The trope goes something like this: one minute you’re teaching your kid to tie his shoes, and the next he’s showing you how to use the new Blu-Ray player. No doubt, fresh minds tend to have an easier time adapting to new technologies – but does the cliché hold water in third-world countries where kids have never seen so much as a calculator?
Ed Mcnierney is Chief Technology Officer of the One Laptop Per Child Foundation, a group which aims to empower the world’s poor through technology and education – they recently conducted an experiment in Ethiopia, dropping off boxes of tablet computers with zero instruction on how to use them.
Check out the accompanying video from the One Laptop Per Child website: