This is a long 1995 congress hearing video that I doubt many people have time and patience to sit through. But if you fast forward to the debate between D.E. Shaw and Seymour Papert/Alan Kay, you will find out 20 years later, the hardware progress is almost exactly as Shaw had predicted, on the other hand, we are far from the vision of Seymour Papert and Alan Kay.
At least, I think we have hit the point where a 5 year life cycle for a $1000 computer is reasonable.
On the other hand there's still a lot of teaching where a single person sits in front and tries to broadcast knowledge to a group of students, which to me seems absurd. The fact that the most obvious difference between schools now and 30 years ago is that whiteboards, powerpoint, and flatscreens have replaced blackboards, overhead projectors, and film projectors was perhaps predictable, but seems wasteful.
Thanks for the observation on the 5 year life cycle.
But if we think of the "education" in 5-year stages: the first is elementary school, the second is middle and high school, the third is college, the fouth is grad school.
So the the "life-long" educational computer budget for each student is $4000.
