schools and teachers provide. It’s ironic, then, that Negroponte and his organization deride “traditional education.”

It’s also important to note that Negroponte wants to give away this laptop to every single poor child in the world. That’s about one billion children. He believes in ownership—just as there are no such things as “community pencils,” he argues, there should be no community computers. But a billion computers means lots of waste in parts of the world where recycling services are not available. The XOs look like toys and will most likely be treated as such. After all, the intended consumers are children.

Internal tensions come out in Negroponte’s sales pitch. In a recent interview on 60 Minutes, he noted that when children in Cambodia received computers, school attendance went up 50 percent. Yet he also claimed that the XO is particularly helpful if children don’t go to school, lauding the laptop as a “school in a box.” If that latter claim is right, won’t it reduce the incentive to go to school?

Competition means more computers can reach more children and their families at lower costs, and each company would be driven to continue to innovate and bring the costs of other technologies down as well.

Negroponte has also fought Intel’s Classmate, another low-cost laptop. Intel’s critiques of the OLPC effort (which runs on rival AMD processors) left Negroponte contrasting Intel’s profit motivation with his own “humanitarian effort." But there’s nothing immoral about selling the laptops, and Intel or any other business should not wince in the face of Negroponte’s pathos-ridden defense. Of course, households may not be able to pay the full cost up-front, but with monthly payments the purchase is clearly possible. Take Cambodia, the country Negroponte loves to evoke in his campaign, as an example. According to the 2003/4 Socioeconomic Survey, Cambodian households with per capita incomes of less than $3,000 in purchasing power parity have an annual budget of $54 for information and communication technologies (ICT) and $88 for education. This means that over the course of one year some households in Cambodia could afford to purchase a laptop.

By buying the XO or the Classmate, households can achieve ownership and have an incentive to use the computer not only for education, but also as an income generator. In much poorer Bangladesh, Grameen phone ladies have bought cell phones and then rented their use to other community members, thus doubling their incomes. The XO could also serve as an impetus for budding internet cafes, community ICT centers, and other local businesses.

If he could make his machines part of a profitable business, Negroponte wouldn’t have to worry about fundraising money to keep OLPC afloat or about getting enough orders to begin mass production. Competition means more computers can reach more children and their families at lower costs, and each company would be driven to continue to innovate and bring the costs of other technologies down as well.

Negroponte should bring his head down from the clouds and take advantage of the creativity and technical expertise he used in creating XO for marketing the device. It is understandable that he was inspired by his experiences in Cambodia and other parts of the developing world, but his idealism blurs and distorts his more plausible dream. The children and families of poor communities do indeed need the $100 laptop for the opportunities it offers, including making education easier and more appealing. However, it will not and should not replace traditional education. Some things in society have lasting power: schools, teachers, books—and markets. Negroponte should embrace all of these and sacrifice none.

Apoorva Shah is a research intern in development policy at the American Enterprise Institute. In 2006, he taught technology classes to youth in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Featured image by jonl.