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There are many stages in a kid's development. Many of these stages are before they have yet reached intellectual cognitive construction. We must take all this in context before we use the word 'kid' especially when we choose or talk of equipment for them.
I was in my thirties when personnal computers with GUI were born. If I'd been raised with them, I'd be quite different for sure. My kids, now well in their twenties, have evolved and learned with those GUI computers and even now they spend more time being entertained by them than using them as serious work tools.
Some kids in early stages of development, do not take to the computer. Sit a kid who does not write yet to a blank page in Word and watch. Put the same kid in front of a video game and he will surely take to it. At younger ages kid are more spectators than participants. Even when they have learned to read and begun to acquire knowlege they will have a tendancy to be lead by an action more than initializing one.
Hey! why do most adults today prefer to drone before a tv set than to run a line of code? Why are so many people computer illiterate? How can there be kids today who are not able to read? Or young adults who have managed to sneak through, right up to college without knowing how to read? Those cases are more numerous that we'd like to think.
Most reasons for all these observations turn around the fact that the computer has not been democratized yet and offered to developing minds. It is still more expensive than what can be afforded for kids. A small portable computer such as the ones we're examining now proposes a decent alternative, not to the specs of a rich programmer, but to the eyes of a kid who can now say "My Personal Computer"
I do wish this recent argumentation to pipe down a little. It is unworthy of the intelligence of the 'propos' usually carried at MR. There is an etiquette here that has always been observed about respect and right of speech. However passionate opinions are. there is always a proper way to express oneself that gives value to debate. What suprises me is that all parties preach for the same important thing. We care about kids.
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