35 Cent laptop

This is a 35 cent laptop. Don't laugh. It has a simple input device (a pencil) and a memory-card-come-display (an index card). It uses the best software in the world - your brain.

It is extremely portable, requires no power and can be used anywhere. You can also add components (an eraser?) or expand the memory by adding more cards.

The software is infinitely flexible and can learn, adapt and undertake a multitude of tasks, sometimes simultaneously.

Any laptop is only a glorified pencil anyway. The quality of the end result is still reliant on the quality of the user.

Vladimir Nabokov used a similar system (index cards, pencil) to write his most famous books - Lolita and Pale Fire. This is Nabokov using a 35 cent laptop in his car (Life photo). While his software was probably better than yours and mine, the language he used is the one we share - the same alphabet, the same grammar, the same words. The quality of any writing is not dependent on the size of the hard-drive or the speed of the processor but on the quality of the ideas. And these ideas can be recorded as easily on a 35c laptop as a $3,500 one.

The great architects, the great composers, even the great blues singers didn't need an expensive laptop to achieve great things. Nor did Pythagoras, Gallileo, or Spike Milligan.

It is an important lesson for kids to see what can be achieved with simple technology. Challenge them to make up a game on a 35 cent laptop. Start with an old one - hangman, battleships, noughts and crosses. Write a poem, a memoir, a recipe, a shopping list, a song. Draw a picture, a map, a plan, a wiring diagram...