I personally am excited about ultramobile PCs. Like I said, I edit when I'm not librarianing (there is no good verb for "doing a librarian's job"), and I really would love to have a small PC that I could haul around in a regular bag. I have a laptop that I use at home, but it's really not great for carrying everywhere as it's too big, and I have a PocketPC, which I love, but it's a completely different operating system and it doesn't have a keyboard. It's extremely useful and I use it every day, but I *have* to have the full version of Word at the very least in order to edit. Plus I'd like to have Internet access anywhere there's a hotspot, without paying wireless fees to access the web. I don't mind having different machines for different uses (MP3 player, digital camera, cell phone, PocketPC, laptop, UMPC), but if I could combine a few of them, I'd love that.
On the UMPC thought, I am very impressed by the $100 laptop project, especially the ability to make a ad-hoc local network for sharing files. Children's textbooks could be cheaply distributed by PDF, the children can create many kinds of files for projects, and as they would be run by human power, they wouldn't contribute to global warming. Brilliant. We all know that we are living in exponential times--see "Shift Happens" video below--and that information is changing so rapidly that soon, if we wait for a textbook to come out, it will be outdated by the time it is published. Technology, properly applied, may allow developing countries to participate in lifelong learning as well.
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