Unfortunately, this trend is not well enough established. If you work with a company in the video game business, please consider advocating open architectures. Include a modem. Create wonderful authoring tools so that kids can build their own content additions on top of your titles. Allow open Web access.
Connectivity is central if kids are to be empowered by digital technology.
Some schools that have PCs tend to do stupid things with them. This is in part because of the antiquated textbook industry, which sees itself as purely a content provider rather than a tool provider. It's also unavoidably the case that the adults who run the schools are from older generations and don't understand the new economy. John Gage, director of the Science Office at Sun Microsystems Inc., has spearheaded a successful approach to solving this problem by organizing NetDay, a volunteer effort to wire schools for the Internet. This was a job that government would have gotten around to eventually, but much too slowly to matter to a generation of kids.