Nana Nano.(Column)

Byline: Cory Farley

If you can read this, you're too close to the future. I'm writing it on an XO Laptop, the cyber equivalent of that "$2,500 car'' that's been in the news lately. What the Tata Nano may do to transportation the XO could do with computers: Put them within reach of millions of people who can't afford them now.

I'm pretty sure that having millions of new cars would be, on balance, bad. The problem with drawing lines like that, though, is that it's hard to agree where they should go.

I want a car, of course. I just don't want all those other people clogging my roads. Similarly, I want a little technology, yet I like the idea of primitive peoples leading their colorful traditional lives, herding their yaks or whatever. But that often means they're dying of malaria or getting eaten by tigers, too, a stiff price for my amusement.

The XO was conceived as a "$100 laptop,'' putting computers into the hands of children by making them cheap and simple to use. The current price is $188, and I got two-one for me, one sent to a needy child-for $400 through One Laptop Per Child (www.laptop.org). I figured I'd play ...