More historical rambling...

It seems to me that society's habit to somehow looses it's ability to consider the real value of a "revolution" is as strong as ever...

I remember back in history class learning how in the 1840s railway mania gripped the UK as building a railway (like making a dot com company) was deemed somehow a magic ticket to get rich. Unfortunately for some three railway lines going the same way wasn't quite such a magic ticket to get rich.... nor was the sail powered loco... or the rocket powered one...

Not too much unlike the idea that the Internet, without applications, would make the travel agent that runs a website (lastminute.com) more valuable than British Airways (which was profitable at the time as far as I remember) who happen to own a fleet of jet aircraft...

Now if we consider 1:1 computing in developing countries and the empowerment that we could deliver to educating the children who are in amongst the worst imaginable circumstances to shape their own destiny, well, let's learn from the dot com revolution, it won't magically take care of itself. Some was the case with the railways. Before it could really work all the edges needed rounding off, everything needed sorted out (finance models and the introduction of shareholders for example had to change almost completely, management, the works...)

The revolutions do in the end of course change the world dramatically, perhaps not quite as quickly as expected, and perhaps after a bit of finishing work, perhaps in other ways... but in the end they do.