Jeff Jarvis tries to dissmiss criticism of the $100 laptop project - but I have a bone to pick on that:

I love the One Laptop per Child project (David Weinberger takes one for a spin here ) and think the criticism of it motivated by PC nitwittery (’you should solve every other problem the poor have before giving them a laptop’) or competitive greed (’how dare you make an inexpensive machine with inexpensive software?’) is ridiculous, even offensive.

PC nitwittery? You mean that some other basic needs, like sanitation and electricity are less useful? You don't think that a bunch of laptops handed out to the truly poor represent nothing so much as a target for extortion? Dismissing completely logical objections is itself stupid.

There are problems with "trying to solve every other problem first". On the other hand, some of those problems might well be worth looking into. Simply dismissing them out of hand is not an argument - it's a refusal to engage.

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