Dave informed me last night that the XO laptops have a ripcord charger instead of the hand-crank from the original design. But ripcords take strength to pull, and stamina to pull repeatedly. Will only the biggest, beefiest, most muscleheaded kids be able to use them? Will the weaklings be locked out of the future of the internet?

The nerd psyche is imprinted on the design of all things technical; it’s hard to imagine what internet technologies might have been like if they had been created by jocks instead of nerds. Maybe the XO laptop will show us.