Wikipedia Joines $100 Laptop Initiative

According to a Boing Boing post I just scanned, the $100 laptop folks have added Wikipedia as their first content element. 

A few minutes ago here at the Wikimania conference, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales announced that the One Laptop Per Child Project is including Wikipedia as the first element in their content repository. They've been talking about this for at least a year, but now it's official.

Mmmm.  It dawns on me that...

1. One of the ways to create equality is not just offering self-powered computing technology to developing nations, but also to allow each voice to quickly become an equal when it comes to creating, evaluating, and using universal information.  I'm imagining that it'll take time for the wiki-mindset to take off where perhaps the day before something like computing was a truly foreign concept for a developing nation/community, but in time...oh, boy...something special might indeed take place.
2. Does Wikipedia become the new Times Square for the future?
3. If Wikipedia is first, which blogging platform will follow?  Or will the Wikipedia gang add blogging as a side venture since their platform will already be imbedded?
4. Still want to know who will get there first:  cell phone technology or the $100 laptop in terms of offering all the bells and whistles to truly help developing nations achieve equity.  But in the meantime, I'm thrilled to see Negroponte's vision still making great progress.

Comments

[DK]

Been reading lots on this exciting project for a while and even though I can see the obvious educational and societal benefits I still have a nagging feeling about, what I can only describe as, 'socialised-technology' - another words, all of us in the western world have had some form of socialisation in terms of our technology adoption and use. With the impending $100 laptop being introduced into communities who only a few years ago got electricity (some even without) is it not a question of whether we can more about whether we should?