Russell Coker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I think that the best solution to many of the worlds problems would be to > provide really cheap laptops and good net access (including satellite net > access). The idea is that everyone in the world should be able to download > whatever they like (with a few exceptions such as child porn).
It's a great idea, and I hope it would work. But I'm wary of such technological determinism. In Europe, cheap printing led to a million presses printing sheets of whatever, with the result that there was a sudden huge broadening in thought, bringing in its wake the Refomation, the Enlightenment, and all kinds of good things to follow. In China, the result of the very same technology was the exact opposite; it provided the ability to mass-produce official versions of classic texts, to centralize the imperial bureaucracy more effectively, and so forth. Thomas
