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As you cannot comment on other people's comments on Blogger, I will comment here in response to my mom's comment to my last blog post. I hear you. This information web is totally valuable, and sometimes numbingly overwhelming. I also think it's an admirable goal to put laptops, particularly with internet access, in the hands of children in developing countries. However, before this could possibly do any good, we must ensure that these children can read and encourage them to be the principal actors in the development of their own lives and communities. That is, we must do these things in order to further my personal agenda of having their lives be lovely in one of the ways my life has been lovely. In other words, you are also completely correct that this is not implicity necessary to having a beautiful and full life. However, I believe that there is no stopping the change of the world. No stopping the "development" of the world. I would love it if the directors of that development were the people it affected rather than the people profiting from those it affects, and for that reason, I would like the people of my small village to be able to read and access the network of information so widely shared in the world in the form of books and internet sites like wikipedia.