One Laptop Per Child

Specification

XO-1

Manufacturer Quanta Computers
Type Subnotebook
Connectivity 802.11b/g /s wireless LAN3 USB 2.0 portsMMC/SD card slot
Media 1 GB flash memory
Operating system Fedora-based (Linux)
Input KeyboardTouchpadMicrophoneCamera
Camera built-in video camera (640×480; 30 FPS)
Power NiMH or LiFePO4 battery removable pack
CPU AMD Geode LX700@0.8W + 5536
Memory 256 MB DRAM
Display dual-mode 19.1 cm/7.5" diagonal TFT LCD 1200×900


One Laptop per Child Foundation:
"Most of the nearly two–billion children in the developing world are inadequately educated, or receive no education at all. One in three does not complete the fifth grade.The individual and societal consequences of this chronic global crisis are profound. Children are consigned to poverty and isolation—just like their parents—never knowing what the light of learning could mean in their lives. At the same time, their governments struggle to compete in a rapidly evolving, global information economy, hobbled by a vast and increasingly urban underclass that cannot support itself, much less contribute to the commonweal, because it lacks the tools to do so."

- http://laptop.org/vision/mission/

The One Laptop Per Child foundation is a U.S based (non-profit) charity which aims to give the 3rd world countries a chance in life by introducing computers and internet to their lives. This works by someone buying 2 XO-1 Laptops for $100, however you only receive one and the other goes to a third world country. They believe that any countries most precious natural resource is it's children, and therefore by giving them the chance to collaborate through the internet provides the idea of "learning learning".

Current Participating Countries:

1. Argentina
2. Brazil
3. Cambodia
   
4. Costa Rica
5. Dominican Republic
6. Egypt
   
7. Greece
8. Libya
9. Nigeria
10. Pakistan
11. Peru
12. Rwanda
13. Tunisia
14. USA
15. Uruguay
    
    All the countries above have committed the project one way our another, however their promises are not binding.
    

OLPC is funded by a number of sponsor organizations, including AMD, Brightstar Corporation, eBay, Google, Marvell, News Corporation, SES, Nortel Networks, Red Hat, and most recently Intel. Each company has donated two million dollars.
The organization is chaired by Nicholas Negroponte and its CTO is Mary Lou Jepsen. Other principals of the company include former MIT Media Lab director Walter Bender, who is President of OLPC Software and Content, and Jim Gettys, Vice-President of Software Engineering.

Information From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XO-1_(laptop)

Here are some issues that co-inside with the Digital Divide:
-Gender Issues
-Disability
-Role of Language
-cultural inequality regarding the content available on the World Wide Web
-the role of educators in reducing the digital divide in the classroom

However, there is a large group of companies that rely hugely on the world wide web. For example, Australia use long distance learning via the Internet due to having such a low population in comparison to the rather large size of the country.
My Counter Argument:
Despite the Internet being regarded nationally as a positive luxury any country would like to have, it isn't always the step forward. Generally the more technologically advance countries are rich, and are stereotyped as being "lackadaisical", for example; The USA are huge culprits of this kind of behaviour, and Germany, these two countries are rated the as the two biggest countries with the highest cholesterol ratings, now however this doesn't seem important but if you take into account how much they rely on the web for their living, virtually they may never need to walk out their own door again, thus this could lead to no exercise, social clubs or even general socialising. Whereas if you take into the perspective of countries that don't have the luxury of using the Internet, for example; Nigeria have to work for their food and living, they don't have the luxury of lazing around doing nothing or even playing a game, they have to work to the extreme to just about put their food on their table, this is because the only real major income available in Nigeria is chemical engineering, which is in short terms, oil.