By SCOTT DEWING
Published: September 2007

THE RED TRACK SUIT, the incredibly fast running speed, that bionic arm with the power of a bulldozer—The Six Million Dollar Man was my childhood hero. The popular 1970s television series starring Lee Majors celebrated the power of technology. The message was clear: given enough money, we could accomplish any feat.

In The Six Million Dollar Man, Steve Austin (played by Majors) is an astronaut who is severely injured during a test flight of a jet aircraft. Rather than letting him die, the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) steps in with its whopping six million bucks (hey, that was a lot of money in the 70s) and rebuild him with the latest and greatest “bionic” technology. Viewers were told this at the beginning of each episode with the opening narration: “Steve Austin: astronaut. A man barely alive. We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better…stronger…faster.”

And so, technology triumphs over biological death. Technology makes us better. Makes us stronger. Faster. It’s a recurring theme that’s been burned deep into the collective American psyche. Better, stronger, faster technology equals progress and the pursuit of progress has defined and shaped American culture since the Industrial Revolution.

I was reminded of this recently when I saw the headline for the “100 Dollar Laptop” that went into production this past month. Not that the 100 Dollar Laptop is necessarily better, stronger, faster than other laptops on the market today. Far from it. But it represents the fourth pillar of the technology-driven global economy—cheaper. And by being cheaper, we can deliver the fruits of our technological progress into places—such as Africa—that have been far less economically fortunate than we’ve been.

The 100 Dollar Laptop is the brainchild of Nicholas Negroponte and some other faculty members at the MIT Media Lab. Negroponte came up with the idea for a low-cost laptop after visiting a Cambodian village. A longtime maven on the digital technology scene, Negroponte founded the Media Lab in 1980 and authored the bestselling book Being Digital in 1995. His most recent endeavor has been One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), a non-profit association “dedicated to research to develop a $100 laptop—a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world’s children.”

The 100 Dollar Laptop has a dual-mode screen visible in direct sunlight, a ruggedized impact and moisture-proof case, wireless networking, a motherboard that shuts off when not in use and the ability to be charged up and powered via a hand-crank or a solar panel. This last feature is important because the 100 Dollar Laptop is being shipped to some of the world’s poorest countries where electricity is not readily available.

This, of course, begs the question: Do they really need laptops? Critics of the project have argued that children in developing countries need food, clean water and healthcare before they need a laptop with a hand-crank.

“It’s an education project, not a laptop project,” Negroponte has countered. “If we can make education better—particularly primary and secondary schools—it will be a better world.”

Yes, education can make the world a better place. But laptops—or any technology for that matter—do not necessarily improve education. They are just tools. People known as teachers educate our global youth. And if those teachers and their students are hungry, sick and living amidst extreme poverty and escalating violence, laptops will not make them better, stronger, faster. Yes, we have the technology, but we can’t rebuild them if they die of starvation, disease or become a civilian casualty of war. In the long-run, the 100 Dollar Laptop will only be effective if America rises to the occasion and—like The Six Million Dollar Man—uses its bionic power to save those in need.