Been almost a whole month. It's not that I haven't had anything to say, just little time to do anything about it. All my writing has been going into the writing class I'm taking along with Spanish.

Enough of the excuses, the reason I'm bitching now. Not really a bitch, just an observation. There is this nonprofit entity that has decided to make a laptop that will cost less than $100 when purchased bulk. They tout it as very durable, a screen easily read out of doors (for those days spent on the plains, I guess), and with a hand crank for when there is no power. Yep, a hand crank. Crank it for one minute, you get ten minutes of use. They want to get these machines to underdeveloped countries, cause one of the founders has seen what kids can get accomplished with them when he and his wife let them use notebooks in Cambodia.

The first customers? The governor of of Massachusetts (is that spelled right?) wants to buy 500,000 for kids there in middle and high school.

Will it help them out? With the right supervision, it would. But I live with two teenage boys, and a third is in the final stages of boot camp, and I can attest to the fact that when a boy has a computer, learning is the furthest thing from their mind. They have all had computers in their rooms, online of course. The youngest in our house, spent a lot of his time playing video games, doing teenage activity web pages, and looking up secret codes for the nintendo games they were into. When he really had to he would use it to write papers, or look shit up on the internet for school, but those were rare occasions. This is all past tense, because when the distractions the electronic devices provided proved to be too much to resist, and those activities precluded homework, I confiscated everything. Yes, I even found porn sites in the history on several occasions, but mostly it was gaming stuff.

The other boys are older, so of course they were all over Kazaa downloading blonde babes blowing or latino sluts getting slammed. I would check and erase everything, then finally forbid Kazaa altogether. It was that and music, nothing more if they could avoid it. It got so bad they were having to frequently start from scratch every time they would get a virus on the computer, and I finally stopped providing computer service for their machines. The oldest bought his own stuff and got better at the maintenance. The middle boy is still without because he is too busy with other things to get a computer going for himself. The youngest is able to maintain his own, but can't keep the priorities straight when it is there to distract him. Much to the dismay to an aunt of mine, he has been deprived of all distractions except for friends and books. Yep, people tend to think the kid is mistreated because I deprive him of television. I don't care, if he is ever going to make it when or if he goes to school beyond high school, he is going to have to be able to take care of his business himself. He will never make it if the grades don't improve.

The point is, that when things are just handed to kids, they don't appreciate the things that are really important, and with boys it's the instant gratification they will gravitate to if allowed. I think that giving these kids in Mass. laptops, just handing them the technology, is just asking for trouble. Sure, some will benefit, but most will be engrossed in the many things available designed to cater to that need for instant gratification. In other words, it will hurt far more than it will help. Sure, it looks good at first, making technology available where it wasn't before, but if those kids weren't willing to work for the benefits it can provide in the first place, they will not benefit if it is just handed to them. It works toward building a community of consumers, and when the consumers tip the scales too much, there won't be enough producers to satisfy the demands of the consumers. It's already happening. People have been bitching about the outsourcing going on, but it is our own fault for allowing the minds of Americans stagnate.