Social responsibility is making computer programmers smile. You can usually leave the preaching up to the twenty-one year old white-kid with dreadlocks who is sooo into jam-bands, dude. "I haven't showered in 14 days to protest social injustice in Ethiopia!" Right, dude. But this time MIT-types are stepping in to mix things up a little.

'One Laptop Per Child' (OLPC) is the non-profit organization that is going to put a laptop in the hands of every school-aged child in every developing country across the world. That means that Mr. Dude can take a shower with the peace of mind that kids in Ethiopia have MySpace... well, sorta. Giving kids access to the Internet is going to set them loose... intellectually... and the laptop that is going to do it costs less than $130. Beat that, Dell.

This thing is construction grade. Each laptop works as as router and broadcasts Internet to other laptops who broadcast Internet to them. NETWORKING! Better resolution than your new IBM ThinkPad(1200x900 vs. 1024x768), and Open Source software. Why give the kids boundaries? Let them manipulate the computers to do whatever they can imagine.

Wait for it.... this is the best part.... Since its most likely that these kids wont have access to electricity, the laptop has its own hand crank to make it completely self sufficient. The CPU, at the very most, only requires 2 watts, so Ricky in Uruguay can crank the handle a couple times and have Internet for half an hour. Battery low? Give it another crank, man. Awesome.

Now 36 million computers are in production. The kids who get these are in some shiesty situations.... with this help in their corner, hopefully they can overcome some of that. Charity? Nope. It's empowerment.