Decisions like this should be made at the local level... The author should talk to his local school district before pushing his untested ideas on the entire country.<p>The future strength of our economy depends on our ability to foster the experimentation and competition of ideas.
<i>Inequity of access. Too many kids today don't have access to computers, cell phones, video games or other programmable devices.</i><p>"today" kids have greater access to technology than any time in history, including yesterday. Including 5 minutes ago.
<p><pre><code> 1. The future strength of our economy depends on its
ability to create, support, and sustain entrepreneurs.
</code></pre>
Dead on.<p><pre><code> 2. ...They are in school, right now...
</code></pre>
Very True.<p><pre><code> 3. They are nerds.
</code></pre>
Wait what?<p>This piece is about catering to a niche subset of the <i>potential</i> future entrepreneurs not a superset of the future entrepreneurs as claimed.
I can't believe that anyone in the U.S. who has a roof over their head couldn't get a computer if they really wanted one.<p>There are plenty of computers similar to the one I use every day on eBay for under $50
<a href="http://computers.shop.ebay.com/PC-Desktops-/179/i.html?LH_BIN=1&LH_Price=..50%40c&Processor%2520Type=Intel%2520Pentium%25204&Memory%2520%2528RAM%2529=512%2520MB%2520or%2520more&_catref=1&_dmpt=Desktop_PCs&_fln=1&_mPrRngCbx=1&_ssov=1&_trksid=p3286.c0.m282" rel="nofollow">http://computers.shop.ebay.com/PC-Desktops-/179/i.html?LH_BI...</a>
Old CRT monitors, keyboards, mice can usually be picked up for next to nothing. And if that is still too expensive there is always <a href="http://www.freecycle.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.freecycle.org/</a> . If someone wants a free up to date OS, then Ubuntu will ship CDs for free:
<a href="https://shipit.ubuntu.com/" rel="nofollow">https://shipit.ubuntu.com/</a><p>You can pick up a Xbox with games for $35
<a href="http://cgi.ebay.com/Microsoft-Xbox-8-GB-Black-14-games_W0QQitemZ150403884334QQcmdZViewItemQQptZVideo_Games?hash=item2304c5252e" rel="nofollow">http://cgi.ebay.com/Microsoft-Xbox-8-GB-Black-14-games_W0QQi...</a>
and they are hackable with Linux<p>You can pick up cell phones for next to nothing and many of them run Java apps.<p>I learnt to program on a BBC B (8bit, 32kb memory) computer I shared with my family and books from the local library. I'm not sure how "kids today don't have access to computers" compared to then. Back then computers and phones were expensive and now they are cheap. Also the internet is full of communities to help people learn programming.
Offtopic: everytime I land on startuplessonslearned.com I get an IE Operation Aborted dialog and an error page. This has occured every time for at least 6 months. Shame, I really want to read the articles. Browser: IE 7.0.5730.13 on XP Pro. (Work PC so no control over the setup)
Kodu Game Lab from Microsoft Research (<a href="http://community.research.microsoft.com/blogs/kodu/default.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://community.research.microsoft.com/blogs/kodu/default.a...</a>) is a really good way to get kids into programming. Disclosure: I worked on it.
An entrepreneur is not always a computer geek who starts a software company :)<p>And I think some of the more outgoing and sociable kids might be great entrepreneur too - you have to sell and selling requires energy to deal with people.
hey, for what it's worth, I commented on this blog post, when it originally went up, saying that it's better to be the change you wish to see, HINT HINT, which means (in other words) I think it would be cool to actually DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS as opposed to chin-stroking about it all day long. (Or indeed, as it turned out, chin-stroking about it for years to come.)<p>If anybody feels the same way, e-mail me (gilesb@gmail.com), because I'm totally not kidding. Actions speak louder than words. Less yammering, less yanking our weiners about how futuristic and enlightened we are, and absolutely NO MORE of the boring nitpicky dickwads saying why it won't work for some blah blah blah bullshit "I'll say anything to avoid getting off my ass and helping people" reason.<p>Fuck all that. Let's teach some kids tech literacy who wouldn't otherwise learn it and change the world already, even if it's just some tiny little piece of the world. Still better than nothing.