Re: It's the economy, stupid!
Also, remember One Laptop per Child?
A well deserved flop, mainly because it was conceived by a bunch of techies with bizarre idea abut how education should happen. Their insistence, for example, that children sitting round a table should be forced to collaborate on line rather than talking to each other.
Morals: (1) Even bright people can be hopelessly wrong when they stray from their field - thank you, Professors Laithwaite and Fleischmann (2) Don't listen to Nicholas Negroponte.