Cloud platforms, information wars, e-commerce, are all part of the world's most famed telecom event, the Open Mobile Summit, which just opened in San Francisco.  But the strangest news was a proposal by Nicholas Negroponte, leader of the One Laptop Per Child initiative, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Negroponte proposes to drop solar powered tablet laptops to illiterate villagers in remote 3rd world areas, using helicopters, then see what happens.  His concept drew immediate parallels to the cargo cults of mid-20th century Pacific Micronesia islanders, who received air-drops that prompted a religious fervor and cult fascination with airplanes.

Negroponte described his helicopter drop plan to PC Magazine, where he compared his vision to the impact of cultural contrasts from the classic 1980 film, The Gods Must Be Crazy.   The film conveys an isolated tribe in the African desert discovering a Coca-Cola bottle that fell from an airplane.

“We’ll take tablets and drop them out of helicopters into villages that have no electricity and school, then go back a year later and see if the kids can read,” Negroponte told The Register. He reportedly was inspired by Professor Sugata Mitra’s Hole in the Wall experiment in India, where children used a PC left in a wall and were able to access the internet within hours.  He has concluded that dropping the tablets will encourage self-directed literacy.

OLPC projects have not been noted for planning items like how teachers, hardware support, and educational material would be supplied. Instead, the stealthy cargo drop approach advocated by Negroponte presumes a seamless, instant-on technology that is intuitive and visual. 

Negroponte's concept seems strangely out of touch with the current economic climate in the US, where children in some areas don't have ready access to computers, let alone personal laptops.

The Open Mobile Summit includes 800 visionary IT movers and shakers, like the CEO of eBay.  The summit will conclude this weekend.